Karlstor
Hitler being driven through
The Karlstor is located between the central rail station and Marienplatz and represents the very centre of the city. The photo on the left shows it during the Tag der Deutschen Kunst of June 10, 1938.
Hitler's supposed painting of the monument with what was left of it after the war.
Sendlinger Tor
Hitler's supposed watercolour from 1913 and the view today
Isartor
Hitler's sketch of the Isartor and me in front. Through the gate one enters Tal Road:
Hitler's painting of Tal Road looking towards Marienplatz with Heilig-Geist-Kirche on the left and the alte rathaus straight ahead.
Hotel Torbräu
Supposedly the oldest hotel in the centre of Munich when it was founded in 1470 as the Hotel Thaltor, the Hotel Torbräu was where the SA and ϟϟ recruited and drank throughout the 1920s. The SA swore allegiance to Hitler in May 1923 and the precursor to the SS, the Stosstrupp Hitler, was established in the basement here in 1925. The Isartor is seen directly behind me.
Hitler’s first bodyguard was replaced with a new one in May of 1923, the Stosstrupp Adolf Hitler. Its members by and large came from a differing social and age group (older) than the quite young SA. The initial leader of this group was Julius Schreck, a man who superficially resembled Hitler and later served as his double from time to time. These recruits were later described by one of their own: “Hard and rough and sometimes quite uncouth were the customs, habits, and looks of the Stosstrup. They did not know ... grovelling. They clung to the right of the stronger, the old right of the fist. In an emergency they knew no command.... When ... called to action— to attack right and left—march! march!—then things were torn to bits and in minutes streets and squares were swept of enemies.... Soon we were known in village and town.”
Otis C. Mitchell (55) Hitler's Stormtroopers and the Attack on the German Republic
Sterneckerbrau
It can scarcely have been a very impressive scene when, on the evening of 12 September 1919, Hitler attended his first meeting in a room at the Sterneckerbrau, a Munich beer-cellar in which a handful of twenty or twenty-five people had gathered. One of the speakers was Gottfried Feder, an economic crank well known in Munich, who had already impressed Hitler at one of the political courses arranged for the Army. The other was a Bavarian separatist, whose proposals for the secession of Bavaria from the German Reich and a union with Austria brought Hitler to his feet in a fury. He spoke with such vehemence that when the meeting was over Drexler went up to him and gave him a copy of his autobiographical pamphlet, Mein politisches Erwachen. A few days later Hitler received a postcard inviting him to attend a committee meeting of the German Workers' Party.
Alan Bullock (58) Hitler: A Study in Tyranny
Of this first visit, Hitler wrote the following in Chapter IX: The 'German Workers' Party' in Mein Kampf:
In the evening when I entered the 'Leiber Room' of the former Sterneckerbrau in Munich, I found some twenty to twenty-five people present, chiefly from the lower classes of the population.
Feder's lecture was known to me from the courses, so I was able to devote myself to an inspection of the organisation itself.
My impression was neither good nor bad; a new organisation like so many others. This was a time in which anyone who was not satisfied with developments and no longer had any confidence in the existing parties felt called upon to found a new party. Everywhere these organisations sprang out of the ground, only to vanish silently after a time. The founders for the most part had no idea what it means to make a party-let alone a movement out of a club. And so these organizations nearly always stifle automatically in their absurd philistinism.
The meeting didn’t impress Hitler, but he was given a
brochure titled “My Political Awakening” by founder
Anton Drexler, and he read it nonetheless. Hitler was invited to the next meeting of the DAP at the Altes Rosenbad
Inn and he was again ordered to attend and even join the
tiny party by his Intelligence superior, Capt. Karl Mayr.
In the old Sterneckerbräu im Tal, there was a small room with arched roof, which in earlier times was used as a sort of festive tavern where the Bavarian Counsellors of the Holy Roman Empire foregathered. It was dark and dismal and accordingly well suited to its ancient uses, though less suited to the new purpose it was now destined to serve. The little street on which its one window looked out was so narrow that even on the brightest summer day the room remained dim and sombre. Here we took up our first fixed abode. The rent came to fifty marks per month, which was then an enormous sum for us. But our exigencies had to be very modest. We dared not complain even when they removed the wooden wainscoting a few days after we had taken possession. This panelling had been specially put up for the Imperial Counsellors. The place began to look more like a grotto than an office.
Standing at the entrance in 2010 on the side street off Tal.
From 1933 the Sternecker housed a NSDAP museum. Today it serves Apple which may be appropriate, given that in Latin the words for 'apple' ("mālum") and for 'evil' ("malum") are nearly identical. One particularly incisive piece from the New York Times revealed the way the company exploits its own foreign workforce in Chinese concentration camps.
Hermann Otto Hoyer's 1937 representation of Hitler's political beginnings set in the Leiber Room of the Sterneckerbräu, Am Anfang war das Wort (In the Beginning Was the Word) for the Great German Art Exhibition at the Haus der Deutschen Kunst. In the summer of 1920 alone Hitler had given the following speeches here: 'Nationalism' (June 9), "About the Political Situation" (June 16), "Spa and Moscow" (July 28) and "Financial Questions" (August 6).
Marienplatz
Around
the turn of the century and the view from after the war and today
taken from the Neues Rathaus next to the Marienplatz showing to the
right of the photo the roofless and pockmarked Altes Rathaus looking
up the Tal. This building had been destroyed by lightning in 1460 and
WWII bombs levelled its successor, so what is seen today is actually
the third incarnation of the building designed by Jörg von Halspach of
Frauenkirche fame. On 9 November 1938 Joseph Goebbels gave his
hate-filled speech here that launched the nationwide Kristallnacht
pogroms. The roofless Heilig-Geist-Kirche is on the right of the photo.
Its spire, without the copper top, is behind the church. The
Talbruck gate tower is missing completely. By the end of the war, only
2.5 percent of Munich’s buildings remained unscathed from Allied carpet
bombing, which had targeted the city centre. Approximately 45 percent
of the city's buildings had been destroyed, including more than 85,000
residential units. This meant that 300,000 Munich residents were left
homeless.
Marienplatz
during the Beer Hall Putsch. The photo on the right shows Julius
Streicher, later publisher of the “Stürmer”, speaking in support of the
putsch.
At the Marienplatz the Nazi column encountered a large crowd which was listening to an exhortation of Julius Streicher, the Jew-baiter from Nuremberg, who had rushed to Munich at the first news of the putsch. Not wishing to be left out of the revolution, he cut short his speech and joined the rebels, jumping into step immediately behind Hitler.
Shirer (67) Rise And Fall Of The Third Reich
As it appeared on November 9, 1938.
The new Rathaus with Nazi banner from 1933.
Nazi propaganda on a street car August 19, 1932, after the war, and standing in front today
After the war and at the same spot today
The inscription in the entrance condemning National Socialism with a rather forced ending:
„Der nationalsozialistische Eroberungs- und Vernichtungskrieg führte die Welt in eine Katastrophe. Durch das Unrecht der Vertreibung und durch Flucht verloren in Europa Millionen von Menschen ihre Heimat. Nach 1945 wurde München für mehr als 143.000 Heimatvertriebene zum neuen Lebensmittelpunkt. Sie haben maßgeblich zum Wiederaufbau und zum Leben unserer Stadt beigetragen.”
(The National Socialist war of extermination and conquest led the world into a disaster. By injustice of expulsion and by escape lost in Europe millions of humans their homeland. After 1945 Munich became for more than 143,000 refugees of homeland the new place of residence. They contributed considerably to the reconstruction and to the life of our city.)
Only a few steps away from the inscription, next to the staircase leading to the first floor, there is a plaque commemorating the Munich Jews who were murdered in Kaunas, Lithuania, in 1941 15 . Put up in November 2000, the plaque was intended to express the “sorrow and shame of Munich’ s population as well as their horror at the silence that prevailed at the time”. On 20 November 1941 one thousand men, women and children were deported from Munich to Kaunas and five days later murdered by firing squad. The deportations to Kaunas marked the beginning of the systematic annihilation of Munich’s remaining Jews. Between then and February 1945 at least forty-three deportations of Jews were transported to Kaunas, Piaski, Theresienstadt and Auschwitz. Numerous people and institutions, including employees of the city , were involved in organising and carrying out the deportations. The memorial plaque, designed by Beate Passow, was put up on the initiative of the Munich City Archive. Parallel to this the City of Munich also donated a sign of remembrance to the memorial site in Kaunas, which Beate Passow used as a model for its Munich counterpart. The artist describes her work thus: “The pane of glass shows a photo of the memorial plaque in Kowno [Kaunas] together with portraits of Jewish citizens of Munich who were deported. The crime committed in Kowno is thus given an appropriate presence in Munich as well.” The photographs were taken from the identity cards marked with a red “J” that Jewish citizens were obliged to carry with them from 1939. In many cases these photos were the last visible traces of their owners.
On the first floor is this Memorial Room. In 1951 members of the Munich City Council belonging to the Christian Social Union, the Social Democrats and the Bavarian Party tabled a joint motion to have a plaque put up in the town hall to commemorate those members of the city administration who had fallen victim to the Third Reich or died in the two world wars. A hexagonal, chapel-like room on the first floor of the wing facing Marienplatz was proposed as a suitable location for the plaque. During the 1920s this room had already been turned into a memorial to the city officials, teachers and white and blue-collar workers killed in the First World War, but it was destroyed by bombing in 1944. The newly refurbished room was opened to the public again in 1958 when the city celebrated its 800th anniversary. In the centre of the room there is an altar-like stone table on which lies a leather-bound book listing the names of those who died in the two world wars. Inscriptions on the walls commemorate both the war dead and those who suffered political persecution under the Nazi dictatorship. A stone slab in the floor is dedicated to the “employees [of the city] who died in service”. The sacral atmosphere of the memorial room and the many dedications is typical of the style used for memorials in the early years of the Federal Republic of Germany. Those who fell in the two world wars were placed on a par with the victims of the Nazi regime, having supposedly suffered a similar “fate”. Questions about the circumstances in which they died or of political and moral responsibility were ignored.
On the first floor is this Memorial Room. In 1951 members of the Munich City Council belonging to the Christian Social Union, the Social Democrats and the Bavarian Party tabled a joint motion to have a plaque put up in the town hall to commemorate those members of the city administration who had fallen victim to the Third Reich or died in the two world wars. A hexagonal, chapel-like room on the first floor of the wing facing Marienplatz was proposed as a suitable location for the plaque. During the 1920s this room had already been turned into a memorial to the city officials, teachers and white and blue-collar workers killed in the First World War, but it was destroyed by bombing in 1944. The newly refurbished room was opened to the public again in 1958 when the city celebrated its 800th anniversary. In the centre of the room there is an altar-like stone table on which lies a leather-bound book listing the names of those who died in the two world wars. Inscriptions on the walls commemorate both the war dead and those who suffered political persecution under the Nazi dictatorship. A stone slab in the floor is dedicated to the “employees [of the city] who died in service”. The sacral atmosphere of the memorial room and the many dedications is typical of the style used for memorials in the early years of the Federal Republic of Germany. Those who fell in the two world wars were placed on a par with the victims of the Nazi regime, having supposedly suffered a similar “fate”. Questions about the circumstances in which they died or of political and moral responsibility were ignored.
Dieser Tanzsaal des Alten Rathauses war jahrhundertelang Schauplatz bürgerschaftlicher und stadtherrlicher Zusammenkünfte und Feste. Das nationalsozialistische Regime missbrauchte diesen Ort für die Planung antisemitischer Verbrechen. Im Verlauf einer Parteifeier am Abend des 9. November 1938 wurden die seit Tagen in vielen Städten des Reiches angezettelten antijüdischen Ausschreitungen hier zu einem deutschlandweiten Pogrom ausgeweitet. Als "Reichskristallnacht" war dieses Pogrom Vorstufe der Vernichtung des europäischen Judentums. (This dance hall of the old person of city hall was for many centuries the scene of the bürgerschaftlicher and the city's wonderful meetings and celebrations. The National Socialist regime abused this place for the planning of anti-Semitic crimes. In the process of a party celebration in the evening 9 November the 1938 for days the anti-Jewish excesses plotted in many cities of the realm were expanded here to a Germany-wide Pogrom. As “Reichskristallnacht” this Pogrom was the preliminary stage for the destruction of the European Jews.)Irving records in his book Goebbels: Mastermind of the Third Reich Goebbels inviting Hitler, the night before Reichskristallnacht,
invited Hitler to his regular café, the Café Hoch on the Marienplatz, facing the city hall. Until three A.M. they talked about horses, the Romanian monarchy, punishments for reckless driving, and their future plans for Germany’s screen and stage. After that Goebbels carried on working back in his hotel, tired but unable to sleep.
Münchner Stadtrat
The Munich City Council has been, since 1919, the local government and is elected for six years and meets in New Hall. The photo on the left shows the first meeting of July 25, 1933 of the City Hall led by the Nazis as the sole power in the city council of 17 members with a ceremony in the Great decorated boardroom. Among the attendees were the representative of the State Government, the Police Headquarters, the Reichswehr, the Protestant church council and others.
Ballroom in the Old Town Hall, 1936 and the inscription commemorating the place where the go-ahead was given for the November pogrom. It was put up on the initiative of Munich’s former Mayor Hans-Jochen Vogel and unveiled in the foyer of the building in November 2000. Since this room is only open to the public on certain occasions, a replica of the plaque was mounted on the façade at the entrance to the building in May 2009.
Frauenkirche
The damage after the war and the church today, with a reminder inside today
Drake Winston in front of St. Michael's church at the same location
The Hofbräuhaus
Postcard from the turn of the century and Hitler's actual painting of it.
It was here that the soldiers' councils proclaimed the Bavarian Soviet Republic. The Hofbräuhaus was one of the beer halls used by the Nazi Party for functions and holds a particular significance in its mythology. The DAP—the future Nazi Party—held its first mass meeting there on October 16, 1919—less than a year after the war’s end—with an audience of seventy people. On February 24, 1920, in its Festival Hall, Hitler presented the Twenty-five Points that formed the political base of the Nazis (as they came to be called; it is an abbreviation of the Party’s full name, just as the Socialists were called Sozis)—this time with two thousand in attendance. On August 13, 1920, Hitler publicly denounced the Jews and demanded their removal from Germany altogether. On November 4, 1921, there was a massive fight between the Nazis and their opponents in the Hofbrauhaus, but Hitler managed to complete his address, despite the chaos of smashed tables and chairs and hurled beer mugs all about him. The same building was also the birthplace of the later feared Nazi street fighting organisation, the Sturmabteilungen, or SA for short.
The building after the war and today
Parteigründungsversammlung in 1935 and 1938.
During the February 24 1929 Versammlung. The last photo shows Hermann Esser, Max Amann, Hitler, General Franz von Epp, Julius Schaub, Heinrich Himmler, and Gregor Strasser.
Hitler referred in his address the first assembly that was held at the Hofbräuhaus:
It was the first major rally our Movement had ever held in which we can say that the Volk participated. For the first time the internal organization was tested in a large hall, and it worked. For the first time people came to us who wanted to listen. We certainly had not lacked the courage to summon the masses, but for a long time the masses lacked the courage to hear our call. It so happened that the man from whom I had rented the hall only gave it after I had made advance payment, although to be fair I would like to add that the situation later changed.
At that first rally we announced our twenty-five points—which our opponents ridiculed—for the first time, to implement them item for item in the years thereafter. And finally, I myself spoke to a large crowd of people for the first time in this hall, although someone had told me I had any number of talents, but speaking was not one of them. I had to assert myself at that large rally, which was not as well-mannered as it is today. Things were rather primitive, and most of the men were not wearing collars out of solidarity, so as not to attract attention.
Later my opponents conceived of the idea of calling me “the drummer” for years afterwards. In any case, that first rally was significant in that it was the first mass rally of our Party, it announced our programme and produced a new speaker.
Karl Fiehler, Julius Schaub, Adolf Wagner, Alfred Rosenberg
The plaque above (shown during and after the war) commemorated Hitler's speech of February 24, 1920 in which he laid out the goals of the new Nazi Party in his 25 point programme, an event later declared to have been the founding session of the NSDAP.
These were all scraps of conventional völkisch wisdom interlaced with attacks on the treaty and on the exactions of the Entente with which no German could disagree. The principles were incorporated in the party program that Hitler together with Anton Drexler and Gottfried Feder wrote out in twenty-five points and that Hitler presented to a meeting of February 24, 1920, in the Hofbräuhaus. They had appealed greatly to the party constituency even though they had no prospect whatever of being realized in any foreseeable future. The party's program enunciated among other things the right to self-determination for Germany, with equal treatment and land and colonies to feed the German people. The Treaties of Versailles and St. Germain were to be abrogated. Only racial Germans could be citizens, and racial Germans were men and women of German blood regardless of religion, so no Jew could be a Volks comrade. Battle would be waged against the corruption of the parliamentary system based on party considerations, which took no account of character and ability. Every citizen had the same rights and duties; the general need came before the individual need; only a man who worked was entitled to an income; war profits were to be confiscated, the serfdom of interest broken. Profiteers, common criminals, and black marketers were to be executed. Trusts already nationalized were to remain so. In the interest of a healthy middle class, the party platform declared that big department stores would be communalised. It demanded land reform and the abolition of speculation in land. Poor children were to be educated by the state, child labour was to be prohibited, and health services were to be provided for mothers and children and young people. A people's army was to replace mercenary troops, and a strong central authority was to be established with complete authority over the Reich and its organisations.
The Making of Adolf Hitler: The Birth and Rise of Nazism, Eugene Davidson (130-1)
A fight that broke out on November 4 1921 made the site a Nazi shrine as it was claimed that the SA had met its baptism of fire. As Hitler wrote at the beginning of Chapter VI, The First Period of our Struggle in Mein Kampf,
During that period the hall of the Hofbrau Haus in Munich acquired for us, National Socialists, a sort of mystic significance. Every week there was a meeting, almost always in that hall, and each time the hall was better filled than on the former occasion, and our public more attentive.
The Festsaal on the third floor where, in 1920, the NSDAP held its first meeting. From Chapter VII: The Struggle with the Red Front in the Second Volume of Mein Kampf:
In the Festsaal of the Hofbräuhaus I always stood on one of the long sides of the hall and my platform was a beer table. And so I was actually in the midst of the people. Perhaps this circumstance contributed to creating in this hall a mood such as I have never found anywhere else. In front of me, especially to the left of me, only enemies were sitting and standing. They were all robust men and young fellows in large part from the Maffei factory, from Kustermann's, from the Isaria Meter Works, etc. Along the left wall they had pushed ahead close to my table and were beginning to collect beer mugs; that is, they kept ordering beer and putting the empty mugs under the table. In this way, whole batteries grew up and it would have surprised me if all had ended well this time...
Until a few years ago, above each lamp the Bavarian flag was seen in the form of a swastika, painted by Hitler's supporters after he took power. After the war the owners found they couldn't paint over them as the swastikas were still visible after several coats of paint, and so decided to 'decorate' them as oddly shaped Bavarian flags. Recently the shape itself was altered as seen in the before-and-after photos above. According to Wikipedia, the Hofbrauhaus "also held a 1889 baby photo of Hitler as recent [sic] as 2006" and furthermore, according to a post at http://worldwartwozone.com:
"There is also other interesting thing - rumour perhaps. On the left hand side of the main hall is small room with sort of a racks where locals can keep their beer steins. They wash them in a copper sink, then put into mailbox size padlocked lockers. When I visited Hofbrauhaus one of the locals told us that Hitler's stein is still there. No one knows which one it is, but is worshipped. Indeed one of the racks was decorated with green applications. Apparently faithful locals decorate it every year before Adi's birthday - 20th April"
Given that Hitler was a teetotaller, it's hard to credit that...
The scene on the right is from the film "Hitler:Rise of Evil" showing Hitler (played by Robert Carlyle) speaking at the Hofbrauhaus in 1920.
The scene on the right is from the film "Hitler:Rise of Evil" showing Hitler (played by Robert Carlyle) speaking at the Hofbrauhaus in 1920.
![[item image]](https://ia700300.us.archive.org/2/items/KapitulierenNiemals/MicrosoftWord-Niekapitulieren.gif?cnt=0 "[item image]"){kind=small}
Werner Naumann's March 23, 1945 speech Kapitulieren, niemals! at the Hofbrauhaus
Die Pfeffermühle
Nearby is the Pepperpot, founded by Erika and Klaus Mann in January 1933 which satirised the Nazis before the two emigrated to New York after Hitler's seizure of power.
Erika Mann defined clearly the aims of this political-satirical cabaret: “Wir wollten die Nazis bekämpfen."
Hitler's Residences
Erika Mann defined clearly the aims of this political-satirical cabaret: “Wir wollten die Nazis bekämpfen."
Hitler's Residences
This was Hitler's first residence in Germany when he arrived in Munich on May 25, 1913, a bright Spring Sunday, when
Hitler followed up an advertisement for a small room rented by the family of the tailor Joseph Popp on the third floor of 34 Schleissheimersrasse, in a poorish district to the north of the city, on the edge of Schwabing, the pulsating centre of Munich's artistic and bohemian life, and not far from the big barracks area.
Hitler shared the room until mid-February 1914 with Rudolf Häusler,
a pal who had accompanied him from Vienna, [who was of] similar background and shared Hitler’s political views. Hitler offered to pay and Häusler readily agreed to accompany him, but first Hitler had to wait for his share of an inheritance from his father’s will. After a frustrating month in limbo, they finally left Vienna by overnight train. Years later Hitler told confidants that he came to Munich intending to study ‘for another three years . . . as a designer. I’d enter for the first competition, and I told myself that then I’d show what I could do!’ Nothing came of this, but Hitler seems hardly to have been disappointed. It was enough for him to be in the German city of his dreams, which seemed ‘as familiar . . . as if I had lived there for years within its walls’. Munich was a ‘German city. What a difference from Vienna! I grew sick to my stomach when I thought back on this Babylon of races.’
Eventually Häusler found
Hitler an exhausting room-mate. Hitler often left the ‘lamp burning until three or four in the morning’, or kept him awake with ‘agitated monologues all night’. Worn out by nocturnal diatribes, Häusler moved to another room. With no ill feeling it seems, since they remained in contact and Häusler later became a Nazi functionary in Vienna.
Williams (21)
Hitler would then live there alone until the war broke out the following August. Hitler paid the rent by painting and selling architectural watercolours door-to-door and in the local beer halls. His landlady recalled that he had no visitors at all for the year and a half that he rented there. And yet, whilst she would claim that she had ‘never met a young man with such good manners,’
the Popps’ account of Hitler in Munich is filled with inconsistencies. While ‘a whole week’ might pass ‘without a sign of Hitler’, he was still and miraculously able to join them in ‘political discussions every evening’. When not painting in his room, the lodger, who was rarely present, spent ‘most of the time’ with his ‘nose buried in heavy books’. Circumstances and survival probably demanded that Hitler put his energy not into reading books, but into painting. From the moment he arrived in Munich, according to Anna Popp (in yet another contradiction): "Hitler began to paint immediately and remained working for hours. After a few days, I saw two beautiful pictures that he’d finished on his table, one of the cathedral and the other of the Theatiner church. Then early in the morning my lodger went out, a briefcase under his arm, looking for buyers."
The period photo on the left shows the plaque declaring that
Adolf Hitler lived in this house from spring 1913 to the day he volunteered for the German army in August 1914.According to The Hitler Pages and Third Reich Ruins, his room was the third from the left on the top floor. This is confirmed by Williams (20):
Shortly after their arrival, he and Häusler found a third-floor room in the house of master-tailor Popp, the main occupant of a terrace at 34 Schleissheimerstrasse. Popp’s wife immediately made this ‘Austrian charmer’ welcome. Her husband, who had worked in Paris and regarded himself as a man of the world, quickly saw in Hitler ‘a personality whose abilities entitled him to the highest hopes’. Hitler was not the first twentieth-century dictator to live in Schleissheimerstrasse. A few years earlier Lenin had lodged about a block away. Today the area appears much as it did in Hitler’s (or Lenin’s) time. A small playground, which Hitler sketched from his window, still lies opposite. While its 1930s’ Nazi-era plaque was pulled down in 1945 along with its ornate stucco façade, 34 Schleissheimerstrasse is still identifiable as Hitler’s first Munich home.
Remarkably, just down the same street at 106 lived Lenin a dozen years earlier:
Hitler's Residence from May 1 1920- October 5 1929
Video made by my senior students about the site
Gathering his meagre belongings which consisted of a cap, coat, jacket, trousers, underwear, shirt, socks, shoes and demobilisation pay of fifty marks, Hitler moved to a small room at Thierschstrasse 41 on March 31, 1920; "a poorish street near the river Isar." (Bullock, 83) which would be his home for the next nine years. He arrived at this room—sublet from a Jew—as an unknown person and left it as a national political figure. Ernst Hanfstaengl described the room in his 1957 work Unheard Witness:Drab and dreary beyond belief, akin to a back bedroom of a decaying New York tenement. The room . . . was tiny. I doubt it was nine feet wide. The bed was too wide for its corner, and the head projected over a single narrow window. The floor was covered with cheap, worn linoleum with a couple of threadbare rugs, and on the wall opposite the bed there was a make- shift bookshelf, apart from the chair and rough table, the only other piece of furniture in the entire room.
It was also the house’s coldest room. Hitler’s landlady later said that he either paid the rent on time or in advance, and he kept his German shepherd dog, Wolf, as company. Today, the building still stands with a statue of the Virgin Mary staring down from an alcove on the second floor outer wall. The room itself, however, was known to make later tenants ill, and since no one would rent it anymore, today it is used as a storeroom.
From July 1936 a plaque was placed outside by the city council that read "Adolf Hitler lived in this house from 1 May 1920 to 5 October 1929." Nearby on Thierschstrasse 15 was the Nazis' third headquarters. His landlord is recorded in Germany's Hitler by Heinz A. Heinz as saying
From July 1936 a plaque was placed outside by the city council that read "Adolf Hitler lived in this house from 1 May 1920 to 5 October 1929." Nearby on Thierschstrasse 15 was the Nazis' third headquarters. His landlord is recorded in Germany's Hitler by Heinz A. Heinz as saying
I hadn't much to do with him myself, since ... his room was a sub-let. And since I am a Jew, I concerned myself as little as possible with the activities of my lodger.... I admit I liked Hitler well enough. I often encountered him on the stairway and at the door - he was generally scribbling something in a notebook.- when he would pass the time of day with me pleasantly enough. Often he had his dog with him, a lovely Wolfshund. He never made me feel he regarded me differently from other people.... He lodged in my house from ....1919 to 1929. First he took a little back room, and then an equally small one in the front to serve as a sort of office and study. The back room, in which he slept is only 8 by 15 feet. It is the coldest room in the house .... Some lodgers who've rented it since got ill. Now we only use it as a lumber room....The only 'comfort' Hitler treated himself to when he was here, was a hand basin with cold water laid on. The room to the front was a bit bigger, but the small high-set window left much to be desired. It was very scantily furnished. (pp. 276-277)
Hitler himself had described the scene when he had returned from his term at Landsberg:
I found them gathered at my door, in the Thierschstrasse, in Munich, men like Fuess, Gahr and the other old faithfuls. My apartment was decorated with flowers and laurel wreaths (I've kept one of them). In his exuberant joy, my dog almost knocked me down the stairs.
Hitler's Table Talk (286)
Former close associate (and only man to have worked directly under Hitler and FDR) Ernst Hanfstaengl revisited the flat after the war and wrote:
When by chance I found myself walking along Thierschstrasse, I couldn't resist the temptation to pay a visit to Hitler's former house at number 41. Nothing had changed; the façade was the same... and the bombs falling on Munich had failed to shake the porcelain Madonna from her alcove.
Hitler's Residence- Prinzregentenplatz 16
The residence in 1937 and today. This was Hitler's residence which, from 1929, was paid for by Hitler's publisher until a decade later when Hitler paid for it outright. Hitler’s private apartment on the third floor of 16 Prinzregentenplatz was located in an apartment house and consisted of nine living rooms, two kitchens, two walk-in closets, two bathrooms, and furnishings. Hitler’s patron, Hugo Bruckmann, had procured the apartment for him. The annual rent was 4,176 marks. The term of the lease contract was first to run until April 1, 1934, with a six-month term of notice. Hitler moved into the apartment on October 1, 1929.
Angela Maria Raubal,nicknamed “Geli”, was born on June 4, 1908 in Linz. She was the daughter of the deputy head of the tax department, Raubal, and his wife Angela, born Hitler (from the second marriage of Hitler’s father, Alois). She studied singing in Munich, although her voice was only average. When Hitler took up residence at Prinzregentenplatz No. 16 in 1929, she got her own room in the huge but sinister apartment of her uncle. She committed suicide there on September 18, 1931. By the time Hitler returned from an engagement in Nuremberg, her corpse had already been removed. Hitler did not attend the funeral in Vienna but instead retreated to the home of his publisher Müller at the Tegernsee. He spent several days there in seclusion. His court photographer Heinrich Hoffmann was the only one allowed to accompany him. Many feared the shock of Geli’s unexpected death might lead him to commit suicide, too. On the anniversary of his niece’s death on September 18, 1932, Hitler secretly visited her grave in Vienna. Goebbels noted in his diary: “Führer gone to Vienna for private visit. Nobody knows about it so that there won’t be any crowds.” News of Hitler’s presence in Vienna leaked, however, and led to many political rumours. On Hitler’s orders, Geli’s room remained untouched. Before the war, he spent every Christmas Eve there in sentimental reflection.
The Complete Hitler (3033-4)
Hitler also met with Mussolini there on September 25, 1937. During their hour-long summit conference, the German and Italian leaders agreed to continue supporting Francisco Franco in Spain, to seek better relations with Imperial Japan, and to oppose Franco-British policies that prevented their joint expansion of power and territorial acquisitions—a great strengthening of the Axis Pact of 1935 and the Anti-Comintern (Communist International) Pact of 1936.
On September 30, 1938, Hitler hosted Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain at the apartment following the signing of the four-power Munich Pact, but before the signing of the Anglo-German Declaration that led Chamberlain to declare that he had brought “peace for our time” home with honour from Germany.
As for Hitler, he later boasted to his intimates: “I saw our enemies at Munich—they are little worms!” Because of the document signed in Hitler’s apartment, Chamberlain mistakenly thought they’d guaranteed European peace for a generation. Nazi Germany occupied the German Sudetenland—taken from the Czechs—the next day.
On September 30, 1938, Hitler hosted Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain at the apartment following the signing of the four-power Munich Pact, but before the signing of the Anglo-German Declaration that led Chamberlain to declare that he had brought “peace for our time” home with honour from Germany.
As for Hitler, he later boasted to his intimates: “I saw our enemies at Munich—they are little worms!” Because of the document signed in Hitler’s apartment, Chamberlain mistakenly thought they’d guaranteed European peace for a generation. Nazi Germany occupied the German Sudetenland—taken from the Czechs—the next day.
Hitler looking out from the balcony. After the American Army had entered Munich, it became the headquarters of an American Section. The furnishings were removed and the Munich Financing Office of the Land of Bavaria took up its quarters in the building and today the third floor is actually police station.
Kunstbunker Tumulka
Down the road on Prinzregentenstrasse 97, this was built in 1944 as a set of flats surrounded by bunkers, one of which serves as the venue for contemporary art exhibitions.
In this May 1945 photo one can see both Hitler's residence in the top centre and the apartment at the bottom-left.
Other examples of the 30 bunkers in Munich. The one on the left is on Blumenstraße. This air raid shelter (Hochbunker) was built in 1941 where as many as 1,200 people (officially: 750) could find shelter. The ground-area of this bunker is 14 by 14 metres. The outer walls has a thickness of 1.30 metres whilst the roof a thickness of two metres. After the war it served as an hotel with 106 beds. The last Hochbunker shown is on the corner of Domagkstrasse.
Eva Braun's House
Footage from Eva Braun's home movies; a number of scenes show her at home here. The photo on the right shows her birthplace on Isabellastrasse 45 (behind the tree).
Munich Opera House at Max-Joseph Platz
In front of the opera house with two supposed Hitler paintings of it. That on the right is a 25" by 19-3/4" painting of the same building by Hitler just after a rainstorm. It was painted in München in the first half of 1914, when Hitler lived the Josef Popp residence at 34/III Schleissheimerstrasse. Popp in an interview several years later recalled:
He began his painting straight away and stuck to his work for hours. In a couple of days I saw two lovely pictures finished and lying on the table, one of the cathedral and the other of the Theatinerkirche. After that my lodger [Hitler] used to go out early of a morning with his portfolio under his arm in search of customers.
Hitler's plan for the new opera house in Munich, part of its redevelopment under the Third Reich from the book Hitler and the Power of Aesthetics by Frederic Spotts
During the Day of German Art, 1937
After the bombing and standing in front today
Looking at what's left of Palais Toerring in 1946 from Max-Joseph Platz and today
The Residenz Königsbau looking the opposite way, again in 1946 and today
The Residenz Königsbau looking the opposite way, again in 1946 and today
