Zentralministerium für den gleichgeschalteten bayerischen Staat
On the morning of 28 April 1945, the group Freiheitsaktion Bayern under Rupprecht
Gerngroß attempted to occupy this building but was suppressed by ϟϟ
units, an event commemorated by a plaque on the wall of the building within the inner court:
The commemorative plaque was put up in 1984 on the initiative of the Maxvorstadt District Committee. The original application to have it mounted on the side of the building facing the street was vehemently rejected by the Bavarian Ministry of Agriculture.
With
the launch in 1933 of the Gleichschaltung, to unify all state
institutions under Nazi control, the various Bavarian ministries were
united into a central ministry which was moved here to Ludwigstraße 2 in
1940. Within ruled the two most powerful men in Bavaria-
Ministerpräsident Ludwig
Siebert and Gauleiter Adolf Wagner. When the former died in 1942 and the
latter suffered an heart attack, Paul Giesler took over all posts to
enjoy absolute power until the end of the Third Reich by which point he
had attempted to have all the surviving inmates at Dachau murdered.
Landeszentralbank- Reich Bank Head Office in Bavaria
Ludwigstraße
13 was the site of the Herzog-Max-Palais, birthplace of Elisabeth of
Bavaria, Empress of Austria and Queen consort of Hungary as the spouse
of Franz Joseph I. A plaque commemorates this but ignores the fact that
the building itself was built to serve the Nazis.
The
building had been demolished by 1937 to make way for Heinrich Wolff's
commission on Hitler's request. In fact, the building had been halted
by 1941 due to the war with only the first floor finished and wasn't
completed until 1951. Today it serves as the Bavarian State Central
Bank.
Kriegsministerium
The
site six months after the fall of the monarchy when a demonstration
took place in front of the Bavarian war Ministry in the afternoon 22 of
April 1919, and the building today.
Heinrich Himmler (holding the Imperial German Army flag) and SA leader Ernst Röhm in front of the Kriegsministerium (now the Bayerisches Hauptstaatsarchiv und Staatsarchiv München) on Ludwigstraße during the Munich Beer hall Putsch. Himmler
would later be instrumental in the latter's death on the Night of the
Long Knives. After this 1934 purge, Röhm's face was eliminated from
the photograph by painting in an additional barricade element
obscuring his face as seen in the doctored version on the right.
Roehm, at the head of a detachment of storm troopers from another fighting league, the Reichskriegsflagge, had seized Army headquarters at the War Ministry in the Schoenfeldstrasse but no other strategic centres were occupied, not even the telegraph office, over whose wires news of the coup went out to Berlin and orders came back, from General von Seeckt to the Army in Bavaria, to suppress the putsch...
By dawn Regular Army troops had drawn a cordon around Roehm’s forces in the War Ministry...
Shortly after noon the marchers neared their objective, the War Ministry, where Roehm and his storm troopers were surrounded by soldiers of the Reichswehr. Neither besiegers nor besieged had yet fired a shot. Roehm and his men were all ex-soldiers and they had many wartime comrades on the other side of the barbed wire. Neither side had any heart for killing...
Roehm surrendered at the War Ministry two hours after the collapse before the Feldherrnhalle.
Despite the friendly picnic-like atmosphere Shirer describes it, according to Ernst Röhm in his book Die Geschichte eines Hochverräters,
Martin Faust and Theodor Casella, both members of the armed militia
organisation Reichskriegsflagge, were shot down accidentally in a burst
of machine gun fire during the occupation of the War Ministry as the
result of a misunderstanding with II/Inf.Regt 19. The best account of the putsch I've found was in Anthony Read's The Devil's Disciples: Hitler's Inner Circle which states that "Two of Röhm's men were also shot dead as they tried to break through the army cordon around the War Ministry to join the battle." (100)
I
can't find anything more than that about the incident; most books (of
course) focus on Hitler's role and limit or ignore their examination of
the peripheral events. This includes Evans's The Coming of the Third Reich which,
despite a chapter entitled "The Beer-Hall Putsch", spends just over a
single page on the actual events of that day (193-4).
The Staatsbibliothek on Ludwigstraße then and now.
In
January 1942 eighteen-year-old Walter Klingenbeck was denounced to the
Gestapo and sentenced to death for “helping the enemy and preparing to
commit high treason”. He was executed on 5 August 1943 in Munich’s
Stadelheim gaol.
Ludwigstraße 11
Munich University
became active in the Bavarian army persuading German troops that Communism was wrong. Part of his training consisted in attending a course at Munich University. At this point he became acquainted with the völkisch (i.e. radical nationalist and racialist) thinker, Gottfried Feder, who was helping to organise the event. The lectures Hitler attended there included titles such as: ‘Socialism in Theory and Practice’, ‘Russia and the Bolshevik Dictatorship’, ‘German History since the Reformation’, ‘Germany 1870–1900’, ‘The Meaning of the Armed Forces’, ‘The Connection between Domestic and Foreign Policy’, ‘Foreign Policy since the End of the War’, ‘Price Policy in the National Economy’, ‘The Forced Economy in Bread and Grain’ and ‘Bavaria and the Unity of the Reich’. Many of these topics could have served as headings for the talks Hitler himself gave in the early 1920s. They must have made a massive impression on a man who unquestionably absorbed information like a sponge.This was also the site of the apprehension of Hans and Sophie Scholl of the White Rose (Weiße Rose), a non-violent resistance group in Nazi Germany, consisting of a number of students from the University of Munich and their philosophy professor. The group became known for an anonymous leaflet campaign, lasting from June 1942 until February 1943, that called for active opposition to Hitler's regime. The core of the group comprised of students from this university- Sophie Scholl, her brother Hans Scholl, Alex Schmorell, Willi Graf, Christoph Probst, Traute Lafrenz, Katharina Schueddekopf, Lieselotte (Lilo) Berndl, and Falk Harnack. Most were in their early twenties. A professor of philosophy and musicology, Kurt Huber, was also an associate with their cause.
The Scholls and Probst were the first to stand trial before the Volksgerichtshof-the People's Court that tried political offences against the Nazi German state-on 22nd February 1943.
On the right is the trailer for the multi-award winning drama Sophie Scholl: The Final Days. Academy Award Nominee for Best Foreign Language Film, Sophie Scholl is played by Julia Jentsch in a luminous performance as the young coed-turned-fearless activist. Armed with long-buried historical records of her incarceration, director Marc Rothemund accurately recreated the last six days of Sophie Scholls life from arrest to interrogation, trial and sentence.
Denkmal Flugblätter Weiße Rose
Just in front of the entrance on Geschwister-Scholl- Platz is this memorial to the Weiße Rose showing biographies and reproductions of the last leaflets.
On February 18, nearly two thousand copies of this flyer were distributed by Hans and Sophie Scholl in broad daylight throughout the university building on Ludwigstrasse and were thrown over the balcony of the inner, glass-covered light well. They were observed by a caretaker, who immediately took them to the university rector, Professor Walther Wüst, a Colonel in the ϟϟ and an intimate of Himmler’s. Wüst held the two in his office until the Gestapo came to take them away. Hans and Sophie Scholl together with Christoph Probst were tried before the People’s Court on February 22. Graf, Schmorell, and Huber followed a few months later. (Schmorell had tried to flee to Switzerland, but had been hindered by deep snow. A former girlfriend, Gisela Schertling, allegedly betrayed him after recognizing him in a Munich air raid shelter. The sentence for all was death by guillotine. When Hans put his head on the block, he shouted: “Long live freedom!” Sophie said to her parents, who had come to say good-bye from Ulm: “This will make waves.” But as courageous as her remarks were at the time, they were not prescient.
Kater (129) Hitler Youth
In the atrium upon which the leaflets had been dropped is a permanent exhibition to them as well as a single memorial and a bust of Sophie School alone despite her questionable involvement in the resistance movement. The bust was created by Nicolai Tregor, initiated and financed by the Weiße Rose Stiftung e.V. and was unveiled on 22 February 2005, the anniversary of the execution of Hans and Sophie Scholl and Christoph Probst. The unveiling was done by the actress Julia Jentsch, who played Sophie Scholl in Marc Rothemund’s prize-winning film Sophie Scholl – Die letzten Tage (Sophie Scholl – The Final Days). Two of my students wrote their IBDP internal assessments on Sophie Scholl and the White Rose.
On the corner of the University building in the red brick wall of its library is another memorial- one of the "Scars of Remembrance" (also referred to as “Wounds of Memory”) showing bullet holes from the last days of the war. The work is part of a much larger European project by the artists Beate Passow and Andreas von Weizsäcker who in 1994/95 set out to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the Second World War by drawing attention to the holes made by bombshells and grenades that are still visible on streets and squares, buildings and works of art in a total of seven European countries. Using a series of square panes of glass the artists subtly alert us to the wounds of war in our everyday environment that one would otherwise scarcely notice.
Residence of the Scholls
Near Munich University at Franz-Joseph-Strasse 13 is where the Scholls had lived, with only a plaque on the wall serving to remind people. When Drake Winston and I visited, a white rose had been stuck under it:
Residence of the Scholls
Near Munich University at Franz-Joseph-Strasse 13 is where the Scholls had lived, with only a plaque on the wall serving to remind people. When Drake Winston and I visited, a white rose had been stuck under it:
House of German Justice (Haus des Deutschen Rechts)
Constructed by Oswald Eduard Bieber and inaugurated in 1939, this served as Hans Frank's headquarters as Bavarian Minister of Justice and Reich Commissioner for the Gleichschaltung of jurisdiction in the Federal States before being made Governor-General of occupied Poland. To him the Haus des Deutschen Rechts was an "NSDAP ideal set in stone."
Across from Munich University, the Nazi eagle has been removed, but everything else remains the same.
With baby Drake Winston in front with Siegestor as it appeared after the war photoshopped in. It was through the arch and past Ludwigstrasse that Hitler led the annual commemoration of the failed Beer Hall Putsch.
The solemn procession had led through the Siegestor (Victory Arch) and the Ludwigstrasse, past the burning pylons. It was doubtless an impressive ceremony, this laying out of the dead in the dark of night, witnessed by scores of honorary formations acting as guards of honour.
Doramus (728) The Complete Hitler
Beside the University and Haus des Deutschen Rechts is the Siegestor (Victory Gate)
This gate was commissioned by King Ludwig I of Bavaria in 1840 and completed in 1852, in honour of Bavarian troops who had triumphed against Napoleon. Like the Brandenburg Gate, it is supposed to now represent a reminder to peace; the inscription that can be seen here at the rear reads Dem Sieg geweiht, vom Krieg zerstört, zum Frieden mahnend: "Dedicated to victory, destroyed by war, reminding of peace". The painting on the right is Das Größere Opfer (the Greater Sacrifice) by Adolf Reich, 1943.
During the Tag der deutschen Kunst and after the war.
Purported painting by Hitler of the arch and after the results of his war
Private First Class Lawrence W. Bartlett (1924-1985), Niagara Falls, New York, examines the four fallen lions which once adorned the top of the Siegestor June 13, 1945.
The remains are left haphazardly on display not far from the Nazi museum
In 1945 with the Siegestor in the background and today
In 1945 and today
