from the SHELL STADTKARTEN 1934
Looking towards Odeonsplatz during the state funeral of Gauleiter Adolf Wagner on April 27, 1944.
Cafe Luitpold and today
Platz der Opfer des Nationalsozialismus
Square for the Victims of National Socialism
Looking as if it was set up as a mere afterthought, an eternal flame burns in memory of victims of the Nazis. When it was first erected, it was shut off each night until enough of a protest had been made. By October 2012 it was missing altogether but has since reopened.
Not far away is located since 1995 a recessed memorial stone to murdered Munich-based gypsies. In March 2008 a Mexican tourist posed the Nazi salute at Platz der Opfer des Nationalsozialismus whilst her husband took a photo. A passer-by reported them to the police and they were fined €450: Mexikanerin posiert mit «Hitler-Gruß» an Münchner NS-Gedenkstätte
A prominent victim of the “Aryanisation” carried out between 1933 and 1945 which took the form of a looting campaign of enormous proportions was the “Modellhaus Adolf Rothschild”, formerly the Palais Eichthal, a dressmaker’s and furrier’s shop located at Brienner Straße 12. Owing to a dramatic fall in sales, Adolf Rothschild was forced to stage a clearance sale in September 1938 and thus sell the business for well below its value. Although Rothschild himself managed to emigrate to London, most of his assets were confiscated.
Munich Gestapo Headquarters
From 1933 onwards the Wittelsbach Palais in Brienner Straße 22 was the headquarters of the Bavarian Political Police, which later became part of the Gestapo (Geheime Staatspolizei or secret state police). This regional headquarters of terror spread fear and dread among the population. Anyone resisting the regime in Munich fell into the clutches of the Gestapo. The carpenter Georg Elser, for example, who attempted to assassinate Hitler on 8 November 1939 by planting a bomb in the Bürgerbräukeller, was interned in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp after weeks of interrogations in Munich and Berlin. He was later taken to Dachau, where he was shot by the ϟϟ shortly before the end of the war. The Gestapo officials in the Wittelsbach Palais were also responsible for issuing orders to compile death lists and for dispatching the deportation orders that led to the annihilation of Munich’s Jewish community.
ThemenGeschichtsPfad National Socialism in Munich
"prisoners had open wounds all over their bodies, primarily on their backs... They were forced to lie with such open wounds on dirty cots. I was often witness to such scenes, especially at the time when the focus was on the BZK. I know of some six people among this group of prisoners dying because they were so badly mistreated. And as I learned later, various others died whilst being transported to Dachau.In 1955 there were discussions on building a cultural or popular education centre on the site, but it was sold to the BayernLB (Bank of Bavaria) in 1958.
1951 testimony by former Gestapo prisoner Josef Eberl about inmates being bull-whipped here at the Wittelsbacher Palais
The stone lion in front of the northern entrance on Gabelsberger Straße is a copy, placed here in 1980 with the inscription: “Copy of the lion destroyed when the Wittelsbacher Palais was bombed in AD 1944.” As the historian Gavriel D. Rosenfeld writes, “A clear example of the postmodern scorn towards artistic authenticity, this monument seems to have been meant to prevent any further commemoration at the site which might have addressed its Nazi past.”
Directly
behind was to have been the site of Hitler's mausoleum. The mausoleum
was to be connected to the planned Halle der Partei at Munich by a
bridge over Gabelsbergerstraße (where, at no.37, the Nazis’ Main Office
for Local Government played key roles in the unrestrained plundering of
the Jews, directed at private property, art
collections and libraries, houses, flats and land, but also at
commercial enterprises.) to become a party-political cult centre in the
city regarded by Hitler as the home of the Nazi party.
The
dimensions were slightly smaller than the Pantheon. The oculus in the
centre of the dome was to be one metre wider in diameter than that of
the Pantheon (8.92 metres) to admit more light on Hitler's sarcophagus,
placed immediately under it on the floor of the rotunda. The modest
dimensions of the structure and its lack of rich decoration are at first
sight puzzling in light of Hitler's predilection for gigantic
dimensions, but in this case the focal point of the building was the
Führer's sarcophagus, which was not to be dwarfed by dimension out of
all proportion to the size of the sarcophagus itself. Likewise, rich
interior decoration would have distracted the attention of "pilgrims"
Giesler's scale model of the building apparently pleased Hitler, but the
model and plans, kept by Hitler in the Reichskanzlei, are are now
probably in the hands of the Russians or have been destroyed.
House of German Doctors (Haus der Deutschen Ärzte)
Established
after plans of Roderich Fick, this building was in the possession of
the Nazis from November 3, 1935 when it was inaugurated in Hitler's
presence. Hitler liked the building so much that he made Fick a
professor of architecture at Munich's Technical University; in 1939 he even appointed Fick Reich Architect for Linz and had been commissioned to work on a number of projects on the Obersalzberg. Bernhard
Bleeker designed the emblem above the entrance which still sports the
two snakes and faintly preserves the title. Located today on Brienner
Straße 23, it now serves as Ober-Österreich-Haus.
The emphasis on "German" proclaimed the medical group's status as a
pure, 'aryanised' organisation by which time Jews had been prohibited
from practising medicine. The members of this organisation included not
only the ideologues of racially based medicine but also the advocates
of medical experiments on humans, forced sterilisation and
'euthanasia'.
In 1933 Jewish doctors were deprived of their licences to practise under health insurance plans. From 1938 onwards they were only allowed to practise as “providers of treatment” for Jewish patients and not permitted to use the title “doctor”. The Association of Health-Fund Physicians of Germany, which had its Munich headquarters in the House of German Physicians, inaugurated in 1935, and the Association of National Socialist German Physicians at Karlstraße 21 played a key role in these measures. The members of these organisations included not only the ideologues of racially based medicine but also the advocates of medical experiments on humans, forced sterilisation and “euthanasia”.
The first Reich Doctors' Leader (Reichsärzteführer)
was Dr Gerhard Wagner, in large measure responsible for euthanasia and
sterilisation carried out against Jews and the handicapped, and who
showed himself at the Nuremberg Party Congress in 1935 to be a staunch
proponent of the Nuremberg Laws, and thereby also of Nazi Germany's race
legislation and racial politics. Under his leadership before dying
suddenly in Munich in 1939, the Nazi killing institution at Hadamar was
established. He instructed doctors to be less dogmatic in their
approach to and understanding of medicine:
The first Israeli consulate in the Federal Republic of Germany opened in Munich at 11 Maria-Theresia Street, closing June 30, 1953.
Looking down the street towards Karolinenplatz, much has changed postwar; only the gate on the left and the balcony offer points of continuity.
Kraft durch Freude - München-Oberbayern
The
site of the former headquarters of the Upper Bavarian branch of the
German Labour Front (DAF) on the left, whose goal was to bring together
in a single organisation all »working Germans«, regardless of their
training, social status or actual profession, and indoctrinate them with
Nazi ideology. The DAF was made particularly attractive by the leisure
activities and holidays offered by its Strength through Joy organisation
(Kraft durch Freude– KdF). They were located here at Brienner Straße
26–28 when, 1935 the KDF took over the business premises and house of
the Jewish antiquarian bookseller Jacques Rosenthal who was forced to
sell the building to the Reich Leadership of the NSDAP for well below
its value. Rosenthal died on October 5, 1937 in Munich, his wife Emma
emigrating to Zurich in December 1939.
Next
door shown on the right is the former site of the German Labour Front
and the offices of the Gau for Munich-Upper Bavaria, formerly the Palais
Matuschka.
Reich HQ of the National Socialist Women's League
Hitler relaxed with a sketching pad, deftly drawing a Party Forum that should grace Munich after his death – a parade square, Nazi Party office buildings, a bridge across Gabelsberger Strasse, and his own mausoleum, dwarfing the city’s famous Frauenkirche and built to ‘last until the end of time.’ It was a concrete sign of his optimism about the future.Irving (178)
House of German Doctors (Haus der Deutschen Ärzte)
Standing in front and as it appeared during the Nazi era. One of the more unexplored yet frightening aspects of the Nazi years is the conduct of the doctors during those years. Many of them abandoned the traditional guiding norms for the practice of medicine, archaically expressed in the Hippocratic oath, and proposed, carried out, and cooperated with medical experiments without the consent of subjects and with little promise of any contribution to medical science. Many also participated in research and other medical activities, such as euthanasia and mass sterilization, whose purposes had nothing to do with a contribution to medical knowledge that would eventually save or improve life, but were simply for the manipulation and killing of persons. These activities quickly fell under the control of Nazi ideology, with no protest on the basis of the norms of medical practice by societies of medical doctors and psychiatrists, and with little, albeit costly, protest by individuals.
Established
after plans of Roderich Fick, this building was in the possession of
the Nazis from November 3, 1935 when it was inaugurated in Hitler's
presence. Hitler liked the building so much that he made Fick a
professor of architecture at Munich's Technical University; in 1939 he even appointed Fick Reich Architect for Linz and had been commissioned to work on a number of projects on the Obersalzberg. Bernhard
Bleeker designed the emblem above the entrance which still sports the
two snakes and faintly preserves the title. Located today on Brienner
Straße 23, it now serves as Ober-Österreich-Haus.
The emphasis on "German" proclaimed the medical group's status as a
pure, 'aryanised' organisation by which time Jews had been prohibited
from practising medicine. The members of this organisation included not
only the ideologues of racially based medicine but also the advocates
of medical experiments on humans, forced sterilisation and
'euthanasia'.In 1933 Jewish doctors were deprived of their licences to practise under health insurance plans. From 1938 onwards they were only allowed to practise as “providers of treatment” for Jewish patients and not permitted to use the title “doctor”. The Association of Health-Fund Physicians of Germany, which had its Munich headquarters in the House of German Physicians, inaugurated in 1935, and the Association of National Socialist German Physicians at Karlstraße 21 played a key role in these measures. The members of these organisations included not only the ideologues of racially based medicine but also the advocates of medical experiments on humans, forced sterilisation and “euthanasia”.
The first Reich Doctors' Leader (Reichsärzteführer)
was Dr Gerhard Wagner, in large measure responsible for euthanasia and
sterilisation carried out against Jews and the handicapped, and who
showed himself at the Nuremberg Party Congress in 1935 to be a staunch
proponent of the Nuremberg Laws, and thereby also of Nazi Germany's race
legislation and racial politics. Under his leadership before dying
suddenly in Munich in 1939, the Nazi killing institution at Hadamar was
established. He instructed doctors to be less dogmatic in their
approach to and understanding of medicine:In his thinking and practice, the German doctor must become closer to nature. He should no longer swear solely and only by the dogma of his university acquired Schulmedizin-based knowledge. Rather, he should also master the methods of Naturheil, homeopathy, and Volksmedezin. We National Socialists subscribe neither to economic nor intellectual dogma, we only know one dogma: The well-being of the German Volk.
Chad Ross (78-9) Naked Germany
After the war the second floor swastika and laurel wreath were removed and the stone plaque altered to read Haus der Muenchener Ärzte. (Munich and Memory: Architecture, Monuments, and the Legacy of the Third Reich by Gavriel David Rosenfeld, page 80)
Ironically
enough, directly across the street from the former Gestapo HQ (right) and next
door to the former House of German Doctors is the current Israeli
Consulate with Drake Winston standing in front, thus explaining the constant police presence.
The
site of the former headquarters of the Upper Bavarian branch of the
German Labour Front (DAF) on the left, whose goal was to bring together
in a single organisation all »working Germans«, regardless of their
training, social status or actual profession, and indoctrinate them with
Nazi ideology. The DAF was made particularly attractive by the leisure
activities and holidays offered by its Strength through Joy organisation
(Kraft durch Freude– KdF). They were located here at Brienner Straße
26–28 when, 1935 the KDF took over the business premises and house of
the Jewish antiquarian bookseller Jacques Rosenthal who was forced to
sell the building to the Reich Leadership of the NSDAP for well below
its value. Rosenthal died on October 5, 1937 in Munich, his wife Emma
emigrating to Zurich in December 1939. Next
door shown on the right is the former site of the German Labour Front
and the offices of the Gau for Munich-Upper Bavaria, formerly the Palais
Matuschka.After the free trade unions were disbanded in May 1933, their assets were confiscated and many trade-union functionaries were arrested. They were replaced by the German Labour Front (DAF), whose goal was to bring together in a single organisation all “working Germans”, regardless of their training, social status or actual profession, and indoctrinate them with Nazi ideology. The DAF was made particularly attractive by the leisure activities and holidays offered by its “Strength through Joy” organisation (“Kraft durch Freude” – KdF). The headquarters of the Upper Bavarian branch of the DAF were located at Brienner Straße 26–28, and in 1935 the KdF took over the business premises and house of the Jewish antiquarian bookseller Jacques Rosenthal at Brienner Straße 26. Rosenthal was forced to sell the building to the Reich Leadership of the NSDAP for well below its value.ThemenGeschichtsPfad (57-58)
(Reichsführung der NS-Frauenschaft)
The headquarters of the head of the Woman's Bureau in the German Labour Front and, from 1934 onward, Reichsführerin of
the National Socialist Women’s Association. The Nazi women's movement (NSF) was the women's organisation of the Nazi Party founded in October 1931. In fact, the political influence of the NSF within the NSDAP and the power of the state tended to be zero, which may have been due to the national socialist image of women, which did not envisage a power and political participation for women. The "German woman" was defined as a housewife and mother, a roll distribution, which was also propagated by Nazi women. The general care and the education of the children were called "feminine habitat" and women's mothers' training courses, which had been attended by every fifth woman (over 20 years) until 1937, were formally established based primarily on the book Adolf Hitler, the German Mother and her First Child by Johanna Haarer, a copy of which our midwife lent me. From February 1934 to the end of the Second World War 1945, the Nazi women's leadership was led by the "Reichsfrauenführer" Gertrud Scholtz-Klink, who also headed the DFW. Scholtz-Klink
had been charged with the responsibility of persuading
women to work for the good of the Nazi government; its offices provided training programmes relating to women's domestic work. In 1938, she argued
that "the German woman must work and work, physically and mentally she
must renounce luxury and pleasure", though she herself enjoyed a
comfortable material existence.
Unlike man, as Alfred Rosenberg once put it, woman thinks 'lyrically’ and not 'systematically’, 'atomistically’ and not 'synoptically’, whatever that may mean; and while he saw it as one of woman’s main tasks 'to preach the maintenance of the purity of the race’, the Reich Women’s Leader Gertrud Scholtz-Klink, in full agreement, complained especially of the absence in sober modern times of the sacred racial function and significance of women and called upon them 'to become once more the priestesses of the family and nation’.
Fest (316) The Face Of The Third Reich
She
eventually served eighteen months in gaol after the war (only having
been caught whilst in hiding in 1948 after witnesses had claimed she had
died in the bunker with Hitler) and remained an unrepentant Nazi until
her death in 1999, twenty years earlier In she had dedicated her book The Woman in the Third Reich
to “the victims of the Nuremberg trials.” The building itself today
dates from 1957 after the original was bombed during the war.
Former NSDAP Accounting Office (Reichrevisionsamt/Rechnungsamt)
Palais Asbeck-Lotzbeck, located
at Karolinenplatz 3, had served as the Nazi accounting office until suffering damaged in 1944 and 1945 with its ruins torn down and made the site in 1955 of the Amerika-Haus.
Initially American cultural officials concentrated on the transmission of high culture so as to overcome inherited notions of German cultural superiority. Its chief instruments were the several dozen “America Houses,” which in the larger cities offered a rich selection of U.S. newspapers, journals, and books that would help curious Germans quench their thirst for information. Typical of their political message was the celebration of America by the poet Stephen Vincent Benet: “There is a land of hope, a land of freedom. There is a land in which the most different kinds of people live, descendants of all peoples of this earth living together under the same big sky.” Especially appealing were novels by Ernest Hemingway, William Saroyan, and others that furnished a key to understanding this land of contradictions, as well as art exhibits that brought back masterpieces of modernism from their exile in the United States. Attempts to convey the work of classical composers like Aaron Copeland and dramatists such as Thornton Wilder, however, proved more difficult. But when reading Nathaniel Hawthorne, one young English major noted enthusiastically: “Finally, [this is] another America than the one we’re used to from the U.S. newspapers, journals, and the occupiers.”
Konrad H. Jarausch (121) After Hitler: Recivilising Germans, 1945–1995
Oberstes Parteigericht
Formerly
the site of Palais Törring built in 1812 from the plans of Karl von
Fischer, this was the site of the Supreme Court of the NSDAP headed by
Walter Buch (whose daughter ended up marrying Martin Bormann). Located at Karolinenplatz 4, it was
responsible for settling internal party conflicts and disciplining
individual members whose behaviour might be damaging to the party. By the constitution of the NSDAP of July 21, 1921, a conciliation committee and a committee of inquiry were set up, which had to assess all new admissions and decision-making procedures. Adolf Hitler saw these committees as an instrument to prevent internal opposition. After the founding of the NSDAP in 1925, the two committees were merged into the examination and conciliation committee (USCHLA). According to the statutes of 25 May 1926, the main task of the new body was the examination of admission and exclusion procedures and the mediation of intra-party disputes. On local and regional level local USCHLAs were formed, which the USchlA in Munich headed. The committees included a chairman and two assessors. In order not to bind the members of the committees as an executive organ of the party leadership, the exclusion was not precisely defined, which led to the judges having more liberties. In 1929, new guidelines were issued for USCHLAs, which were based on the criminal code of procedure.
In 1931 the jurisdiction was extended to the SA and ϟϟ. After the introduction of the Law for the Protection of the Unity of the Party and the State in December 1933, the USCHLA was renamed Party Attacks, with the Supreme Party Judge having several chambers. In 1934, the procedures were aligned more to criminal proceedings by means of new directives. The criminal catalogue was expanded and re-admissions allowed. The party reports were regarded as a separate branch of the state courts, state courts had to provide legal assistance, from 1936 judges who were jurists were the right to sworn witnesses and experts. Efforts to create a separate jurisdiction for the SA failed due to the veto of Hitler and the resistance of the judiciary and the Reichswehr. The court played an important role after the November pogroms in 1938, as it helped to cover up crimes and cover up criminals, thereby strengthening the Nazi dictatorship. After the trial against Josef Wagner, in which the court did not see any grounds for condemnation against the will of Hitler for formal juristical reasons, the power of the court was considerably reduced, especially since every judgement had to be confirmed by the party. In 1944 almost all proceedings were suspended. The building itself was destroyed during the war and completely rebuilt.
In 1931 the jurisdiction was extended to the SA and ϟϟ. After the introduction of the Law for the Protection of the Unity of the Party and the State in December 1933, the USCHLA was renamed Party Attacks, with the Supreme Party Judge having several chambers. In 1934, the procedures were aligned more to criminal proceedings by means of new directives. The criminal catalogue was expanded and re-admissions allowed. The party reports were regarded as a separate branch of the state courts, state courts had to provide legal assistance, from 1936 judges who were jurists were the right to sworn witnesses and experts. Efforts to create a separate jurisdiction for the SA failed due to the veto of Hitler and the resistance of the judiciary and the Reichswehr. The court played an important role after the November pogroms in 1938, as it helped to cover up crimes and cover up criminals, thereby strengthening the Nazi dictatorship. After the trial against Josef Wagner, in which the court did not see any grounds for condemnation against the will of Hitler for formal juristical reasons, the power of the court was considerably reduced, especially since every judgement had to be confirmed by the party. In 1944 almost all proceedings were suspended. The building itself was destroyed during the war and completely rebuilt.
Reichsrechtsamt der NSDAP
Now the the location of the Sparkassenverband Bayern at Max-Joseph-Straße 4, this served as the offices of the Nazis' Legal
Department.
According to The Hitler Pages, in
the summer of 1927 Geli Raubal's history teacher, Hermann Foppa, asked
her if she could arrange a class meeting with her uncle. In the
beginning of July the class went here to the villa of Elsa and Hugo
Bruckman on the Karolinenplatz where they had the meeting with Hitler. With benefactresses such as Elsa Bruckmann and Helene Bechstein vying for his favour, Hitler was able to gain introductions to numerous public figures, including Richard Wagner’s daughter-in-law Winifred, who later became an enthusiastic supporter of the NSDAP. It was also in these circles that Hitler met his later personal photographer Heinrich Hoffmann, who was to heavily influence Hitler’s public propaganda image.
Of Elsa, Hitler would later remark on the night of March 10, 1942:
One day I detected an unexpected reaction even in Frau Bruckmann. She had invited to her house, at the same time as myself, a very pretty woman of Munich society. As we were taking our leave, Frau Bruckmann perceived in her female guest's manner a sign of an interest that she doubtless deemed untimely. The consequence was that she never again invited us both at once. As I've said, the woman was beautiful, and perhaps she felt some interest in me—nothing more.
Hitler's Table Talk (359)
As a student in Munich, future Hitlerjugend
leader Baldur von Schirach lived in the house of the publisher
Bruckmann, who was friendly not only with his parents but also with
Hitler." Fest (456), The Face Of The Third Reich.
It was also here that Hitler first met his favourite architect, Professor Ludwig Troost, in 1928,
and that same day he told the architect, "When I come to power, you will be my architect. I have great plans in mind and I believe you are the only one who can carry them out for me." Troost did not however live long. As Hitler gave the obligatory three taps to the foundation stone for the House of Art (which still stands in modern Munich), the shaft of the silver-headed hammer broke, an omen of ill fortune of the highest degree, as the local architect Schiedermayer tactlessly whispered to the Führer in his dialect: "Dös bedeudt a Unglück."
Irving (100) Hitler's War
If the Feldherrnhalle honours those who fought against Napoleon, this obelisk in the Karolinenplatz commemorates the 30,000 Bavarian soldiers who were sent to fight for
Napoleon and died in Russia. In his final speech before the court on
March 27, 1924 during his putsch trial, Hitler declared: "It will be
said one day, I can assure you, of the young men who died in the
uprising what the words on the Obelisk say: 'They too died for the
Fatherland!' That is the visual proof of the success of November eight,
that in its wake youth rises like a raging flood and is united. That is
the great success of the eighth of November: it has not led to
depressed spirits but has brought the people to the highest pitch of
enthusiasm. I believe that the hour will come when the masses who today
bear our crusading flags on the streets will join with those on
November eight shot at them." In fact, when Hitler often maintained in
party circles that the victims of June 30 had died “for the liberation
of the Vaterland,” he was alluding to the same inscription and had
actually granted substantial pensions to the survivors of those slain
on June 30, 1934.
Looking towards Königsplatz from the base of the obelisk on Karolinenplatz during a march past the Brown House in 1932 and the scene today.
Just past Karolinenplatz on the former Adolf-Hitler-Strasse was The Brown House (Das Braunes Haus)
Das Braune Haus behind the Temples of Honour shown on the left with part of the Führerbau.
The Nazi Party Reich Office: Braunes Haus, Briennerstrasse 45, Munchen 33. It was named for the colour of the party uniforms. On the ground floor was displayed the Blutfahne
('Blood Flag') of the failed Munich beer Hall putsch of November 9,
1923. Hitler, then leader of the SA Ernst Rohm, and the party treasurer
had offices on the top floor. After becoming Chancellor Hitler gave the
building to Rudolf Hess. Also maintaining offices here were Hans
Frank, Heinrich Himmler, Hermann Goering, Philipp Bouhler, and Franz
Xaver Schwarz. The former three-story, neo-classical Barlow
Palace dated from 1828 in the plain Biedermeier style common in those
times, and it was renamed the Brown House (for the colour of the SA
uniforms) in 1931. It had once been the former Italian legation, and the
Nazis converted the attics into another story.
Architect Dr. Paul Ludwig Troost did the renovation. Sepp Dietrich had a room there, and sometimes the Führer stayed overnight. From the Brown House, Hitler executed his plans for the political conquest of Germany during 1929–33.
During 1933–35, a tunnel reportedly was built connecting the Brown House with the nearby Fuhrerbau, and it was from the Brown House that Hitler went by car to arrest Rohm and the other dissident SA leaders on “The Night of the Long Knives,” June 30, 1934.
Inside the Führer’s second floor office, there was a bust of Mussolini, red-brown walls, and high windows (a future typical room feature) looking out onto the Konigsplatz. Peter Adam in Art of the Third Reich noted, “The standard for future Party buildings was set here . . . Much earnest wood panelling on walls and ceiling . . . A vast staircase led to Hitler’s office, with its portrait of Frederick the Great over a large desk. There were also pictures of Prussian battles . . . a Senate chamber was constructed . . . 60 chairs in red leather, with swastikas on their backs for 60 Senators around a vast conference table.”
A Nazi Senate never met, however, as the Führer feared being voted out of Party office by such a body- something that happened to Mussolini in 1943 by the Fascist Grand Council in Rome. Dr. Otto Dietrich recalled in his memoir, Hitler, “The Party Senate—which Hitler had promised to form and for which the Senate Hall in the Brown House at Munich had been completely furnished—never came into existence. Decisions were made by Hitler alone, then passed on to the government and the Party as accomplished facts. Having announced his decrees, Hitler declared that they were essential to the welfare of the nation.”
Architect Dr. Paul Ludwig Troost did the renovation. Sepp Dietrich had a room there, and sometimes the Führer stayed overnight. From the Brown House, Hitler executed his plans for the political conquest of Germany during 1929–33.
During 1933–35, a tunnel reportedly was built connecting the Brown House with the nearby Fuhrerbau, and it was from the Brown House that Hitler went by car to arrest Rohm and the other dissident SA leaders on “The Night of the Long Knives,” June 30, 1934.
Inside the Führer’s second floor office, there was a bust of Mussolini, red-brown walls, and high windows (a future typical room feature) looking out onto the Konigsplatz. Peter Adam in Art of the Third Reich noted, “The standard for future Party buildings was set here . . . Much earnest wood panelling on walls and ceiling . . . A vast staircase led to Hitler’s office, with its portrait of Frederick the Great over a large desk. There were also pictures of Prussian battles . . . a Senate chamber was constructed . . . 60 chairs in red leather, with swastikas on their backs for 60 Senators around a vast conference table.”
A Nazi Senate never met, however, as the Führer feared being voted out of Party office by such a body- something that happened to Mussolini in 1943 by the Fascist Grand Council in Rome. Dr. Otto Dietrich recalled in his memoir, Hitler, “The Party Senate—which Hitler had promised to form and for which the Senate Hall in the Brown House at Munich had been completely furnished—never came into existence. Decisions were made by Hitler alone, then passed on to the government and the Party as accomplished facts. Having announced his decrees, Hitler declared that they were essential to the welfare of the nation.”
[Hitler] took over the Barlow Palace, an old mansion on the Briennerstrasse in Munich, and had it remodelled as the Brown House. A grand staircase led up to a conference chamber, furnished in red leather, and a large comer room in which Hitler received his visitors beneath a portrait of Frederick the Great. The Brown House was opened at the beginning of 1931, a very different setting from the dingy rooms in the Corneliusstrasse or the Schellingstrasse.
Bullock (149-150) Hitler: A Study in Tyranny
With
supporters inside. Hitler often ate his meals in the Brown House
canteen with brown-shirted SA men seated on rustic Bavarian chairs.
Besides Hitler’s own office on the second floor, there were also those
of the SA chief of staff, the Party treasurer, and the Party
administration. Hitler spent little time there, though, preferring
instead to carry on Party business at his usual cafe and eatery haunts.
The photo on the right shows Hitler leaving the Brown House after the 1930 election results.
At the right time, fate led to his meeting with his architect, Paul Ludwig Troost, with whom he soon formed a friendship based on an affinity of minds. What Dietrich Eckart was to The Leader as far as the exchange of ideas of a philosophical nature was concerned, Professor Troost soon became for him as far as architecture was concerned.
The first building to arise through the unique combination of these two men, and also the first small construction of the Movement, was the Brown House in the Briennerstraße in München. It was only a renovation, but for that time, as The Leader sometimes related later, a massive undertaking. Here one can already see everything that was to be expressed even more distinctly in the buildings which were to be constructed after he came to power: severe and austere, but never monotonous. Simple and clear, and without false decoration. Ornamentation used sparingly, but in the right place, so that it could never be considered as superfluous. Material, form and lines combine to create an impression of nobility.
From Adolf Hitler- The Life Of The Leader
The
Brown House was greatly damaged by Royal Air Force bombs on March
9–10, 1943, and in October later that year and by the time of its fall
to the US Army in 1945, it was a mere shell of its former self. The rubble was cleared away in 1947, leaving an empty lot. It
was eventually razed to the ground in 1947 and as can be seen in my
photo, the plot remains empty. Apparently the Bavarian government will
make this site the home of the future NS-Dokumentationszentrum
UPDATE: This notice board has been erected at the site this week confirming the proposed centre (August 2010):
The site from atop the remains of an ehrentempel January 2012
UPDATE: This notice board has been erected at the site this week confirming the proposed centre (August 2010):
The Brown House at that time was a pompous villa kitted out in a not unpleasant way in something approaching imperial style; but it was quite useless for the purpose it was meant to serve. It did not have the right office rooms. Hitler’s work room was on the first floor, in the corner. The entrance led through a little room in which Hess worked. I don’t know if this word ‘worked’ is actually suitable here. The first impression which I . . . had was of boundless disorder. Letters, newspapers, magazines, everything lay strewn around the room. . . .
At once I noticed that Hitler was notable in the Brown House by his absence. He ignored his colleagues and advisers completely and let them do whatever they wanted. He was only there to talk by chance about anything substantial, and only then about what interested him or about what he wanted to discuss. Already he had a special circle around him which was in no way identical with the office holders in the party.
H. Nicolai, Mein Kampf ums Recht.
Across the street from the Brown House was the so-called Black House- Palais Degenfeld- that served as the Apostolic Nunciature to Bavaria. Under the Nazis, Bavaria was not to hold diplomatic ties of its own any more with the Vatican. Whilst its Apostolic Nuncio Eugenio Pacelli, the penultimate nuncio to Bavaria and future Pope Pius XII, managed to continue the nunciature to Bavaria as a kind of outpost of the nunciature to Germany, the Nazi government prompted the expulsion of the last nuncio to Bavaria in 1936. The building had been bombed in 1944 and later completely destroyed- today there is a large space where it was once located- the Verwaltungsbau is seen behind.
At the very corner of the street are the remains of the 'Temples of Honour'
Türkentor
Running off Briennerstrasse just outside the Alte Pinakothek within the Museumsquartier is the Türkentor, the only remaining section part of the Türkenkaserne barracks, built in 1826 for the Royal Bavarian Infantry Lifeguards Regiment. According to The Hitler Pages, on "October 8, 1914 a ceremonial farewell of Hitler’s regiment took place at the Türkenkaserne, with the king present."
Just down the road on Türkenstraße 23 was the home of ϟϟ-Brigadeführer Reinhard Heydrich, at the time head of the Bavarian police and SD, and also served as the main
office of the Sicherheitsdienst (SD). The SD was created primarily to
identify and suppress plots against Adolf Hitler personally and against
the Nazi regime generally. Under Reinhard Heydrich, the SD often
exceeded its brief and conducted espionage abroad. The SD operated as a
rival agency to the Abwehr, much to the degradation of the quality of
German intelligence.
The Sicherheitsdienst (SD), “Security Service,” was the intelligence service of the Nazi Schutzstaffel (ϟϟ). From 1933 to 1939, the SD was under the Sicherheitspolizei (Security Police), then was transferred to the Reichsicherheitshauptamt (Reich Security Service Office, RSHA). The SD was created in 1932 by Reinhard Heydrich, who built it into a powerful organization that became the exclusive Nazi Party “information service” on June 9, 1934. In 1938, the SD was made the intelligence organization for the Reich as well as for the Nazi Party. It worked in parallel with the Gestapo, which it supported with intelligence information. The mission of the SD was primarily to detect and eliminate those who would subvert or otherwise harm the Nazi Party and the Reich. The SD cultivated and managed a network of several hundred agents and thousands of informants throughout the Reich and, during the war, in the occupied territories as well. The SD was always primarily an intelligence-gathering agency serving the Gestapo, which was the executive agency. Ultimately, therefore, the SD came under the control of Heinrich Himmler, who, as chief of the German police, headed the Gestapo and was also the senior officer of the ϟϟ.Axelrod (728) Encyclopedia of World War II
Alte Pinakothek
The
Alte Pinakothek situated in the Kunstareal is one of the oldest
galleries in the world and houses one of the most famous collections of
Old Master paintings. Hitler had declared on the night of 15th-16th January 1942 that
Neue Pinakothek
The Munich Pinakothek is one of the most magnificent achievements in the world. It's the work of one man. What Munich owes to Ludwig I is beyond computing. And what the whole German people owes to him! The palace of the Uffizi at Florence does honour not to Florence alone, but to all Italy.
The midsection had been destroyed during the war
and was reconstructed in 1952 - 1957 by Hans Döllgast. The restored section can clearly be seen today. Outside the building on the western side is the sculpture of the horse tamer (Rosselenker) by Hermann Hahn from 1928, its bullet holes serving as "scars of remembrance."
After... and in their new positions across the street from each other. Bleeker's Rossebändiger was
so badly damaged during the war that the horse was melted down.
Before the war when the two horse tamers were placed in front of the Munich Technical College in 1931.
Neue Pinakothek
[W]ith the advent of war in 1939, the Alte and Neue Pinakotheken closed their doors to the public and the artworks were sent to the provinces for safekeeping. Although restoration work continued in the museums’ workshops through 1944, there were no wartime exhibitions to organise.It had been all but destroyed during the war and its ruins demolished in 1949. Designed by architect Alexander Freiherr von Branca, the new postmodern building shown on the right opened in 1981.
Jonathan Petropoulos (24) The Faustian Bargain - The Art World in Nazi Germany
Schellingstraße
Schellingstraße during the wartime bombing and today. The street has a number of sites associated with the Nazi era.
Schellingstraße was described as the Einfallstor der NSDAP in die Maxvorstadt- the entrance gate of the Nazis to Maxvorstadt. Named after the philosopher Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling, it is the longest continuous street in Maxvorstadt at roughly 2000 metres. Soon after the founding of the NSDAP in 1925, Party members and supporters of Hitler imprinted their ideology and imagery within the university quarter. Heinrich Hoffmann, whose company had been in the rear building of No. 50 since 1924, left the NSDAP in 1925 as a business centre. Until the move to the Braune Haus in 1930, the nation-wide party was organised from here. One legacy is a prominent relief of a Nazi-era coat of arms of Munich, with the eagle and swastika excised:
Schellingstraße was described as the Einfallstor der NSDAP in die Maxvorstadt- the entrance gate of the Nazis to Maxvorstadt. Named after the philosopher Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling, it is the longest continuous street in Maxvorstadt at roughly 2000 metres. Soon after the founding of the NSDAP in 1925, Party members and supporters of Hitler imprinted their ideology and imagery within the university quarter. Heinrich Hoffmann, whose company had been in the rear building of No. 50 since 1924, left the NSDAP in 1925 as a business centre. Until the move to the Braune Haus in 1930, the nation-wide party was organised from here. One legacy is a prominent relief of a Nazi-era coat of arms of Munich, with the eagle and swastika excised:
From
1936 to 1945, the lion was replaced by the Nazi party eagle- the
Reichsadler. Deemed the Hauptstadt der Bewegung, Munich was a
significant place in terms of the Nazi ideology. The city was home to
the NSDAP headquarters, the Beer Hall Putsch and also saw the
establishment of Dachau, the first Nazi concentration camp. Post-war
designs were not pursued until 1949 with the current arms shown for
comparison at right.
Nazi Party offices Schellingstraße 50
Dates at the cinema and restaurants followed. From 1925 until 1931 the NSDAP-Eva was the middle of the three daughters of Fritz Braun, a master craftsman from Simbach on the Inn. She was a pretty, empty-headed blonde, with a round face and blue eyes, who worked as a shop girl in Hoffmann's photographer's shop. Hitler met her there, paid her a few casual compliments, gave her flowers, and occasionally invited her to be one of his party on an outing. The initiative was all on Eva's side: she told her friends that Hitler was in love with her and that she would make him marry her.Bullock (394)
Inside, with the Blutfahne flanked by two standards. The central photo shows Hitler conducting a meeting in the building 1928 during a leadership conference. Also present in the photo are Alfred Rosenberg, Gregor Strasser, Heinrich Himmler, Julius Streicher, and Robert Ley.
Schelling Salon
Having lunch at the Schelling Salon. I'm going to quote from my copy of the 'Past Finder Zik Zak' of Munich, which is based on Maik Kopelek's series of books, although the fold-out map hasn't any author mentioned:
"Family-owned since 1872... Hitler is said to have often left without paying; Lenin never did! Worth seeing: the stone urinals in the cellar."
Osteria Bavaria
"Family-owned since 1872... Hitler is said to have often left without paying; Lenin never did! Worth seeing: the stone urinals in the cellar."
Claimed to have been used by Lenin, Hitler and Franz Josef Strauss.
When banned from entering for refusal to pay his bills, Hitler then moved down the road to the 
Now the Osteria Italiana,
this was apparently Hitler's favourite restaurant where he would have
his "Stammtisch" and where he wooed Eva Braun who worked, one block
down the street, as a clerk and bookkeeper, at Heinrich Hoffmann's
photography studio. Clearly little has changed. It was here that,
according to Irving (100) in Hitler's War,
that "Hitler himself had sketched the rough outlines for the House of
Art, using the back of an Osteria menu, one day in 1931 – a gallery of
stern Grecian lines which even today is mocked as Munich’s 'Athens
Station.’"
Irving also quotes Goebbels's diary (in an excessively misleading way that Evans castigates in Lying About Hitler) wherein he records that it was here that he had reported to Hitler about the events of Reichskristallnacht:
[Hitler] is in agreement with everything. His views are quite radical and aggressive. The Aktion itself went off without a hitch. A hundred dead. But no German property damaged.’ Each of these five sentences was untrue, as will be seen. With minor alterations the Führer authorizes my decree re: breaking off the Aktionen. I issue it immediately through the press. The Führer wants to proceed to very harsh measures against the Jews. They must repair their shops themselves. The insurance companies will pay them nothing. Then the Führer wants Jewish businesses gradually expropriated and their owners compensated with paper which we can [word illegible: devalue?] at any time. Meanwhile people are starting with their own Aktionen. I issue appropriate secret decrees. We’re waiting to see the repercussions abroad. For the time being there is silence there. But the hullabaloo will come.
Henriette
von Schirach described the restaurant as a “cool, small winery with a
little courtyard painted in Pompeian red and a ‘temple,’ that is, an
alcove with two columns in front of it,” which was kept reserved for
Hitler. However, Hitler’s later secretary, Traudl Junge, said that the
Nazi leader’s regular table was the “least comfortable table all the way
in the back, in the corner.” Hitler rarely ate alone. His constant
companions from the early 1920s on included not only Heinrich Hoffmann
but also Ernst Hanfstaengl, a German‑American who was named head of the
Party’s Foreign Press Bureau in 1931. Hitler’s Munich circle in the
early years also included Adolf Wagner, the powerful Gauleiter of the
Munich–Upper Bavaria region, called the “despot of Munich”; Julius
Schaub, Hitler’s personal assistant; Christian Weber, a “potbellied
former horse trader” (in Joachim Fest’s words) and good friend of
Hitler’s; and Hermann Esser, a founding member of the NSDAP, whom
Goebbels called “the little Hitler.” Later additions included Martin
Bormann, Otto Dietrich, ϟϟ General Joseph “Sepp” Dietrich, Max Amann,
and Wilhelm Brückner (an SA‑Obergruppenführer and Hitler’s chief
adjutant since 1930).
Hitler
with Unity Mitford at the Osteria.Her sister Diane married Sir Oswald
Mosley, leader of the British Fascist Party, made it her business to
meet Hitler here. In 1934 she stalked him in Munich where he noticed
her at the Osteria Bavaria (today “Osteria Italiana”) at Schellingstrasse No. 62. Ward Price described her with these words: “No one could sit for long in the same room as Miss Unity Mitford without noticing her. Her golden hair, fair skin, and blue eyes attain the highest standards of that Nordic beauty which Germans especially admire.” On one occasion, Hitler sent his adjutant Brückner to her in the Osteria Bavaria to convey the chancellor’s compliments. This marked the beginning of a friendship, which soon was to be platonically extended to her sister, Diana Guinness. Shortly after the war broke out, Unity Mitford attempted to end her life by shooting herself in the temple in Munich’s “Englischer Garten.” Hitler ordered the best doctors to her side. After her health was restored, Hitler’s personal physician Morell brought her to Switzerland. From there, she returned to England where she died in 1948, as a patient in the Oban Hospital.
At the usual time, around half past two, I went to the Osteria Bavaria, a small artists' restaurant which rose to unexpected fame when it became Hitler's regular restaurant. In a place like this, one could more easily imagine a table of artists gathered around Lenbach or Stuck, with long hair and huge beards, than Hitler with his neatly dressed or uniformed retinue. But he felt at ease in the Osteria; as a "frustrated artist" he obviously liked the atmosphere he had once sought to attain to, and now had finally both lost and surpassed...One tacit agreement prevailed: No one must mention politics. The sole exception was Lady Mitford, who even in the later years of international tension persistently spoke up for her country and often actually pleaded with Hitler to make a deal with England. In spite of Hitler's discouraging reserve, she did not abandon her efforts through all those years. Then, in September 1939, on the day of England's declaration of war, she tried to shoot herself with a small pistol in Munich's Englischer Garten. Hitler had the best specialists in Munich care for her, and as soon as she could travel sent her home to England by a special railroad car through Switzerland.
Speer (39-40) Inside the Third Reich
The
non-descript address here at 94 Turkenstraße off Schellingstraße was where, in 1939, Georg
Elser rented a room before attempting to blow up Hitler at the
Bürgerbräukeller
on November 8 1938, the day of Hitler's annual speech on the
anniversary of the Beer Hall Putsch. Given the demands of the war and
forecast of fog preventing him from flying back to Berlin the next
morning, Hitler decided to return to Berlin the same night by his
private train. With the departure from Munich's main station set for
21:30, the start time of the event was brought forward by half an hour
to 20:00 leaving Hitler to cut his speech from the planned two hours to a
one-hour duration at 21:07, 13 minutes before Elser's bomb exploded at
21:20. By that time, Hitler and his entourage had left the
Bürgerbräukeller. The bomb brought down part of the ceiling and roof and
caused the gallery and an external wall to collapse, leaving a mountain
of rubble. About 120 people were still in the hall at the time leaving
seven killed. Another sixty-three were injured, sixteen seriously, with
one dying later. Hitler did not learn of the attempt on his life until
later that night on a stop in Nuremberg when told of the bombing by
Joseph Goebbels. Hitler would later declare: "Now I am completely at
peace! My leaving the Bürgerbräu earlier than usual is proof to me that
Providence wants me to reach my goal."
Nearby a square is named in his
honour and yet for a long time Elser was unacknowledged;
nor was he himself commemorated. Starting in the late 1960s several
attempts were made to have a street named after Elser. It was not until
January 1997, however, that a small square off Türkenstraße that Elser
had passed every day on his way to the Bürgerbräukeller was named
Georg-Elser-Platz, chiefly thanks to the unflagging efforts of the
Munich Georg Elser Initiative.
To
mark the seventieth anniversary of the assassination attempt in 2009,
moreover, a permanent art installation mounted on the façade of the
school building on Türkenstraße adjacent to the square was also
dedicated to Georg Elser. The neon lettering reading “8 November 1939”
by Silke Wagner was the winning entry in a competition held by the
city’s Department of Art and Culture. “Georg Elser,” says Silke Wagner,
“earned himself a place in the history of resistance to the Nazi
dictatorship. The object of the memorial can only be to remind people of
this. The work directs the viewer’s gaze to the most important thing –
the assassination attempt.” Each day at exactly 21.20, the time of
the explosion, the red neon tubes light up one after another, writing
the historic date 8 November 1939 in lights. Exactly a minute later the
lights go out again and the work “disappears” from public view. The
abstract monument thus confines itself to the central message and
through this deliberate reduction interrupts our habitual view of the
square, alerting us to that single moment when the history of the
twentieth century might have taken a different course. An earlier
memorial to Georg Elser was installed in the pavement in front of the
building housing the GEMA – the fascistic music performing rights and
copyright authority that prevents any form of music from being enjoyed
in Germany unless being paid for the privilege first– in 1989.
Just across the street is Alter Simpl:
At #57 the name and bulldog logo of which provides a link to the Private Eye-type satirical magazine Simplissimus, banned in 1944 by the Nazis for being critical of them.
A Nazi relief remains on the façade of this building on the corner of Schellingstrasse and Türkenstraße
Nazis battling with police on the corner of Schellingstrasse and Amalienstrasse in 1931
