A guide through Munich's streets reveals the city's Nazi past.
During his incarceration, following the failed Putsch attempt on November 8-9, 1923, Hitler composed the antagonistic propaganda of Mein Kampf. In it he declared Munich the “Metropolis of German Art.” Later, in 1933, when laying the cornerstone of the “Haus der Deutschen Kunst,” he praised Munich as the “Capital of German Art.” With this praise he also signaled the radical proprietorization of art for racist, anti-Semitic, nationalistic and anti-Marxist propaganda purposes and the rejection of contemporary art as “degenerate.” Hitler went on to explain that “the original starting point of an idea must not only be contained [in the work of art] but exaggerated.” Hitler, the unrecognized artist and architect, assigned a particularly significant role to architecture in abetting the Nazis’ rise to power. The route through Munich which is mapped out in this article will offer insights into the nature of National Socialism’s self-representation and its misanthropic politics, as well as take a sidelong glance at Munich’s middle-class, who made the dictator’s rise to the top possible. Königsplatz. We begin our tour at the Königsplatz, one of Munich’s most attractive 19th-century plazas. In the first half of the 19th century, Ludwig I, a great patron and lover of classical art and architecture, had the plaza built beyond the confines of the medieval city walls. The buildings’ Greco-Roman style was an expression of the Bavarian king’s aspirations to glory. As early as the 1920s, the Nazis had chosen this plaza as an assembly point for their movement. In 1933 they developed a plan to transform the plaza into a “[political] party forum,” and the bordering streets were to be lined with their buildings. During the 1934 – 36 period, the NSDAP (National Socialist German Labor Party) covered the plaza’s grassy open spaces beneath roughly 20,000 granite slabs. Hitler declared the plaza the “ceremonial center of the movement.” Each year at the site, memorial tributes were paid to those who fell in the Putsch of November 9, 1923. It wasn’t until 1988 that the plaza was returned to its original pre-Hitlerian state. Arcisstrasse 12, Meiserstrasse 10. Leaving the Königsplatz, we turn in the direction of Karolinenplatz. Soon after seizing power in 1933, Hitler had “his” architect, Paul Ludwig Troost, concretize Hitler’s desire for power with two constructions erected to the right and left of the Arcis-/Meiser-/Briennerstrasse intersection. It was in the building on the left, the Führer’s Building, that the Munich Conference of September 29 took place. Here, after gaining the consent of France, England and Italy, plans to crush the Czech state were initiated. The building’s cold exterior indicates the Nazis’ contempt for humanity. The opposing building, on Meiserstrasse, housed the NSDAP’s high command and its ranks. Today, both of these buildings are used by the university and are open to visitors. The Führer Building houses the music academy. Situated between the two party buildings, directly at the intersection, are the plinths, now overgrown with grass, on which two Ehrentempel (temples of honor) once stood. In them, 16 of the fallen Putsch participants were watched over by an eternal guard. With the bombing of this structure by the U.S. Army in 1945, the liberators sent a clear message of their opposition to the cultish terrors of National Socialism. Briennerstrasse 45. Here, on the side of the Führer’s Building, directly behind the Ehrentempel, was the site of the Brown House, which took its name from the color of the Nazi uniforms. The building served as a museum of the Nazi movement from 1933 until its destruction in the war. Meiserstrasse. This street is named for the leading bishop of the Protestant Church of Bavaria, who played a critical role in Munich before and after the Nazi era. Modern critics insist that the street be renamed, as it has become increasingly clear in recent years how closely Meiser cooperated with the Nazis. Karolinenplatz 5. We’ve now reached Karolinenplatz, marked with the obelisk. In the basement of house Nr. 5, a former noble villa, 21 innocent members of a Catholic organization were murdered by the Weisser Freikorps in May 1919. Hitler was allied with the Freikorps in his attack on the government of the Weimar Republic. In the twenties, the family of the respected Munich art and book publisher Bruckmann lived here. Hitler was repeatedly invited to Bruckmann’s salon, where important cultural figures of the city gathered. Bruckmann’s wife, Else, was an early admirer of Hitler. On June 2, 1925 she wrote to him, “Dear Mr. Hitler, The enclosed watch is one I no longer need. Would you not like to use this one until yours is working again? With your many important dates here and elsewhere, you need one! Would you like to come ...to see whether any of our furniture etc. may also be of use to you?” Briennerstrasse 23. We now leave the Karolinenplatz and head east along Briennerstrasse. In 1938 an organization of “cleansed” physicians opened the “House of German Doctors.” Politically persecuted and Jewish doctors had already been prohibited from practicing their profession by this time. Briennerstrasse 20/Türkenstrasse. This corner is marked by a memorial plaque noting that the rebuilt offices of the Bavarian Landesbank were once the site of the dreaded Gestapo headquarters (destroyed in the bombing of 1944). The building, originally known as the Wittelsbach Villa, was home to the revolutionary Bavarian government in April 1919. In 1933 the Gestapo and the political police took it over. Thousands of political prisoners and the persecuted were subject to inquisitions, torture and arrest here before they were shipped to concentration camps. The student members of the White Rose resistance movement, executed by the Nazis, were also questioned and tortured in this building. A small, easy-to-find exhibit in the main building of the university on Ludwigstrasse provides interesting insights into the fate of these students and resisters. Platz der Opfer des Nationalsozialismus. This area was proclaimed the “Plaza of the Victims of National Socialism” on September 9, 1946. On November 8, 1985, on the anniversary of the pogroms of 1938, Munich’s mayor unveiled the memorial. It represents a symbolic prison cell, in which burns an eternal flame as a reminder of the Nazi victims. Nearby, on a small strip of lawn, a memorial slab commemorates the 50,000 Sinti and Roma (so-called gypsies) murdered by the Nazis. Feldherrnhalle/Odeonsplatz. Our trail now continues along Briennerstrasse to Odeonsplatz. To the left, Ludwigstrasse leads to the university. To the right, rises the imposing Feldherrnhalle, built in the style of the Loggia die Lanci in Florence. In the forecourt of the hall, visitors can find a memorial plaque embedded in the cobblestones. The plaque pays tribute to four policemen killed by members of the Putsch attempt. Here a police unit loyal to the republican government halted Hitler’s march and dispersed the crowd. Following this defeat, Hitler sought “legal” paths to power, abusing democratic freedoms and institutions to achieve his aim. Maximillianstrasse 17. Continuing along the trail of the Hitler march to the Feldherrnhalle, we bear left onto Residenzstrasse and follow it to Maximillianstrasse. A short walk along the left side takes us to the Hotel Vier Jahreszeiten. In the years after the end of World War I, the public rooms of this renown Munich hotel served as meeting points for opponents of the republic, nationalists and anti-Semites (the so-called “Thule Society”). Experts regard this group as the “nucleus of National Socialism,” a sort of think tank of the extreme right. Members were later to become leaders in the Nazi party, such as notorious Jew-hater Julius Streicher and Hitler’s deputy, Rudolf Hess. Herzog-Rudolf-Strasse 3-5. Past the Vier Jahreszeiten, we bear left on Herzog-Rudolf-Strasse. A small commemorative plaque denotes the site of an Orthodox Jewish synagogue, club and parochial school. Many Jews lived in nearby Lehel, among them Lion Feuchtwanger, whose novel The Success impressively recounts the rise of Nazism. On November 9, 1939 the Nazi troops, the SA, burned the complex while firefighters looked on, exerting themselves only to preserve the neighboring buildings. The Jewish organization, Ohel Jakob Society, was later forced to pay 15,000 Reichsmark to have the charred rubble of the synagogue cleared away. Haus Der Kunst. We proceed up Herzog-Rudolf-Strasse and turn right on Hofgartenstrasse, cross over the Altstadtring, and turn left in the direction of Prinzregentenstrasse. Directly across the street we find the government building housing the offices of the Bavarian Prime Minister, once the site of the Bavarian military museum before it was destroyed in World War II. We cross Prinzregentenstrasse, and straight ahead is the Haus der Kunst. Until fire destroyed it in 1931, the Glaspalast in the old botanical garden was the site of Munich’s art exhibits. In April 1933, after the Nazi party had taken over Bavaria, Hitler’s architect, Troost, was contracted to design and build the Haus der Deutschen Kunst. The erection of the facility was financed in large part by German industry. The museum opened on July 18, 1937 and its first offering was “the Great German Art Exhibit.” In his speech at the opening ceremony, Hitler declared war against modern art. “If these artists actually see [the world] that way, and believe in what they portray, then it need only to be determined if their bad eye sight is brought on by mechanical means or is inherited. In the first scenario, what a shame for them. In the second, this would be important information for the Reich’s Ministry of the Interior, which would have to begin busying itself with the question of how to stop this horrible eye defect from being further inherited. Or [the artist] does not believe in the credibility of the works, but for some reason chooses to bother the nation with this humbug, in which case he will proceed directly into the category of committing a punishable offense.” The day after this speech, “Degenerate Art” – a Nazi-sponsored exhibit documenting the banning and destroying of contemporary art in Germany – opened in the Hofgarten on nearby Galeriestrasse. A small permanent exhibit, housed on the right side of the Haus der Kunst, gives insight to the history of the museum and can be viewed free-of-charge. This marks the end of our tour of the “Capital of the Movement,” as the city was – by its own wishes – known after August 1935. When American troops liberated Munich on April 30, 1945, General Eisenhower congratulated them on having taken the “cradle of the Nazi beast.”