The Brocken has a complex history in German mythology and political history. It is both the site of one of the earliest weather stations and of the world's first TV tower, which in 1936 broadcast the Berlin Olympic games.

WW2 brought an end to broadcasts but some 40 radio transmitters were in operation, which in 1945 were captured and used by the U.S. army until 1947.

During the DDR period the border between East and West Germany ran through the Harz Mountains. In 1947 the Brocken became part of the Soviet zone and was walled in as a strategic high security military zone, the Stasi occupying the TV tower and spy domes. In 1994 the Soviet installations were removed and the Brocken was returned to the German people.

On Walpurgisnacht witches on broomsticks and he-goats are believed to fly at midnight to the Brocken, the highest point in the mountains, which is often claimed to be the inspiration for Mussorgsky's 'Night on Bald Mountain' a popular composition used for the soundtrack in The Wizard of Oz (1939) tower scene and for the Chernobog scene in the film Fantasia (1940). Goethe, writer, astrologer, magician and alchemist included a verse about the Brocken in Faust:
Now to the Brocken the witches ride; The stubble is gold and the corn is green; There is the carnival crew to be seen, And Squire Urianus will come to preside. So over the valleys our company floats, With witches a-farting on stinking old goats.

Slothrop and Geli Tripping experience the famous Brocken Spectre in Thomas Pynchon's novel Gravity's Rainbow.