This page continues on from Odeonsplatz
My GIF on the right shows Himmler (centre) at the funeral of NSKK (National Socialist Motor Corps) leader Adolf Huenlein on May 21, 1942 and today. The
street housed several buildings that were instrumental for the Nazi
regime, including administrative offices and venues for political
rallies. It was here that many key decisions affecting not only Munich
but also the broader trajectory of Nazi policy were made. The
architectural grandiosity of Ludwigstraße also lent itself well to the
Nazi penchant for spectacle. Evans notes that architecture was a "key
element in the Nazi theatricality," and Ludwigstraße, with its
monumental scale and classical form, fit well within this aesthetic
framework. The street was often used for parades and other public
displays designed to showcase the strength and unity of the Nazi regime.
These events were meticulously choreographed, serving both to
intimidate and to create a sense of collective identity among
participants and onlookers. The grand buildings lining the street
provided a backdrop that amplified the sense of awe and power that the
Nazis sought to evoke. The street was not merely a backdrop but also a
symbol in its own right. Kershaw posits that the Nazis were adept at
using symbols to create a "mythical past," and Ludwigstraße, with its
historical and architectural significance, was incorporated into this
narrative. The street's classical architecture, reminiscent of a
glorified Germanic past, was co-opted to lend historical legitimacy to
the Nazi regime. This appropriation of public spaces for ideological
ends is a recurring theme in totalitarian regimes, and Ludwigstraße
serves as a case study in how architecture and urban planning can be
politicised.
Berlin's Under den Linden and Munich's
Ludwigstraße are comparable in regard to their historical development
and their urban context. They show common neo-classical features typical
of the early 19th century town planning. The type as well as the
location of institutions along the two royal boulevards correspond to
the idealistic concepts of the "via triumphalis" in the centre of the
capitals of authoritarian states. All institutions, from the royal
castle on the edge of the older part of the city to the university,
founded by the king, to the military and ecclesiastical edifices,
demonstrate the royal power and the authority of the state, thus
outlining the character of the city in the pre-industrial age,
immediately before political, social, aesthetic, and stylistic changes
universally started to transform the functions and physiognomy of urban
structures. Today both streets are situated on the edge of the central
business district; they continue to be surrounded by public buildings
housing the arts and sciences as well as governmental institutions.
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Hitler paid tribute to this street which links the Feldherrnhalle, sacred to the Nazis, to the Siegestor, where Maxvorstadt spills over into
Schwabing and which serves today as a symbol of peace, in a speech on May 22, 1938 in Munich where he declared
Do you think a Ludwigstrasse would ever have been constructed had it been up to the citizens and other institutions of Munich? Great architectural solutions can only come about through a central plan, and this is the way it will be once again today... when the Ludwigstrasse was built, Munich had scarcely 70,000 inhabitants. Today Munich has a population of more than 800,000 and Berlin has more than 4,500,000. Nobody shall dare to come up to me to say that the new streets we are building are too wide.
Although the street itself owes more to Maximilian I who
dreamed of turning Munich into a city of
art and culture, an ‘Athens on the Isar’ with its uniform and well-
proportioned row of neoclassical architecture a
credit to court architects Klenze and Gärtner, the Nazis left their mark.
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Looking from the other direction as Hitler and Mussolini are driven down Ludwigstraße on June 18, 1940.
On the left is the Central Ministry of the State of Bavaria, today
Bavarian State Ministry for Nutrition, Agriculture and Forestry
(Ludwigstraße 2) whilst on the right the Bazar at Odeonsplatz. Hitler
arrived in the city at noon, aboard his special train. Reich Governor
von Epp greeted him at the gate. After the customary welcome, review of
the guards of honour, et cet., Hitler’s car bore him to his apartment at
16 Prinzregentenplatz. Three hours later, the Führer was back at the
station gate to greet the Duce, whose train reached the Bavarian capital
punctually at 14:58. Ciano accompanied Mussolini. Nearly the same
ceremony that hours earlier had welcomed Hitler, now greeted the Duce.
Then the two dictators drove to the Prince Carl Palace, where Hitler
took leave of his guest for the time being.
The
'Bockerlbahn' in front of the destroyed Cafe Tambosi at Odeonsplatz. In
October 1944 the authorities introduced an emergency lane to transport
debris via this steam-powered locomotive. It appears on the right going
through Wittelsbacher Platz.
Café Heck
Then and now, with the equestrian statue of Ludwig I. Below
it appears in a photo taken by men of the American 14th Armoured
Division right after taking the city. The statue itself is made of
bronze with the the base made of stone. The main figure shows Ludwig I
on horseback with crown and sceptre; the secondary figures show
allegories of justice and perseverance , corresponding to the king's
motto. The corner figures show allegories of religion, poetry, industry
and architecture which were supposed to correspond to the king's
interests. The base has the inscriptions "Ludwig I Koenig von Bayern" on
the front and "Erected out of gratitude by the city of Munich on XXV.
August MDCCCLXII" on the back. Accordingly, the equestrian statue was
erected on August 25, 1862. Odeonsplatz is named for the former concert
hall, the Odeon, on its southwestern side. The Odeon was built from
1826–1828 on a commission from King Ludwig I of Bavaria and was
originally a concert hall and ballroom. .gif)
Klenze
designed the exterior as an identical counterpart to that of the Palais
Leuchtenberg, so that there was no outward indication of its function. The
ministry itself was founded in 1806, whose core competencies include
internal administration, the police and construction, despite
considerable changes over time. With the establishment of the ministries
for social welfare and agriculture, the interior department lost
considerable competencies after the Great War, but the staff themselves
were not replaced despite the revolution. From 1918 to 1920 the ruling
SPD appointed the ministers of the interior followed from 1921 to 1933
by BVP politicians who then headed the ministry and who fought massively
against the emergence of the Nazis. Nazi Interior Minister Adolf Wagner
succeeded after 1933 in considerably expanding the responsibilities of
his department. The Nazis also took over the previous officials, but
were quickly able to infiltrate the authority with loyal party
members.During the Nazi era, the ministry was responsible, among other
things, for the mass killings of the mentally ill and disabled. The
building was gutted in an air raid on the night of April 25, 1944.
Beginning in 1951, it was rebuilt by Josef Wiedemann to house the
Ministry of the Interior.
This
route, approximately seven kilometres long, was significantly longer
than 1933 but retained its u-turn on the Ludwigstraße. In addition to
repeating the awkward u-turn, this also meant that the expanded number
of floats and participants of the 1937 parade had to confine themselves
to only one half of the street. At least one writer claimed this route
led to 'special groupings and images that merged into each other, when
for instance the turned-around parade passed itself in opposing
directions', making the parade a 'parable of the repetition of life'.
Yet parade organisers clearly intended to depict Nazism as the climatic
finale and culmination of German history. Rather than a mere repetition
of previous ages, the parade aimed to present an unassailable chronology
of German achievement culminating in Nazism's New Age. The awkward
orientation of the Ludwigstraße space partially obscured this trajectory
as did the overall parade route which passed the House of German Art
near its start. Although it is easy to understand why some would
uncritically assume that the parade 'wound through the streets toward
the new museum', the route actually led away from the museum. In 1938,
organisers diverted the parade right on to Königstraße after passing the
House location. From there it entered the Ludwigstraße from the north
and proceeded along its length without having to double back. Now floats
advancing along the Ludwigstraße would not have to compete with each
other. The new route also allowed the parade to enter the Ludwigstraße
by passing beneath the monumental Victory Gate, instead of turning
around in front of it. The procession could also expand to cover the
entire width of the Ludwigstraße. Although providing a more dramatic
entry on to the Ludwigstraße, it required the parade to follow the
Königstraße, an unremarkable residential street. Munich's existing
spatial layout simply did not offer a clear and coherent route that
could link the House of German Art and Munich's other important public
spaces. Whilst the dimensions of the Ludwigstraße were conducive for the
type of mass spectacle favoured by Nazi leaders, the architecture
lining the street posed a problem. Commissioned by King Ludwig in an
effort to transform Munich into an international cultural centre, these
façades recalled classical and renaissance styles in Italy and Greece.
Although not necessarily incompatible with Nazi ideology, these
buildings did not easily connect to the revised parades which celebrated
a narrower vision of Germanic cultural and military prowess. Indeed,
the neo-classical period, which encompassed most of the Ludwigstraße's
architecture, played a negligible role in the parades. In response, the
street was adorned with myriad banners, flags and other decorations that
almost completely screened the boulevard's buildings from view. Here,
flags and other decorations provided a means to obscure the street's
original architectural symbolism and focus spectators' attention on the
more nationalistic message conveyed by the parade. While the effect
along the Ludwigstraße was certainly impressive, the visual impact along
other portions of the route was limited. Most of the rest of the parade
route followed narrow streets which lacked the monumentality of the
Ludwigstraße space and generally had fewer decorations. Again, Munich's
existing layout and architecture served to limit its effectiveness as a
venue for Nazi spectacle and performance. In addition to its awkward
route and its ill-suited architectural backdrop, later parades
demonstrated several additional shortcomings and contradictions. First,
interpretation of the parade required a significant amount of historical
knowledge, which many middle- and lower-class Germans may not have
possessed. Second, some of the figures celebrated were difficult to
reconcile with Nazi policy. For example, the mediæval Hohenstaufen
emperors focused much of their energy on gaining territory in Italy,
whereas Nazi rhetoric and policy obsessed about eastern expansion. It
was also noteworthy what events and figures were omitted. References to
classical Greece, so prominent in 1933, were removed in a shift away
from a general narrative of Western culture to a narrower celebration of
Nordic-Germanic history and values. 
On the left, a model of the Haus der Deutsche Kunst at the "Glanzzeiten deutscher
Geschichte" parade on the 1937 "Day of
German Art" in front of St. Ludwig’s church. As
noted above, religion was almost totally absent, aside from pagan
allegories. It was not surprising that the Reformation and the Thirty
Years War were missing since they allude to national discord. Yet the
parade celebrated the Gothic period, a time of national political
fragmentation. Furthermore, achievements in Gothic art and architecture
were closely tied to the Christian cathedral. This reflects a degree of
ambiguity if not hostility between Christianity, which enjoyed
significant support among the general public, and many party leaders,
who cast Nazism as a new messianic religion. Even more striking was the
omission of most modern history. Aside from Wagner, the nineteenth and
early twentieth centuries were largely absent. There was no reference to
Bismarck or German unification in 1871, although they could represent
national unity and military victory. Even the First World War, a pivotal
personal experience for many Nazi leaders and of profound importance
for the development of the party, was excluded. It is perhaps
understandable that the Weimar period was excluded, although the period
witnessed the birth of the Nazi Party. These sparse references to recent
history reflected the Nazi movement's prevailing view of this as a time
of cultural decay and racial degeneration. Although the parades' title
suggested a message of continuity between successive historical epochs
leading to National Socialism, these omissions had the effect of
presenting Nazism as the expression of an eternal and an historical
racial ethos that, after a period of decline, simply emerged beyond any
context. In many respects, the party's ideologues drew greater
inspiration from mythical images of prehistoric, pagan and mediæval
times representing national unity, military valour, and racial purity,
and sought to portray the Nazi movement as the embodiment of these
supposedly timeless Germanic national values.
Despite claims to be a 'tremendous parade of peace', the parades of 1937 to 1939 offered
an extended acclamation of martial achievements and heroic feats
culminating in representations of Hitler's foreign policy successes.
Although presented as a parade of German culture, warriors and political
leaders rather than artists were the pivotal figures. As the exiled
Social Democratic Party sarcastically reported: "The parade was more of a
military rather than a cultural spectacle. Two thirds of all
participants were warriors. From the fighters of the Germanic Age armed
with spears to the military and party formations marching at the end of
the parade, one could follow the exceptional development of the German
warrior'. After the preceding floats recounted the history of this
idealised Volk community, the extensive New Age section positioned the
Nazi regime as the inheritor, defender and culmination of this legacy.
The allusions to Sacrifice, Belief and Loyalty, which opened the New Age
section, complemented efforts to ready men and women for their
respective roles as the regime prepared its own war of conquest. Despite
the parades' sharpened ideological message, they did not emerge as
iconic images of Nazi Germany. In contrast to Munich's art exhibitions
which were celebrated in professional journals, popular magazines and
widely circulated programmes, the parades garnered relatively little
coverage. The
apparent disinterest of the party propaganda machinery in pushing the
parades as part of the broader Nazi iconography raises questions about
their effectiveness as propaganda events. Scholars examining parades and
other public spectacles in democratic contexts have noted that
organisers often attempt to reinforce the ideological message by
actively involving the public in the spectacle. This objective has also
been noted in dictatorial states, such as Fascist Italy, where David
Atkinson argued that the regime sought to build control and consensus by
staging 'inclusive spectacles' in Rome's public spaces. Nazi organisers
stated a similar goal in the 1937 parade programme: Through forms drawn
from the distant and recent past of German culture, we ourselves.
stride, as an entire people, in the parade of German achievement, of
German history. Not spectators but rather we are today and always a
deeply edifying and extremely resolute community of blood and culture.
This desire to blur the distinction between participant and observer was
an important element in the power of the Nuremberg Rallies, the
regime's most infamous propaganda spectacles. Yet unlike the massive
parades and spectacles staged in Nuremberg, the Munich parades largely
failed in this regard. There are various reasons, but one important
consideration is the different types of spaces and venues within which
the Nuremberg Rallies and Munich parades were performed. Unlike the
Nuremberg Rally complex, which featured large venues designed and built
by the Nazi Party to enclose both participant and observer, Munich's
parade route lacked comparable spaces. Parade organisers had to make do
with Munich's existing street layout and architecture, which were not
designed with parades or mass gatherings in mind. Whilst the
architecture of the Nuremberg Rallies was purposely designed to place
Hitler and the party within an aura of power, order and permanence, in
contrast, Munich's relatively modest nineteenth-century neo-classical
buildings were ill-suited for this task. On both a symbolic and
practical level, Munich's urban layout presented a series of
architectural and spatial limitations that diminished the propaganda
impact of the Nazi culture parades which highlights the degree to which
an urban space's existing layout and symbolic associations can constrain
its potential use, even in totalitarian societies. The urban landscape
is certainly malleable and open to interpretation, but there are limits
to its flexibility. This is also suggestive of why, after initial
efforts to redevelop existing urban spaces, Fascist Italy and Nazi
Germany eventually shifted to building new urban centres from scratch
that could be designed in accordance with their respective ideologies.
Zentralministerium für den gleichgeschalteten bayerischen Staat Café Heck
Just
off Odeonsplatz and overlooking the Hofgarten beside the Residenz, this
was a main Hitler site. The photo on the left shows him with his main
acolytes from Geoff Walden's Third Reich in Ruins.
Hanfstaengl with Hitler at Cafe Heck. Hanfstaengl wrote in his book Hitler: The Missing Years (132) that "whenever he was in Munich, he was usually to be found with his inner circle at the Cafe Heck, in the Galleriestrasse, which became his Stammtisch after leaving Landsberg". According to Kershaw, much of Hitler's time
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The Hofgarten in 1919 during the Munich civil war as seen in the first episode, Helped into Power, from the 1997 documentary The Nazis: A Warning from History:
Hanfstaengl with Hitler at Cafe Heck. Hanfstaengl wrote in his book Hitler: The Missing Years (132) that "whenever he was in Munich, he was usually to be found with his inner circle at the Cafe Heck, in the Galleriestrasse, which became his Stammtisch after leaving Landsberg". According to Kershaw, much of Hitler's time
was spent lounging around cafés in Munich. He specially liked the Café Heck in Galerienstraße, his favourite. In a quiet corner of the long, narrow room of this coffee-house, frequented by Munich’s solid middle class, he could sit at his reserved table, his back to the wall, holding court among the new-found cronies that he had attracted to the NSDAP. Among those coming to form an inner circle of Hitler’s associates were the young student Rudolf Heß, the Baltic-Germans Alfred Rosenberg (who had worked on Eckart’s periodical since 1919) and Max Erwin von Scheubner-Richter (an engineer with excellent contacts to wealthy Russian émigrés).
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Bavaria is a picture-book land, famous for its lederhosen and its beer halls, but at the end of WWI, conditions existed here which would create a revolution. After the war, the Allies continued to blockade Germany and the returning troops were shocked to discover how much their families were still suffering. Millions of Germans were hungry and thousands more were dying of tuberculosis and influenza. Politics were polarised. Conservatives and Socialists became radical in the face of crisis. With the whole of Germany in turmoil in the spring of 1919, the unrest in Munich resulted in a left-wing takeover of the city, the Raterepublik. This culminated, in April 1919, in the Munich Soviet Republic, an attempt to create a soviet-style government of the city, only 18 months after the victory of the Bolsheviks in the Soviet Union. Government troops were sent to quash the rebellion and there was fighting on the streets of Munich. More than 500 people were killed. The soldiers were supported by the Freikorps, right-wing mercenaries paid for by the government. In Munich, there were cases where the Freikorps simply shot members of the Raterepublik out of hand. Other Freikorps members heartily approved of the brutal measures used to suppress Communist revolutionaries throughout Germany.
The
same site July 26, 1933 with a visiting group of 411 Italian fascist
youth and today. From the central station they marched here to the
residenz where, in the ballroom, they were offered a ceremonial
reception that began with a speech of welcome from ambassador Vittorio
Cerutti. After Hitler's own speech, the Jungfaschists then visited the Brown House. Only
months earlier on March 31, 1933 he had given Hitler a letter from
Mussolini concerning the upcoming actions against the Jews the next day
which Hitler had brusquely rejected. Cerruti warned Mussolini of the
dangers of German Austria policy for Italy. On October 12, 1933 Cerruti
visited Hitler and brought him Mussolini's proposals on the issue of
disarmament; soon after Göring agitated for Cerruti's dismissal which
Mussolini refused, probably because of the increasing German-Italian
tensions over Austria. Tensions were not improved by the reading of the
reports Cerruti gave to Rome that came from the German interception
services listening in to his telephone calls. When Mussolini sent two
Italian divisions to the Brenner Pass during the Austrian crisis of July 1934 with the assassination of Chancellor Dollfuss, Hitler
blamed Cerruti for the decision. As early as June 21, 1935, Hitler had
informed his liaison with Mussolini, former Italian Consul General
Renzetti, of his desire to have Cerruti replaced. When Ambassador
Cerruti was ordered back to Rome by Mussolini, Hitler had ordered that
no party member appear at his departure for Italy on August 13, 1935.
Bayerisches Staatsministerium des Innern
.gif)
Klenze
designed the exterior as an identical counterpart to that of the Palais
Leuchtenberg, so that there was no outward indication of its function. The
ministry itself was founded in 1806, whose core competencies include
internal administration, the police and construction, despite
considerable changes over time. With the establishment of the ministries
for social welfare and agriculture, the interior department lost
considerable competencies after the Great War, but the staff themselves
were not replaced despite the revolution. From 1918 to 1920 the ruling
SPD appointed the ministers of the interior followed from 1921 to 1933
by BVP politicians who then headed the ministry and who fought massively
against the emergence of the Nazis. Nazi Interior Minister Adolf Wagner
succeeded after 1933 in considerably expanding the responsibilities of
his department. The Nazis also took over the previous officials, but
were quickly able to infiltrate the authority with loyal party
members.During the Nazi era, the ministry was responsible, among other
things, for the mass killings of the mentally ill and disabled. The
building was gutted in an air raid on the night of April 25, 1944.
Beginning in 1951, it was rebuilt by Josef Wiedemann to house the
Ministry of the Interior.
Then and now, with the equestrian statue of Ludwig I
Map
showing the route taken through Munich during the 1937 parade. Joshua
Hagen has written extensively about these Nazi parades in his article Parades, Public Space, and Propaganda: The Nazi Culture Parades in Munich (Geografiska Annaler. Series B, Human Geography Vol. 90, No. 4 (2008), pp. 349-367):
The
statue is shown on the bottom left behind Hitler being greeted by
Gauleiter Wagner with Goebbels on the left and, second from the right,
the Italian Chief of General Staff Pariani at the opening ceremony of
the Tag der Deutschen Kunst on July 10, 1938. The top left is from the year before showing Frau Troost, Goebbels, Hitler, Göring, Adolf Wagner, and Rudolf Heß.
Map
showing the route taken through Munich during the 1937 parade. Joshua
Hagen has written extensively about these Nazi parades in his article Parades, Public Space, and Propaganda: The Nazi Culture Parades in Munich (Geografiska Annaler. Series B, Human Geography Vol. 90, No. 4 (2008), pp. 349-367):Unlike
the 1933 event which appeared rather hastily organised, organisers had
time to prepare a more visually extravagant affair in 1937. The parade's
ideological content also reflected a more developed Nazi cultural
policy and propaganda apparatus. The redesigned parade, titled Two
Thousand Years of German Culture, positioned Nazism as the culmination
of German history and focused on a promised glorious future. As the
programme to the 1939 festivities explained, the parade offered a chance
to 'experience German history, experience its greatness and tremendous
past, and see how proudly the German future is being built'. In addition
to the widely publicised opening of the House of German Art, Hitler and
other party leaders declared its first exhibition, the Great German Art
Exhibition, a showpiece of artistic achievement in Nazi Germany. 
These
ideologically appropriate paintings and sculptures tended to depict
nude figures, scenes of German landscapes and peasant life, or images
glorifying the party and combat. A short distance away, another exhibit
of so-called degenerate art scorned modernist and abstract art as
foreign and contrary to a healthy folk culture. After a weekend of
exhibitions, concerts and banquets, the official opening of the House on
the morning of Sunday, July 18, 1937 would be followed by an afternoon
parade concluding the weekend's festivities. Although scholars have paid
scant attention to the parade, contemporary press coverage clearly
depicted the parade as an integral component of the festival. Unlike the
exhibitions which were naturally confined within smaller interior
spaces, the parade offered an opportunity for mass participation and
public spectacle comparable to the marches accompanying the Nuremberg
Rallies. Adolf Wagner again oversaw the planning, including the creation
of a quasi-private association to organise this and future events.
Painter Hermann Kaspar and sculptor Richard Knecht, both professors at
the Academy of Visual Arts, shared the overall artistic direction of the
parade. Buchner again arranged street decorations. Expressing the regime's ideological intentions, the Nazi mouthpiece Völkische Beobachter
proclaimed that 'according to the will of the Führer' the parade would
be 'a grand demonstration of German culture' symbolising 'that we are
one of the oldest civilised nations, that we are proud of our history,
and that we pull strength from it for the future now beginning'. Rather
than simply trying to 'repeat but amplify the parade of 1933',
organisers took several steps to make the later parades more coherent
and comprehensive expressions of the Nazi Party's vision of past,
present and future national community. 
Reflecting
this propaganda goal, the official parade programme explained: 'Our
walk today is a glowing tribute to the historical achievements of our
Volk, a military journey of the national community, a parade into the
great future of the eternal Germany'. Based on official programmes and
German press accounts, it's clear that, although sharing certain
similarities with its predecessor, every facet of the later parades was
grander and presented a more rigid and expansive chronology showcasing
German history as a prelude to the proclaimed grandeur of the
thousand-year Nazi Reich. Whilst
the amalgam of Greek and German elements in the 1933 parade was
interpreted as representing a 'balance between north and south', the
entire 1937 production portrayed, as one writer argued, 'German
achievement for the culture of humanity from Germanic prehistory to the
present'. Stretching nearly four kilometres and lasting for over two
hours, the revised parade began with riders bearing the standards and
flags of the Nazi Party and the arts followed by seven main sections,
each devoted to a specific historical period with its own music:
Germanic, Romanesque, Gothic, Renaissance, Baroque, Classical and
Romantic, and the New Age. As the parade's second largest grouping with
about 480 participants, the Germanic Age introduced the revised
narrative with 'tall, weathered blondes' proudly battling against nature
and other peoples to 'create the destiny and the culture of the
Nordic-Germanic world'. The
Germanic group contained eight floats which positioned
'Nordic-Germanic' tribes as the earliest ancestors of modern Germans.
After warriors escorting a Viking-like ship, most of the successive
floats symbolised specific religious icons like the sun, the day, the
night, the creation of the first humans, the sea god, and Valhalla where
the gods welcomed heroes after death. 
In
an overt attempt to link Nazism to the epoch's perceived racial purity
and martial valour, the sun group presented a stylised swastika as an
ancient representation of the sun, while the Walhalla allegory featured
long banners and draperies with swastika motifs. The
prominence of the swastika was an obvious attempt by parade organisers
to position the Nazi movement as the modern incarnation of this
prehistoric warrior race. As one writer explained: 'As our ancestors
honoured the swastika as a rune for well-being and promise, it is again
holy for us today'. Compared to the 1933 parade, the later parades, with
their grounding of Nazi symbols in prehistory and prominent rhetoric of
blood ties between ancient Nordic tribes and modern Germans, began with
a much more direct ideological statement. Reflecting orthodox Nazi
views of a national community based on racial purity and martial valour,
the parade programme explained how the Germanic group and subsequent
floats would demonstrate that 'throughout nearly three thousand years
the racial strength remained unbroken and devoted itself to life in work
and battle'. Although the Germanic group was replete with pagan
religious icons, the Romanesque Age with its ten floats and the Gothic
Age with seven floats were largely devoid of Christian overtones. Apart
from three floats celebrating the architecture and sculpture of the
period, the Romanesque section focused on Charlemagne, Friedrich
Barbarossa, and other political leaders flanked by squadrons of German
warriors and crusaders. Of the seven elements of the Gothic Age, three
focused on the arts including a model of a Gothic fountain reused from
the 1933 parade, while the remaining four were formations of knights
mounted for battle, jousting or hunting. Although the Germans adopted
Christianity and were active in religious affairs during these periods,
the parade's interpretation largely focused on military exploits,
reflecting the Nazi Party's valorisation of conflict but ambivalence
towards Christianity. The next three groupings, celebrating the
Renaissance, Baroque, and Classical and Romantic Ages, were relatively
small. Three elements of the Renaissance Age depicted a flowering of
painting, sculpture and science, while two others featured a grouping of
peasants and riders. The four elements of the Baroque Age symbolised
music, theatre, sculpture and the Bavarian rococo, a second leftover
from the 1933 parade. 
The
fifth Baroque element featured military formations recalling Friedrich
the Great. The Classical and Romantic Age had only two elements: one
recognising the neo- classical arts, the other devoted to Richard
Wagner. Although many of the major cultural trends symbolised here
originated in non-German lands, the parade programme emphasised the
unique German contribution by explaining that although 'foreigners often
gave us example and impetus; the borrowed form always obtained its own
original life from the spirit of our bloodline'. Compared with the
preceding groups, these three ages are remarkable in their relative
brevity and lack of martial themes. This may stem from the fact that
many of the major events of these periods, such as the Reformation, the
Thirty Years War and the slow decline of the Holy Roman Empire, conjured
images of German disunity rather than the Nazi ideal of national unity.
These
ideologically appropriate paintings and sculptures tended to depict
nude figures, scenes of German landscapes and peasant life, or images
glorifying the party and combat. A short distance away, another exhibit
of so-called degenerate art scorned modernist and abstract art as
foreign and contrary to a healthy folk culture. After a weekend of
exhibitions, concerts and banquets, the official opening of the House on
the morning of Sunday, July 18, 1937 would be followed by an afternoon
parade concluding the weekend's festivities. Although scholars have paid
scant attention to the parade, contemporary press coverage clearly
depicted the parade as an integral component of the festival. Unlike the
exhibitions which were naturally confined within smaller interior
spaces, the parade offered an opportunity for mass participation and
public spectacle comparable to the marches accompanying the Nuremberg
Rallies. Adolf Wagner again oversaw the planning, including the creation
of a quasi-private association to organise this and future events.
Painter Hermann Kaspar and sculptor Richard Knecht, both professors at
the Academy of Visual Arts, shared the overall artistic direction of the
parade. Buchner again arranged street decorations. Expressing the regime's ideological intentions, the Nazi mouthpiece Völkische Beobachter
proclaimed that 'according to the will of the Führer' the parade would
be 'a grand demonstration of German culture' symbolising 'that we are
one of the oldest civilised nations, that we are proud of our history,
and that we pull strength from it for the future now beginning'. Rather
than simply trying to 'repeat but amplify the parade of 1933',
organisers took several steps to make the later parades more coherent
and comprehensive expressions of the Nazi Party's vision of past,
present and future national community. 
Reflecting
this propaganda goal, the official parade programme explained: 'Our
walk today is a glowing tribute to the historical achievements of our
Volk, a military journey of the national community, a parade into the
great future of the eternal Germany'. Based on official programmes and
German press accounts, it's clear that, although sharing certain
similarities with its predecessor, every facet of the later parades was
grander and presented a more rigid and expansive chronology showcasing
German history as a prelude to the proclaimed grandeur of the
thousand-year Nazi Reich. Whilst
the amalgam of Greek and German elements in the 1933 parade was
interpreted as representing a 'balance between north and south', the
entire 1937 production portrayed, as one writer argued, 'German
achievement for the culture of humanity from Germanic prehistory to the
present'. Stretching nearly four kilometres and lasting for over two
hours, the revised parade began with riders bearing the standards and
flags of the Nazi Party and the arts followed by seven main sections,
each devoted to a specific historical period with its own music:
Germanic, Romanesque, Gothic, Renaissance, Baroque, Classical and
Romantic, and the New Age. As the parade's second largest grouping with
about 480 participants, the Germanic Age introduced the revised
narrative with 'tall, weathered blondes' proudly battling against nature
and other peoples to 'create the destiny and the culture of the
Nordic-Germanic world'. The
Germanic group contained eight floats which positioned
'Nordic-Germanic' tribes as the earliest ancestors of modern Germans.
After warriors escorting a Viking-like ship, most of the successive
floats symbolised specific religious icons like the sun, the day, the
night, the creation of the first humans, the sea god, and Valhalla where
the gods welcomed heroes after death. 
In
an overt attempt to link Nazism to the epoch's perceived racial purity
and martial valour, the sun group presented a stylised swastika as an
ancient representation of the sun, while the Walhalla allegory featured
long banners and draperies with swastika motifs. The
prominence of the swastika was an obvious attempt by parade organisers
to position the Nazi movement as the modern incarnation of this
prehistoric warrior race. As one writer explained: 'As our ancestors
honoured the swastika as a rune for well-being and promise, it is again
holy for us today'. Compared to the 1933 parade, the later parades, with
their grounding of Nazi symbols in prehistory and prominent rhetoric of
blood ties between ancient Nordic tribes and modern Germans, began with
a much more direct ideological statement. Reflecting orthodox Nazi
views of a national community based on racial purity and martial valour,
the parade programme explained how the Germanic group and subsequent
floats would demonstrate that 'throughout nearly three thousand years
the racial strength remained unbroken and devoted itself to life in work
and battle'. Although the Germanic group was replete with pagan
religious icons, the Romanesque Age with its ten floats and the Gothic
Age with seven floats were largely devoid of Christian overtones. Apart
from three floats celebrating the architecture and sculpture of the
period, the Romanesque section focused on Charlemagne, Friedrich
Barbarossa, and other political leaders flanked by squadrons of German
warriors and crusaders. Of the seven elements of the Gothic Age, three
focused on the arts including a model of a Gothic fountain reused from
the 1933 parade, while the remaining four were formations of knights
mounted for battle, jousting or hunting. Although the Germans adopted
Christianity and were active in religious affairs during these periods,
the parade's interpretation largely focused on military exploits,
reflecting the Nazi Party's valorisation of conflict but ambivalence
towards Christianity. The next three groupings, celebrating the
Renaissance, Baroque, and Classical and Romantic Ages, were relatively
small. Three elements of the Renaissance Age depicted a flowering of
painting, sculpture and science, while two others featured a grouping of
peasants and riders. The four elements of the Baroque Age symbolised
music, theatre, sculpture and the Bavarian rococo, a second leftover
from the 1933 parade. 
The
fifth Baroque element featured military formations recalling Friedrich
the Great. The Classical and Romantic Age had only two elements: one
recognising the neo- classical arts, the other devoted to Richard
Wagner. Although many of the major cultural trends symbolised here
originated in non-German lands, the parade programme emphasised the
unique German contribution by explaining that although 'foreigners often
gave us example and impetus; the borrowed form always obtained its own
original life from the spirit of our bloodline'. Compared with the
preceding groups, these three ages are remarkable in their relative
brevity and lack of martial themes. This may stem from the fact that
many of the major events of these periods, such as the Reformation, the
Thirty Years War and the slow decline of the Holy Roman Empire, conjured
images of German disunity rather than the Nazi ideal of national unity. After
the parade's rather cursory treatment of German history and culture
from the Gothic period onward, it skipped ahead to a 'New Age' as the
culmination of German national development. The eight elements of the
New Age section focused exclusively on the achievements and ideology of
the Nazi regime with scant reference to the arts. Likely accounting for
over one-third of all costumed participants, the New Age section was by
far the largest of the parade, although it covered only five years. The
section began with riders in black armour bearing crests representing
the Nuremberg Party Rallies and the arts. Young torch-bearing women
mourners, 'symbols of the eternal watch over the graves of the heroes'
heralded the next element, which actually consisted of separate
allegorical floats representing Sacrifice, Belief and Loyalty. 
The
next float, Mother Earth, emphasised the importance of nature and
fertility. These two sections displayed Nazi conceptions of appropriate
gender roles in this new national community. Female participants
received roles associated with fertility, while males were associated
with action. In light of the coming war, it was prophetic that women
accompanying the Sacrifice float appeared to be mourning, while Belief
and Loyalty, seen as vital military attributes, were represented by male
statues escorted by young men. The remaining elements of the New Age
depicted political achievements starting with the reincorporation of the
Rhineland and Saarland. Next, a large eagle led a series of models of
'Monumental Buildings of the Führer' in Munich and Nuremberg. The high
profile accorded to architecture was especially striking considering
that the other arts were basically absent from this New Age. This was
indicative of the importance Nazi leaders and propaganda placed on new
construction projects as evidence of the regime's progress towards a new
economy, culture and national community. Surprisingly, there was no
direct reference to the new age of German painting supposedly initiated
by the Great German Art Exhibition. Although participants in other
sections wore costumes reflecting that section's specific time period,
men in the New Age section wore costumes reminiscent of mediæval monks
or knights, while women appeared in flowing robes in an attempt to
portray the Nazi movement in 'timeless beautiful garments'. 
The parade's finale was successive formations of SA, ϟϟ,
Labour Service, police and military units as 'symbols of German
strength'. As one writer explained, these were to be both symbolically
and literally 'guardians and keepers of a historical legacy, protectors
of two thousand years of German culture, guarantees for its preservation
in the near and distant future'. Although little documentation of the
parade's planning and administration survived, it is possible to piece
together some general statistics from published accounts and
photographs. Whilst parade organisers and party officials may have
exaggerated, estimates from Wagner and Wenzel that between 21,000 and
24,000 people were involved in preparations for the parade, totalling
approximately 143,000 work hours, appear plausible. The number of
costumed participants in 1937 likely totalled around 3,200, mostly
members of various party organisations. About 450 of these rode on
horseback, including a few women. Dozens of additional horses pulled
twenty-six floats, while about an equal number of smaller elements were
transported by hand. The closing formations included approximately 3200
uniformed marchers, while approximately 13,500 additional men, mostly
members of the SA and ϟϟ, provided crowd control.
The
next float, Mother Earth, emphasised the importance of nature and
fertility. These two sections displayed Nazi conceptions of appropriate
gender roles in this new national community. Female participants
received roles associated with fertility, while males were associated
with action. In light of the coming war, it was prophetic that women
accompanying the Sacrifice float appeared to be mourning, while Belief
and Loyalty, seen as vital military attributes, were represented by male
statues escorted by young men. The remaining elements of the New Age
depicted political achievements starting with the reincorporation of the
Rhineland and Saarland. Next, a large eagle led a series of models of
'Monumental Buildings of the Führer' in Munich and Nuremberg. The high
profile accorded to architecture was especially striking considering
that the other arts were basically absent from this New Age. This was
indicative of the importance Nazi leaders and propaganda placed on new
construction projects as evidence of the regime's progress towards a new
economy, culture and national community. Surprisingly, there was no
direct reference to the new age of German painting supposedly initiated
by the Great German Art Exhibition. Although participants in other
sections wore costumes reflecting that section's specific time period,
men in the New Age section wore costumes reminiscent of mediæval monks
or knights, while women appeared in flowing robes in an attempt to
portray the Nazi movement in 'timeless beautiful garments'. 
The parade's finale was successive formations of SA, ϟϟ,
Labour Service, police and military units as 'symbols of German
strength'. As one writer explained, these were to be both symbolically
and literally 'guardians and keepers of a historical legacy, protectors
of two thousand years of German culture, guarantees for its preservation
in the near and distant future'. Although little documentation of the
parade's planning and administration survived, it is possible to piece
together some general statistics from published accounts and
photographs. Whilst parade organisers and party officials may have
exaggerated, estimates from Wagner and Wenzel that between 21,000 and
24,000 people were involved in preparations for the parade, totalling
approximately 143,000 work hours, appear plausible. The number of
costumed participants in 1937 likely totalled around 3,200, mostly
members of various party organisations. About 450 of these rode on
horseback, including a few women. Dozens of additional horses pulled
twenty-six floats, while about an equal number of smaller elements were
transported by hand. The closing formations included approximately 3200
uniformed marchers, while approximately 13,500 additional men, mostly
members of the SA and ϟϟ, provided crowd control.At
least two contemporary accounts of the 1938 parade claimed that it
involved 5,000 costumed participants, a significant increase since 1937.
In a departure from other party spectacles, women were well represented
in the Munich parades, with about 2,000 females versus 3,000 males.
Yet, as suggested above, Nazi gender ideals were clearly on display. 
As
shown in my GIF on the left, female participants appeared passive,
often simply walking alongside floats, whilst males rode horses, were
dressed for battle, or muscled floats through the streets. Whilst claims
that hundreds of thousands lined Munich's streets for the parade are
difficult to verify, the festivities drew large crowds. On this festival
weekend, nearly 73,000 more travellers than usual passed through
Munich's train station, whilst an additional 100,000 were estimated to
have arrived by motor vehicle. It is clear that the parades of the late
1930s far surpassed their 1933 predecessor. The later parades were
monumental spectacles offering a more coherent presentation of Nazi
views of politics, culture and national community. Yet, given the
parade's extravagance and the Nazi Party's penchant for fiscal
mismanagement, the parade association founded in 1937 soon ran into
financial troubles and was dissolved in 1940. Viewing the 1937 Day of
German Art as a success, national and local leaders resolved to repeat
the exhibition and parade annually. The parades in 1938 and 1939 had the
same basic content and ideology as the 1937 performance with minor
changes. The Mother Earth float, for example, was re-named Blood and
Soil. The other changes involved additional floats celebrating foreign
policy triumphs or planned building projects. The 1938 parade featured
three new elements depicting the annexation of Austria and a
personification of the Danube. There were also new models of buildings
planned in Nuremberg, Hamburg and Berlin. The 1939 parade was updated
with three new floats celebrating recent foreign policy victories: the
annexation of the Czech Sudetenland, the Czech Protectorate and the
Memel Land. Wartime conditions precluded further parades. The route
Organisers also revised the route but still faced complications from
Munich's existing layout. The new route followed the same initial
course, but now, once reaching the southern end of the Ludwigstraße, the
parade turned west towards the Königsplatz then circled south through
the city centre.
This
route, approximately seven kilometres long, was significantly longer
than 1933 but retained its u-turn on the Ludwigstraße. In addition to
repeating the awkward u-turn, this also meant that the expanded number
of floats and participants of the 1937 parade had to confine themselves
to only one half of the street. At least one writer claimed this route
led to 'special groupings and images that merged into each other, when
for instance the turned-around parade passed itself in opposing
directions', making the parade a 'parable of the repetition of life'.
Yet parade organisers clearly intended to depict Nazism as the climatic
finale and culmination of German history. Rather than a mere repetition
of previous ages, the parade aimed to present an unassailable chronology
of German achievement culminating in Nazism's New Age. The awkward
orientation of the Ludwigstraße space partially obscured this trajectory
as did the overall parade route which passed the House of German Art
near its start. Although it is easy to understand why some would
uncritically assume that the parade 'wound through the streets toward
the new museum', the route actually led away from the museum. In 1938,
organisers diverted the parade right on to Königstraße after passing the
House location. From there it entered the Ludwigstraße from the north
and proceeded along its length without having to double back. Now floats
advancing along the Ludwigstraße would not have to compete with each
other. The new route also allowed the parade to enter the Ludwigstraße
by passing beneath the monumental Victory Gate, instead of turning
around in front of it. The procession could also expand to cover the
entire width of the Ludwigstraße. Although providing a more dramatic
entry on to the Ludwigstraße, it required the parade to follow the
Königstraße, an unremarkable residential street. Munich's existing
spatial layout simply did not offer a clear and coherent route that
could link the House of German Art and Munich's other important public
spaces. Whilst the dimensions of the Ludwigstraße were conducive for the
type of mass spectacle favoured by Nazi leaders, the architecture
lining the street posed a problem. Commissioned by King Ludwig in an
effort to transform Munich into an international cultural centre, these
façades recalled classical and renaissance styles in Italy and Greece.
Although not necessarily incompatible with Nazi ideology, these
buildings did not easily connect to the revised parades which celebrated
a narrower vision of Germanic cultural and military prowess. Indeed,
the neo-classical period, which encompassed most of the Ludwigstraße's
architecture, played a negligible role in the parades. In response, the
street was adorned with myriad banners, flags and other decorations that
almost completely screened the boulevard's buildings from view. Here,
flags and other decorations provided a means to obscure the street's
original architectural symbolism and focus spectators' attention on the
more nationalistic message conveyed by the parade. While the effect
along the Ludwigstraße was certainly impressive, the visual impact along
other portions of the route was limited. Most of the rest of the parade
route followed narrow streets which lacked the monumentality of the
Ludwigstraße space and generally had fewer decorations. Again, Munich's
existing layout and architecture served to limit its effectiveness as a
venue for Nazi spectacle and performance. In addition to its awkward
route and its ill-suited architectural backdrop, later parades
demonstrated several additional shortcomings and contradictions. First,
interpretation of the parade required a significant amount of historical
knowledge, which many middle- and lower-class Germans may not have
possessed. Second, some of the figures celebrated were difficult to
reconcile with Nazi policy. For example, the mediæval Hohenstaufen
emperors focused much of their energy on gaining territory in Italy,
whereas Nazi rhetoric and policy obsessed about eastern expansion. It
was also noteworthy what events and figures were omitted. References to
classical Greece, so prominent in 1933, were removed in a shift away
from a general narrative of Western culture to a narrower celebration of
Nordic-Germanic history and values. 
On the left, a model of the Haus der Deutsche Kunst at the "Glanzzeiten deutscher
Geschichte" parade on the 1937 "Day of
German Art" in front of St. Ludwig’s church. As
noted above, religion was almost totally absent, aside from pagan
allegories. It was not surprising that the Reformation and the Thirty
Years War were missing since they allude to national discord. Yet the
parade celebrated the Gothic period, a time of national political
fragmentation. Furthermore, achievements in Gothic art and architecture
were closely tied to the Christian cathedral. This reflects a degree of
ambiguity if not hostility between Christianity, which enjoyed
significant support among the general public, and many party leaders,
who cast Nazism as a new messianic religion. Even more striking was the
omission of most modern history. Aside from Wagner, the nineteenth and
early twentieth centuries were largely absent. There was no reference to
Bismarck or German unification in 1871, although they could represent
national unity and military victory. Even the First World War, a pivotal
personal experience for many Nazi leaders and of profound importance
for the development of the party, was excluded. It is perhaps
understandable that the Weimar period was excluded, although the period
witnessed the birth of the Nazi Party. These sparse references to recent
history reflected the Nazi movement's prevailing view of this as a time
of cultural decay and racial degeneration. Although the parades' title
suggested a message of continuity between successive historical epochs
leading to National Socialism, these omissions had the effect of
presenting Nazism as the expression of an eternal and an historical
racial ethos that, after a period of decline, simply emerged beyond any
context. In many respects, the party's ideologues drew greater
inspiration from mythical images of prehistoric, pagan and mediæval
times representing national unity, military valour, and racial purity,
and sought to portray the Nazi movement as the embodiment of these
supposedly timeless Germanic national values.
Despite claims to be a 'tremendous parade of peace', the parades of 1937 to 1939 offered
an extended acclamation of martial achievements and heroic feats
culminating in representations of Hitler's foreign policy successes.
Although presented as a parade of German culture, warriors and political
leaders rather than artists were the pivotal figures. As the exiled
Social Democratic Party sarcastically reported: "The parade was more of a
military rather than a cultural spectacle. Two thirds of all
participants were warriors. From the fighters of the Germanic Age armed
with spears to the military and party formations marching at the end of
the parade, one could follow the exceptional development of the German
warrior'. After the preceding floats recounted the history of this
idealised Volk community, the extensive New Age section positioned the
Nazi regime as the inheritor, defender and culmination of this legacy.
The allusions to Sacrifice, Belief and Loyalty, which opened the New Age
section, complemented efforts to ready men and women for their
respective roles as the regime prepared its own war of conquest. Despite
the parades' sharpened ideological message, they did not emerge as
iconic images of Nazi Germany. In contrast to Munich's art exhibitions
which were celebrated in professional journals, popular magazines and
widely circulated programmes, the parades garnered relatively little
coverage. The
apparent disinterest of the party propaganda machinery in pushing the
parades as part of the broader Nazi iconography raises questions about
their effectiveness as propaganda events. Scholars examining parades and
other public spectacles in democratic contexts have noted that
organisers often attempt to reinforce the ideological message by
actively involving the public in the spectacle. This objective has also
been noted in dictatorial states, such as Fascist Italy, where David
Atkinson argued that the regime sought to build control and consensus by
staging 'inclusive spectacles' in Rome's public spaces. Nazi organisers
stated a similar goal in the 1937 parade programme: Through forms drawn
from the distant and recent past of German culture, we ourselves.
stride, as an entire people, in the parade of German achievement, of
German history. Not spectators but rather we are today and always a
deeply edifying and extremely resolute community of blood and culture.
This desire to blur the distinction between participant and observer was
an important element in the power of the Nuremberg Rallies, the
regime's most infamous propaganda spectacles. Yet unlike the massive
parades and spectacles staged in Nuremberg, the Munich parades largely
failed in this regard. There are various reasons, but one important
consideration is the different types of spaces and venues within which
the Nuremberg Rallies and Munich parades were performed. Unlike the
Nuremberg Rally complex, which featured large venues designed and built
by the Nazi Party to enclose both participant and observer, Munich's
parade route lacked comparable spaces. Parade organisers had to make do
with Munich's existing street layout and architecture, which were not
designed with parades or mass gatherings in mind. Whilst the
architecture of the Nuremberg Rallies was purposely designed to place
Hitler and the party within an aura of power, order and permanence, in
contrast, Munich's relatively modest nineteenth-century neo-classical
buildings were ill-suited for this task. On both a symbolic and
practical level, Munich's urban layout presented a series of
architectural and spatial limitations that diminished the propaganda
impact of the Nazi culture parades which highlights the degree to which
an urban space's existing layout and symbolic associations can constrain
its potential use, even in totalitarian societies. The urban landscape
is certainly malleable and open to interpretation, but there are limits
to its flexibility. This is also suggestive of why, after initial
efforts to redevelop existing urban spaces, Fascist Italy and Nazi
Germany eventually shifted to building new urban centres from scratch
that could be designed in accordance with their respective ideologies.
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. In place of four demolished houses by Leo von Klenze and the
Reichsbank, the "Central Ministry of the State of Bavaria" was built
from 1938-39 based on designs by Fritz Gablonsky on the corner of
Ludwigs- and Von-der-Tann-Straße for the Ministry of Finance as well as
the state chancellery. The original idea of building a building for all
Bavarian ministries could not be implemented due to space constraints.
The structure of the façade shows that the main entrance was intended
for today's Galeriestrasse. 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.
power until the end of the Third Reich by which point he
had attempted to have all the surviving inmates at Dachau murdered.After the war, this building served as the headquarters of the American Military police and later the American Consulate General from where "Voice of America" was broadcast. In 1955 the building was returned to the Bavarian authorities and is now the official residence of the Bavarian State Ministry for Agriculture and Forestry.
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.
Two plaques on the house wall refer to the Herzog-Max-Palais as the birthplace of the later Austrian empress and Queen of Hungary 'Sissi' (shown left) and the completion of the current building by Carl Sattler after the war. The building had been demolished by 1937 to make way for Heinrich Wolff's commission on Hitler's request. The original purpose of the house, the construction work up to 1941 and the Nazi clients at that time are not mentioned, ignoring the fact that the building itself was built to serve the Nazis who had planned the building to serve as the branch office of the Reichsbank in Munich. It was constructed in the context of the planning of a traffic axis oriented from east to west. For the new building, the Herzog-Max-Palais (also known as Karl-Theodor-Palais and Herzog-Karl-Palais), built according to plans by Leo von Klenze from 1828 to 1830, was demolished in 1937-38. After three years of construction completed in 1941, work had to be stopped due to the war with only the first floor finished. The corner building at what was then Ludwigstrasse 8 between Von-der-Tannstrasse and Rheinbergerstrasse was built up to the first floor and was only completed from 1949 to 1951 on behalf of the Bavarian State Central Bank according to the old Nazi plans of Carl Sattler. Today it serves as the Bavarian State Central Bank.
Ludwigstrasse 5 on the left, built in 1821 for the master tailor
Gampenrieder. Around 1900 the building on the corner of Ludwigstrasse
and von-der-Tannstrasse was replaced by a new building for the
Reichsbank. In 1937 all four houses were demolished in order to set up a
central ministry for the Bavarian state, based on plans by Fritz
Gablonsky. During the war, Ludwigstrasse was badly damaged by bombing
and artillery fire, and, in the last days, by street fighting. It still
hasn't been fully restored. Indeed, it suffered further destruction in
the 1960s and 1970s with the establishment of the Altstadtring
(Oskar-von-Miller-Ring/Von-der-Tann-Straße) which resulted in the
demolition of two other historic von Klenze buildings and overall
gutting of properties as part of the so-called urban redevelopment
project. Most of the post-war losses are those buildings which were
located at Ludwigstraße 6 and 7 (today 11), which were built by Klenze
in 1822-23. Even before the war, the Nazis wanted to tear it down to
make room for Frühlingsstrasse
(today's Oskar-von-Miller-Ring) in order to widen the axis linking
Prinzregentenstraße with Tannstraße, Frühlingstraße and
Gabelsbergerstraße in order to create an impressive connection between
Riem Airport and the Nazi party district at Königsplatz, but the
outbreak of war prevented the plan from being implemented. Nevertheless,
the Nazis' plans were implemented in 1949 as the building at
Ludwigstraße 7 was demolished and the neighbouring building to the south
were converted into a single corner building, expanding it by two axes
and thus destroying its symmetry to make room for the Altstadtring and
the neighbouring site at Ludwigstrasse 6 (today 11). In this way, two
Klenze buildings were destroyed in the post-war period.
Empress of Austria and Queen consort of Hungary as the spouse
of Franz Joseph I.Two plaques on the house wall refer to the Herzog-Max-Palais as the birthplace of the later Austrian empress and Queen of Hungary 'Sissi' (shown left) and the completion of the current building by Carl Sattler after the war. The building had been demolished by 1937 to make way for Heinrich Wolff's commission on Hitler's request. The original purpose of the house, the construction work up to 1941 and the Nazi clients at that time are not mentioned, ignoring the fact that the building itself was built to serve the Nazis who had planned the building to serve as the branch office of the Reichsbank in Munich. It was constructed in the context of the planning of a traffic axis oriented from east to west. For the new building, the Herzog-Max-Palais (also known as Karl-Theodor-Palais and Herzog-Karl-Palais), built according to plans by Leo von Klenze from 1828 to 1830, was demolished in 1937-38. After three years of construction completed in 1941, work had to be stopped due to the war with only the first floor finished. The corner building at what was then Ludwigstrasse 8 between Von-der-Tannstrasse and Rheinbergerstrasse was built up to the first floor and was only completed from 1949 to 1951 on behalf of the Bavarian State Central Bank according to the old Nazi plans of Carl Sattler. Today it serves as the Bavarian State Central Bank.
This
block of houses on Ludwigstrasse between Hofgarten and von-der-
Tannstrasse was built in 1820-21 according to plans by Leo von Klenze.
The façades all follow a similar scheme, namely that of the Italian High
Renaissance townhouse as found in Florence and Rome. but with reduced
dimensions windows larger than the wall area due to the climatic
conditions in Central Europe and the resulting living habits. The
considerable difficulties in finding buyers who wanted to live in such
Italian palazzi as Ludwig I had in mind for the new houses on Ludwigstrasse
led to Klenze's famous statement:"Munich is not Rome and Mr. Mayer, for
whom the house is being built, is not a Farnese or Pitti." He further
elaborated by stating that "[t]he poverty of the Munich builders and the
Nordic need to give the little sun and light access and to heat the
rooms in winter there are just as many obstacles to the charm of Italian
façades.” As a result, Ludwig changed architects from Klenze to
Gärtner, deciding to settle only state or church institutions on
Ludwigstrasse.
Ludwigstrasse 5 on the left, built in 1821 for the master tailor
Gampenrieder. Around 1900 the building on the corner of Ludwigstrasse
and von-der-Tannstrasse was replaced by a new building for the
Reichsbank. In 1937 all four houses were demolished in order to set up a
central ministry for the Bavarian state, based on plans by Fritz
Gablonsky. During the war, Ludwigstrasse was badly damaged by bombing
and artillery fire, and, in the last days, by street fighting. It still
hasn't been fully restored. Indeed, it suffered further destruction in
the 1960s and 1970s with the establishment of the Altstadtring
(Oskar-von-Miller-Ring/Von-der-Tann-Straße) which resulted in the
demolition of two other historic von Klenze buildings and overall
gutting of properties as part of the so-called urban redevelopment
project. Most of the post-war losses are those buildings which were
located at Ludwigstraße 6 and 7 (today 11), which were built by Klenze
in 1822-23. Even before the war, the Nazis wanted to tear it down to
make room for Frühlingsstrasse
(today's Oskar-von-Miller-Ring) in order to widen the axis linking
Prinzregentenstraße with Tannstraße, Frühlingstraße and
Gabelsbergerstraße in order to create an impressive connection between
Riem Airport and the Nazi party district at Königsplatz, but the
outbreak of war prevented the plan from being implemented. Nevertheless,
the Nazis' plans were implemented in 1949 as the building at
Ludwigstraße 7 was demolished and the neighbouring building to the south
were converted into a single corner building, expanding it by two axes
and thus destroying its symmetry to make room for the Altstadtring and
the neighbouring site at Ludwigstrasse 6 (today 11). In this way, two
Klenze buildings were destroyed in the post-war period.
Kriegsministerium
The
site six months after the fall of the monarchy when a demonstration
took place in front of the Bavarian war Ministry on the afternoon April 22, 1919, and the building today.
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.
The future overlord of the ϟϟ empire was at this time still in his twenties, a well-educated and intelligent former agricultural student who had briefly worked for a fertiliser firm and reared chickens. With his short-back-and-sides haircut, small moustache, round glasses, and unathletic build, he resembled a small-town bank clerk or pedantic schoolmaster. Whatever appearances might have suggested, he had, however, few peers in ideological fanaticism and, as time would prove, cold ruthlessness. The young nationalist idealist, already imagining dire conspiracies involving ‘the red International’, Jews, Jesuits, and freemasons ranged against Germany, had joined the NSDAP in the summer of 1923, influenced by the man whose murder he would orchestrate eleven years later, Ernst Röhm. It was at Röhm’s side that, on 8 November that year, the night of the putsch, he had carried the banner at the head of the Reichskriegsflagge unit engaged in attempting to storm the Bavarian War Ministry.
Kershaw Hitler
Richard Rhodes goes further, describing how
Himmler carried the flag, marching with his brother Gebhard and four hundred other men of the Reichskriegsflagge to the War Ministry, where Röhm ordered them to occupy the building and surround it with a barbed-wire barricade. It was for the purpose of rescuing the Reichskriegsflagge that Hitler and two thousand fellow putschists linked arms and marched into the Odeonplatz the next day, where a firefight started with the Munich police. Hitler dislocated his shoulder diving for cover (or being dragged down by the weight of the man shot dead next to him; accounts vary). At the War Ministry Röhm was arrested, but the rank and file, including the Himmler brothers, were merely disarmed and sent home. “Toward the authorities,” Smith reports of the aftermath, “Heinrich was very bitter, his mood alternating between imaginary fears of his own arrest and disappointment that the government was not interested in him.” He began to suspect that people were opening his mail.
Masters of Death (81)
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 this doctored version. 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 Bavarian State Library decked out in swastikas in 1933 and today. Founded
in 1558 by Duke Albrecht V, and built again by Gärtner, housing 9.1
million volumes, nearly 400,000 maps and subscriptions to over 42,000
periodicals; one of the largest libraries in the German-speaking world.On
April 7, 1933 the Reich government issued the "Law for the Restoration
of the Civil Service." This affected the state library because the
scientific librarian Max Stefl, the candidate for the middle library
service Paul Schumacher and the administrative assistant Marianne Lacher
were dismissed, having been considered politically unreliable because
they had spoken critically about the Nazis to colleagues. Likewise, the
leading librarian Otto Hartig was also transferred in 1935 for political
reasons to the State Library Bamberg. Director General Georg Reismüller
fell victim to an intrigue planned by his deputy Georg Leidinger, who
had wanted to become general director himself. On March 23, the SD
arrested Reismüller; his forced retirement went into effect from July 1,
1935. Then in October, Reismüller was interrogated in the State
Ministry of Education and Culture under suspicion of having acquired and
anti-Nazi writings and withheld pro-Nazi titles from library users.
Reismüller fell seriously ill and died in 1936.
The
influence of the Nazi regime was not limited to personnel matters.
Books could not simply be borrowed without first applying in advance
whilst the order to exclude Jews at the German universities of 1938
denied Jewish users access to the academic libraries. Like all
scientific libraries, the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek also had to comply
with certain requirements when compiling and loaning out the books. In
1936, the Reichsschrifttumskammer published a list of harmful and
unwanted literature, which was constantly updated. The publications
concerned had to be set up separately and could only be submitted if the
users could prove their political reliability and scientific interest.
After Kristallnacht Jews were not allowed access for several weeks, but
in March 1939 the new General Director, Rudolf Buttmann,
instructed on October 1, 1935 "that in principle a review of the Aryan
descent of the library users is ignored". Visitors were then only
allowed to be asked if they were Jews if they had been offended by their
behaviour. From September 15, 1941 when Jews had to wear the Jewish
star, they were forbidden to use the Bavarian State Library.
Nevertheless, newly published documents critical of the Nazis found
their way into the library's collections under Buttmann, but these works
were not accessible to library users. When Buttmann introduced the
referral system in his house in 1939, he also neglected subjects such as
"Literature of the NSDAP" and the "Jewish Question".
Hard to reconcile such an image after the war with Ludwigstrasse today
 |
| Hitler at the Staatsbibliothek |
How
the Bayerischen Staatsbibliothek appeared after the wartime bombing and
today. In 1941, the search for places of refuge for the collection
began and in 1942 Buttmann had the location directories filmed and the
catalogues relocated to magazine rooms, which were classified by the
Munich Land Office. Before the library building suffered the first heavy
bomb damage on March 9-10 1943,
tens of thousands of manuscripts had been brought to safety. On the
other hand, Buttmann only arranged for the salvage of the large mass of
books afterwards. About one-fifth of the total stock - between 400,000
and 500,000 books - had been destroyed by the bombing. As a result of
the second major fire in the Bavarian State Library in April 1944, the
rental and reading room business finally collapsed, and only the
acquisition department continued to pursue its tasks. After the war in
1946 the reconstruction of the Bavarian State Library began with the
library staff in the former Nazi buildings on Arcisstraße resumed its
internal work in 1947. From 1948 books could be borrowed again and the
administration and the main departments returned to the building on
Ludwigstraße in 1952 along with the repatriation of books and documents.
The interior has since been extensively restored much to how it originally appeared
1949
photo of the thousands of books from the Bayerischen Staatsbibliothek
in the Haimhauser Schlosskapelle; site of my school, the Bavarian International School. During the 1944 bombing, the library's
collection was distributed throughout 28 sites in Oberbayern.
The bombed Haslauer-Block and its reconstruction today at Ludwigstraße 6-10. This block of builings was built for Ludwig I as three
private houses in 1827-1830 by architect Leo von Klenze behind a single
Florentine façade. The building was heavily damaged during the war, so
it had to be completely demolished and rebuilt by Erwin Schleich in
1960-1968 who followed the specifications of Klenze, but not the
internal structure. Today office, residential and business premises are
in the building and serves as the office of the Munich School of
Political Sciences.
.gif)
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.
Within days he had been assigned to the first of the anti-Bolshevik ‘instruction courses’, to take place in Munich University between 5 and 12 June 1919. For the first time, Hitler was to receive here some form of directed political ‘education’. This, as he acknowledged, was important to him; as was the fact that he realised for the first time that he could make an impact on those around him. Here he heard lectures from prominent figures in Munich, hand-picked by Mayr, partly through personal acquaintance, on ‘German History since the Reformation’, ‘The Political History of the War’, ‘Socialism in Theory and Practice’, ‘Our Economic Situation and the Peace Conditions’, and ‘The Connection between Domestic and Foreign Policy’. Among the speakers, too, was Gottfried Feder, who had made a name for himself among the Pan-Germans as an economics expert. His lecture on the ‘breaking of interest slavery’ (a slogan Hitler recognised as having propaganda potential), on which he had already published a ‘manifesto’ – highly regarded in nationalist circles – distinguishing between ‘productive’ capital and ‘rapacious’ capital (which he associated with the Jews), made a deep impression on Hitler, and eventually led to Feder’s role as the economics ‘guru’ of the early Nazi Party. The history lectures were delivered by the Munich historian Professor Karl Alexander von Müller, who had known Mayr at school. Following his first lecture, he came across a small group in the emptying lecture hall surrounding a man addressing them in a passionate, strikingly guttural, tone. He mentioned to Mayr after his next lecture that one of his trainees had natural rhetorical talent. Von Müller pointed out where he was sitting. Mayr recognised him immediately: it was ‘Hitler from the List Regiment’.
The façade of the university after the war and today.
Kershaw (67)
Hitler
revisiting the University in 1935 on the occasion of the Annual Meeting
of the “Academy of German Law” (Akademie für deutsches Recht). In the
1920s Munich was a centre
for reactionary and extremist groups that counted many students among
their members. Their degree of radicalisation and their public impact
increased as the decade advanced. In 1925 Richard Willstätter personally
drew attention to the growing threat by resigning from his position as
Professor of Chemistry. During these years there were frequent acts of
violence on campus, and the University was
repeatedly forced to close temporarily. However, whilst attacks
perpetrated by left-wing students were severely punished, the Senate’s
response to violence by right-wing elements of the student body was
usually much less decisive. The Nazis would bring far-reaching changes. With the appointment of Walther Wüst, Indologist and Aryan ideologist
(President of the National Socialist Forschungsgemeinschaft Deutsches
Ahnenerbe), as Führer-Rektor of the University in 1941, responsible
research and soundly based tuition programs became more and more
difficult, particularly in ideologically sensitive disciplines. These
authoritarian measures led to a further fall in student enrolment. By the time the war began, Munich University was one of the few in Germany
able to remain in operation. But as the war progressed, the lack of
qualified staff soon made itself felt. In the first year of the war, the
number of registered students rose to 6,700, before falling back to
between 3,000 and 4,000 in 1941-1944. After the Main Building was
destroyed by Allied bombers in July 1944, only a rudimentary teaching
program could be maintained, and the scheduled Summer Semester of 1945
was cancelled.
When
the Americans marched into Munich on April 30, 1945, around 80% of the
university was in ruins and around a third of all books in the
university library were lost or destroyed. As early as November 1945 and
hence
before the university forecourt on the western side of Ludwigstraße
was renamed Geschwister- Scholl-Platz, the then Minister of Culture
Franz Fendt announced the city’s intention to erect a memorial to the
resistance group at this location. The plain plaque made of Jura marble
and designed by Theodor Georgii was mounted the following year next to
the entrance to the main assembly hall. The Latin inscription
commemorates the seven members of the White Rose who were executed as
martyrs and who had had to die an inhumane death because of their
humanity. However, only the date reveals that they died under the Nazi
regime. The text ends with a quotation from the “Epistulae morales” of
the Roman philosopher Seneca: “It is only in this way that the true
spirit can be tested, – the spirit that will never consent to come under
the jurisdiction of things external to ourselves.” In 1957 the plaque
was moved to the wall of the northern upper gallery – the place from
which Hans and Sophie Scholl dropped their pamphlets into the inner
courtyard and where another memorial was unveiled during the
celebrations to mark the restoration of the courtyard the following
year..gif)
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. .gif)
It
was in this atrium, shown again this time after its bombing and today, upon which the last leaflets had been dropped where
today a permanent exhibition to them has been set up. In addition, a
single memorial and a bust of Sophie School alone has been erected
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 February 22, 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. Two of my students wrote their IBDP internal assessments on Sophie Scholl and the White Rose.
.gif)
It
was in this atrium, shown again this time after its bombing and today, upon which the last leaflets had been dropped where
today a permanent exhibition to them has been set up. In addition, a
single memorial and a bust of Sophie School alone has been erected
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 February 22, 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. Two of my students wrote their IBDP internal assessments on Sophie Scholl and the White 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
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 end of the 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. The building suffered heavy bomb damage during the war, but most of the walls remained intact. Since its restoration, it has served as a seminary to this day. Since 1986, the important sacred art collections of the Georgianum - mainly old Bavarian and Swabian art from Romanesque to Rococo - can be viewed in the in-house museum.
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:
The
members of the White Rose, particularly Hans and Sophie Scholl, have
become the most famous and most admired members of the German
resistance. Munich alone now has almost thirty sites to keep their
memory alive, whether in the form of memorials and street names or
institutions named after them. Since 1980 the Bavarian branch of the
German Booksellers’ and Publishers’ Association and the city’s
Department of Art and Culture have awarded an annual “Geschwister-Scholl
Prize” whose prize-giving ceremony is held in the main assembly hall of
the Ludwig Maximilian University.
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.gif)
Reconstruction efforts began in 1946 under the direction of Munich’s municipal authorities, led by architect Karl Meitinger, who prioritised restoring Ludwigstraße’s historical continuity. The focus was on repairing the damaged roof and upper floors while preserving the neoclassical facade to maintain the street’s architectural harmony, originally envisioned by King Ludwig I. By December 1948, the building was weatherproofed, with temporary repairs to the roof and windows completed to prevent further deterioration. Full reconstruction, including internal refurbishments, concluded by June 1952, with the building repurposed for administrative use by the Bavarian state government. The reconstruction process involved 120 workers at its peak, with costs estimated at 1.2 million Deutsche Marks, funded partly by the Bavarian state and municipal contributions. Materials were sourced locally, including limestone from nearby quarries to match the original facade whilst prioritising structural stability over aesthetic embellishments, with interior spaces simplified to accommodate modern office layouts. By March 1953, the building housed the Bavarian State Ministry for Education and Culture, a function it retained for decades. The building’s understated restoration, completed without fanfare, contrasts with the more prominent rebuilding of landmarks like the Frauenkirche, finished in 1994. In 1995, during renovations to install climate control systems, workers discovered a hidden room in the basement containing fragments of the original Nazi flag. The flag’s remnants, along with 12 metal bound ledgers detailing party finances, were handed to the Bavarian State Police.
The marble façade was cleaned in 2015, removing soot from wartime fires, but original carvings on the north side were replicated using 3D scanning technology. The building’s east entrance, least damaged in 1945, retains its original bronze doors, though their handles were replaced in 1960. Today, it serves as an office for state administrative functions, its Nazi origins increasingly obscured by the planting of trees to cover the view of it.
Beside the University and Haus des Deutschen Rechts is the Siegestor (Victory Gate)
.gif)
Hitler's
paintings of the Siegestor. Hitler arrived in Munich on May 25, 1913,
residing at Schleißheimer Straße 34, where he produced over 100
watercolours and postcards of local landmarks, including the Siegestor,
to sell for income. This specific postcard, dated June 1914 and signed
"A. Hitler," depicts the monument from the Ludwigstraße approach,
showing the quadriga in detail; this item was sold to dealer Samuel
Morgenstern for ten Kronen and is preserved in the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek collection.
Another drawing, from July 1913, portrays the southern facade with
pedestrians, measuring 20 by 15 centimetres, and fetched 15 Kronen at a
Munich auction. Kershaw claims such paintings reveal amateurish
technique focused on architectural precision rather than artistic merit;
he evaluates them as evidence of Hitler's marginal existence,
contrasting with later regime claims of prophetic vision. In 1914,
Hitler completed at least five Siegestor views, one of which, a
watercolour sold on August 1, 1914 for 20 Kronen, includes the
inscription "Dem Siege geweiht" prominently. Post-1933, these pieces
were retrospectively valorised; the Völkischer Beobachter on April 20, 1935 published a reproduction of the June 1914 postcard, claiming it foreshadowed Nazi victories.
.gif)
A 1937 exhibition at the Haus der Deutschen Kunst included
two of Hitler's pre-war Siegestor drawings, viewed by 400,000 visitors
from July 18 to October 31, 1937. Biographer Konrad Heiden, in exile in
1936, estimated that Hitler produced 10 Siegestor pieces between 1913
and 1914, sold for a total of 150 Kronen. He records SA leader Ernst Roehm as
he was to depart for his self-imposed exile to Bolivia over his
opposition to the Frontbann at the end of 1924, as having said to Hitler:
In the end, the question has always been to which victory the arch refers. When Bavarian troops entered the solemnly decorated gate on July 16, 1871 after their victories in the Franco-Prussian, it was only then properly consecrated. In the actual sense of a triumphal arch - the passage of victorious troops - this was the only time it was used as one which, ironically given that at the same time also meant the end of Bavaria's independence, it was therefore not a full triumph. In 1918 defeated First World War soldiers marched through it. The bronze quadriga cast by Ferdinand von Miller is enthroned on the triumphal arch, depicting the six metre high figure of Bavaria on a chariot drawn by four lions (as opposed to the original horses intended) and weighing twenty tonnes. In fact, it was only erected in 1852, two years after the Victory Gate was completed. It's remarkable that tondi with scenes from art and culture are depicted above the rectangular reliefs, which generally depict antiquity battle scenes, which should thus rise above the war in Ludwig's intention and should represent his peace and art policy.
.gif)
It
was through the arch and down Ludwigstrasse, shown from both sides with
help from Drake Winston, that Hitler led the annual
commemoration of the failed Beer Hall Putsch, past the burning pylons.
Indeed, the Siegestor's role in Nazi events began immediately after the
regime's consolidation of power. On September 1, 1933, the monument
served as the centrepiece for the Reichskriegertag rally,
attended by 200,000 veterans and party members. SA units, numbering
15,000, marched through the central arch, whilst Hitler addressed the
crowd from a podium erected directly in front, quoting in his speech,
"Germany awakens to its destiny under the banner of victory." This event
marked the first major utilisation of the Siegestor, transforming it
into a stage for displaying military discipline. Subsequent years saw
annual commemorations at the site, including the November 9, 1933 Beer
Hall Putsch anniversary parade, where 5,000 participants passed beneath
the arches carrying torches, illuminating the inscription "Dem
Bayerischen Heere" on the southern facade. Traffic was diverted for
twelve hours during this procession, allowing for a crowd of 50,000
spectators.
.gif)
In
1934, the Siegestor hosted a Labour Day celebration on May 1, with
10,000 workers from the Deutsche Arbeitsfront assembling around it;
Goebbels spoke from the eastern side, emphasising, "Labour honours the
victories of the past," as noted in the Münchner Neueste Nachrichten on
May 2, 1934. The monument's quadriga, depicting Bavaria as a triumphant
figure, was draped with swastika banners measuring 20 metres in length,
enhancing the visual impact. By 1935, the Siegestor featured in the Tag der Freiheit rally
on September 15, part of the Nuremberg extensions to Munich, where
8,000 Hitler Youth members cycled through the arches in formation,
covering a route of two kilometres along Ludwigstraße. Attendance
figures reached 150,000, with 500 injuries reported from overcrowding,
per medical records from the Schwabing Hospital. The Siegestor's use
extended to 1936, when on January 30, the third anniversary of the Machtergreifung,
12,000 Reichswehr soldiers paraded past it, firing salutes that echoed
for 30 minutes. Goebbels oversaw the installation of loudspeakers on the
arches, broadcasting Hitler's radio address to an estimated 100,000
listeners in the vicinity.
.gif)
In 1937, the monument anchored the Große Deutsche Kunstausstellung opening
on July 18 shown here, with 2,000 artists marching through, carrying
replicas of historical Bavarian standards. Attendance swelled to 300,000
over the day, as per the Völkischer Beobachter on July 19, 1937. Evans
critiques this integration, positing that the Siegestor's martial
iconography was deliberately exaggerated to align with the regime's
militarisation efforts, evaluating how events like the 1937 parade, with
its 2,000 participants, fostered a collective amnesia regarding the
monument's original anti-Prussian context under Ludwig I. The year 1938
saw the Siegestor utilised for the Anschluss celebration on March 15,
where 20,000 Munich residents gathered, waving flags imported from
Vienna; Hitler drove through the central arch in an open Mercedes,
pausing for photographs that appeared in Das Reich on March 16, 1938.
Crowd control involved 1,000 police officers, resulting in 20 arrests
for disorderly conduct. On November 9, 1938, following Kristallnacht,
the site hosted a subdued memorial for the 1923 putsch, with 3,000
attendees; the arches were lit with red spotlights symbolising blood
sacrifice. Burleigh assesses these gatherings as mechanisms for
enforcing ideological conformity, arguing that the Siegestor's repeated
use, as in the 1938 event with its 3,000 participants, normalised
violence by associating it with historical triumph.
.gif)
The latter is the tallest figure
in the painting and is purposefully walking forward. He's still wearing
his uniform; although he's no longer needed for military service, his
hair is short, his shoes have been shined- he doesn't quarrel with his
fate. An example therefore should be taken from him as he has sacrificed
his physical integrity, a far greater sacrifice than the pennies the
boys collect in their cans..gif)
.gif)
Hitler's
paintings of the Siegestor. Hitler arrived in Munich on May 25, 1913,
residing at Schleißheimer Straße 34, where he produced over 100
watercolours and postcards of local landmarks, including the Siegestor,
to sell for income. This specific postcard, dated June 1914 and signed
"A. Hitler," depicts the monument from the Ludwigstraße approach,
showing the quadriga in detail; this item was sold to dealer Samuel
Morgenstern for ten Kronen and is preserved in the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek collection.
Another drawing, from July 1913, portrays the southern facade with
pedestrians, measuring 20 by 15 centimetres, and fetched 15 Kronen at a
Munich auction. Kershaw claims such paintings reveal amateurish
technique focused on architectural precision rather than artistic merit;
he evaluates them as evidence of Hitler's marginal existence,
contrasting with later regime claims of prophetic vision. In 1914,
Hitler completed at least five Siegestor views, one of which, a
watercolour sold on August 1, 1914 for 20 Kronen, includes the
inscription "Dem Siege geweiht" prominently. Post-1933, these pieces
were retrospectively valorised; the Völkischer Beobachter on April 20, 1935 published a reproduction of the June 1914 postcard, claiming it foreshadowed Nazi victories. .gif)
A 1937 exhibition at the Haus der Deutschen Kunst included
two of Hitler's pre-war Siegestor drawings, viewed by 400,000 visitors
from July 18 to October 31, 1937. Biographer Konrad Heiden, in exile in
1936, estimated that Hitler produced 10 Siegestor pieces between 1913
and 1914, sold for a total of 150 Kronen. He records SA leader Ernst Roehm as
he was to depart for his self-imposed exile to Bolivia over his
opposition to the Frontbann at the end of 1924, as having said to Hitler:You have only to give me the word- "be at the Siegestor at 6 a.m. on such and such a day with your men" and I shall be there.In 1939, a regime-sponsored book reproduced the July 1913 drawing, quoting Hitler from a 1938 speech: "My early art captured the spirit of Germany." During the war, claims persisted; a 1942 Deutsche Wochenschau mentioned Hitler's "prophetic" Siegestor paintings amid bombing reports, viewed by 15 million.
Heiden (198)
In the end, the question has always been to which victory the arch refers. When Bavarian troops entered the solemnly decorated gate on July 16, 1871 after their victories in the Franco-Prussian, it was only then properly consecrated. In the actual sense of a triumphal arch - the passage of victorious troops - this was the only time it was used as one which, ironically given that at the same time also meant the end of Bavaria's independence, it was therefore not a full triumph. In 1918 defeated First World War soldiers marched through it. The bronze quadriga cast by Ferdinand von Miller is enthroned on the triumphal arch, depicting the six metre high figure of Bavaria on a chariot drawn by four lions (as opposed to the original horses intended) and weighing twenty tonnes. In fact, it was only erected in 1852, two years after the Victory Gate was completed. It's remarkable that tondi with scenes from art and culture are depicted above the rectangular reliefs, which generally depict antiquity battle scenes, which should thus rise above the war in Ludwig's intention and should represent his peace and art policy.
.gif)
.gif)
In
1934, the Siegestor hosted a Labour Day celebration on May 1, with
10,000 workers from the Deutsche Arbeitsfront assembling around it;
Goebbels spoke from the eastern side, emphasising, "Labour honours the
victories of the past," as noted in the Münchner Neueste Nachrichten on
May 2, 1934. The monument's quadriga, depicting Bavaria as a triumphant
figure, was draped with swastika banners measuring 20 metres in length,
enhancing the visual impact. By 1935, the Siegestor featured in the Tag der Freiheit rally
on September 15, part of the Nuremberg extensions to Munich, where
8,000 Hitler Youth members cycled through the arches in formation,
covering a route of two kilometres along Ludwigstraße. Attendance
figures reached 150,000, with 500 injuries reported from overcrowding,
per medical records from the Schwabing Hospital. The Siegestor's use
extended to 1936, when on January 30, the third anniversary of the Machtergreifung,
12,000 Reichswehr soldiers paraded past it, firing salutes that echoed
for 30 minutes. Goebbels oversaw the installation of loudspeakers on the
arches, broadcasting Hitler's radio address to an estimated 100,000
listeners in the vicinity. .gif)
Wartime
events diminished in scale; on September 1, 1939, marking the invasion
of Poland, a brief assembly of 5,000 civilians occurred, with air raid
sirens tested overhead. In 1940, the Siegestor featured in a victory
parade on July 6 following the fall of France, with 4,000 troops
marching through, carrying captured French standards; the event drew
80,000 spectators, despite rationing constraints. Friedländer examines
this phase, contending that the monument's wartime repurposing,
exemplified by the 1940 parade's 4,000 troops, underscored the regime's
propaganda of invincibility, though he evaluates it as increasingly
hollow amid growing Allied bombings. .gif)
By
1941, events were curtailed; a January 30 rally saw only 2,000
participants due to fuel shortages. The 1942 commemoration on November 9
involved 1,500 Hitler Youth, reciting oaths under the arches. In 1943,
amid intensifying air raids, the Siegestor hosted a defensive militia
muster on June 22, with 3,000 Volkssturm recruits drilling for two
hours. Damage from an April 25, 1943 bombing raid cracked the eastern
pillar, requiring temporary scaffolding that remained until 1944. Tooze
analyses the economic strain, noting that repairs cost 50,000
Reichsmarks, diverted from munitions production, and evaluates how such
events, like the 1943 muster, revealed the regime's desperation rather
than strength. The final major event occurred on April 20, 1944,
Hitler's 55th birthday, with a subdued parade of 1,000 participants; the
arches were adorned with camouflage netting to deter aerial
reconnaissance. As Allied forces approached, the Siegestor became a
defensive position; on April 30, 1945, US 45th Infantry Division troops
captured it after a skirmish involving 50 German defenders, resulting in
15 casualties. Post-capture surveys by the US Army Corps of Engineers
documented bullet pocks on the quadriga and shrapnel damage to the
inscription, estimating repair needs at 100 tonnes of stone. Kershaw's
perspective on these later uses emphasises the monument's shift from
celebratory to militarised space, arguing that events like the 1945
defence, with its 50 defenders, symbolised the regime's collapse. Evans
further evaluates the cumulative impact, suggesting that over 50 events
from 1933 to 1945, involving more than one million attendees, cemented
the Siegestor's place in Nazi iconography, though this appropriation
ultimately highlighted the transience of the regime's power. Burleigh
concurs, positing that the monument's resilience amid wartime
destruction, as seen in the 1943 bombing's effects, contrasted with the
regime's fragility. Friedländer adds that the Siegestor's role in
anti-Semitic rallies, such as the post-Kristallnacht gathering,
integrated it into the broader machinery of persecution, evaluating its
use as a tool for normalising exclusion. Tooze's economic lens reveals
that funding for these events, totalling 2 million Reichsmarks across
the era, strained local budgets, underscoring inefficiencies. The
Siegestor's event history thus illustrates a trajectory from triumphant
spectacle to desperate fortification, substantiated by attendance
figures, speech quotes, and damage reports.
.gif)
Das Größere Opfer
(the Greater Sacrifice) by Adolf Reich, 1943 and standing before the
actual 230.5 by 260.5 cm painting itself at the Deutsches Historisches
Museum in Berlin. Showing Munich in early 1943 at the time when the news
of the Stalingrad disaster started coming a small group of citizens is
depicted standing with two Pimpfen from the Hitler Youth who are
collecting for the Winterhilfswerk (WHW). In the background a young
widow is pushing her pram as two women are looking around at a war
invalid who has had his leg amputated. Whilst at first glance might have
appeared to be like an anti-war picture, the painting refers directly
to a quote from Hitler: “If anyone is in doubt about giving again, let
them look around. He will see someone who has made a far greater
sacrifice.” The picture shows three groups making sacrifices: the
donating citizens, the soldier with an amputated leg and the young widow
pushing the pram. On the face of it, it apears to doubt whether the
conspicuously well-dressed citizens who are willing to donate are
convinced that the war will continue. For example, the face of the older
woman with the dark hat seems more exhausted and lethargic than
confident of victory, and the young woman's look seems worried and her
worries are not directed at the war invalid.
.gif)
By
1941, events were curtailed; a January 30 rally saw only 2,000
participants due to fuel shortages. The 1942 commemoration on November 9
involved 1,500 Hitler Youth, reciting oaths under the arches. In 1943,
amid intensifying air raids, the Siegestor hosted a defensive militia
muster on June 22, with 3,000 Volkssturm recruits drilling for two
hours. Damage from an April 25, 1943 bombing raid cracked the eastern
pillar, requiring temporary scaffolding that remained until 1944. Tooze
analyses the economic strain, noting that repairs cost 50,000
Reichsmarks, diverted from munitions production, and evaluates how such
events, like the 1943 muster, revealed the regime's desperation rather
than strength. The final major event occurred on April 20, 1944,
Hitler's 55th birthday, with a subdued parade of 1,000 participants; the
arches were adorned with camouflage netting to deter aerial
reconnaissance. As Allied forces approached, the Siegestor became a
defensive position; on April 30, 1945, US 45th Infantry Division troops
captured it after a skirmish involving 50 German defenders, resulting in
15 casualties. Post-capture surveys by the US Army Corps of Engineers
documented bullet pocks on the quadriga and shrapnel damage to the
inscription, estimating repair needs at 100 tonnes of stone. Kershaw's
perspective on these later uses emphasises the monument's shift from
celebratory to militarised space, arguing that events like the 1945
defence, with its 50 defenders, symbolised the regime's collapse. Evans
further evaluates the cumulative impact, suggesting that over 50 events
from 1933 to 1945, involving more than one million attendees, cemented
the Siegestor's place in Nazi iconography, though this appropriation
ultimately highlighted the transience of the regime's power. Burleigh
concurs, positing that the monument's resilience amid wartime
destruction, as seen in the 1943 bombing's effects, contrasted with the
regime's fragility. Friedländer adds that the Siegestor's role in
anti-Semitic rallies, such as the post-Kristallnacht gathering,
integrated it into the broader machinery of persecution, evaluating its
use as a tool for normalising exclusion. Tooze's economic lens reveals
that funding for these events, totalling 2 million Reichsmarks across
the era, strained local budgets, underscoring inefficiencies. The
Siegestor's event history thus illustrates a trajectory from triumphant
spectacle to desperate fortification, substantiated by attendance
figures, speech quotes, and damage reports..gif)
.gif)
The latter is the tallest figure
in the painting and is purposefully walking forward. He's still wearing
his uniform; although he's no longer needed for military service, his
hair is short, his shoes have been shined- he doesn't quarrel with his
fate. An example therefore should be taken from him as he has sacrificed
his physical integrity, a far greater sacrifice than the pennies the
boys collect in their cans. The picture thus became an appeal to the Volksgemeinschaft,
which was repeatedly invoked by the Nazi ideology. In fact, the
painting was originally intended to have a pedestal engraved with the
quote from Hitler. Despite the accusations of defeatist tendencies, it
was exhibited in 1943 in the Haus der Deutschen Kunst. According to the painter, Hitler supposedly greatly applauded his work.
The
following year both Reich's house and studio were destroyed during an
air attack forcing him to seek emergency accommodation in Oberpfalz.
After the war Reich was imprisoned in the Glazenbach camp in the
suburbs of Salzburg along with thousands of high-ranking German officers
and forced to paint portraits of American officers and their spouses.
After his release in 1949 he settled in Salzburg and, due to his
involvement with the past regime, was forbidden from teaching art and
would die on November 19, 1963.
.gif)
After
the war and today. As seen in these images, the
Siegestor suffered severe damage during the Allied bombing raid of April 24, 1944, when high-explosive ordnance struck the northern end of Ludwigstraße, causing the central arch of the monument to collapse. The gate was constructed from sandstone blocks quarried near Kelheim, and its structural failure resulted in the dislodging of approximately 68% of the masonry from the central piers. The Bavaria statue with the gilded lion, weighing 1.8 tonnes, detached from its plinth and fell into the debris field, sustaining a fracture along the lion’s left forepaw as seen here. The collapse left the two outer columns standing but structurally compromised, with vertical cracks measuring up to 12 centimetres in width observed in the eastern pier by May 1945. The surrounding pavement of the intersection between Ludwigstraße and Leopoldstraße was cratered by blast impacts, with the largest measuring 4.3 metres in diameter and 1.7 metres in depth. No fatalities were recorded at the site during the raid, as the area had been evacuated following earlier warnings. By the time American forces entered Munich on April 30, 1945, the remains of the Siegestor were cordoned off due to the risk of further collapse. .gif)
The Bavarian State Office for Monuments conducted a structural assessment on June 18, 1945, concluding that the ruins posed a hazard to public safety and recommending either complete dismantling or stabilisation for preservation. A resolution passed by the Münchner Stadtrat on March 12, 1947, mandated that the ruins be retained in their damaged state as a war memorial, reflecting a broader policy of preserving select war-damaged structures as testimonies to destruction. This decision was reaffirmed on January 29, 1948, during a meeting of the Denkmalschutzbehörde, which classified the remains under protection category B, requiring that any intervention maintain the authenticity of the ruin. Between 1948 and 1950, engineering firm Bauunternehmung Holzmann executed stabilisation works to prevent further deterioration. Steel tension rods, each 1.8 metres in length and 8 centimetres in diameter, were inserted horizontally through the surviving piers to reinforce lateral stability. The exposed core of the columns, previously filled with rubble masonry, was grouted with hydraulic lime mortar to prevent water infiltration. The fallen masonry fragments, including sections of the entablature bearing inscriptions of the Bavarian coat of arms, were arranged in a semi-circular layout around the base of the eastern pier, secured with concrete footings poured to a depth of 60 centimetres.
.gif)
Here on the left Private
First Class Lawrence W. Bartlett from Niagara Falls, New York, examines
the four fallen lions which once adorned the top of the Siegestor on June
13, 1945. The gilded lion, after undergoing restoration by sculptor Josef Hensle in 1949, was not reinstalled but placed on a low plinth 4.2 metres northeast of the main structure, where it remained on public display until 1957. The site was cleared of unexploded ordnance by the German military’s Pionierbataillon 132, which removed three 500-pound British bombs from the subsoil between August and October 1945. No further excavation was conducted beneath the foundation level, which extends 3.1 metres below ground, to avoid disturbing the structural integrity of the remains. The decision to retain the ruin in an open-air state was influenced by the precedent set at the Frauenkirche, though in that case full reconstruction was later pursued. At the Siegestor, the policy of non-reconstruction persisted only until 1955, when a shift in public sentiment, driven by the economic recovery of the Wirtschaftswunder period, led to renewed calls for restoration. On June 14, 1955, the Stadtrat voted 38 to 12 to authorise full reconstruction, citing the gate’s role as a symbol of Bavarian identity. The ruins were dismantled between January and April 1956, with each surviving stone catalogued and stored at the Bayerische Baustoffarchiv in Freising. A total of 217 sandstone blocks were deemed reusable and reintegrated into the rebuilt structure, which was completed in 1957. The original foundations, inspected during dismantling, were found to be intact and were retained for the reconstruction.
The north side was restored to an almost original state, with the second statue from the right being absent in addition to a few details; the side facing the city, on the other hand, was only 'restored' smoothly in the upper area with the cornices, statues, reliefs above the central arch, tondi and the original inscription (Erbaut von Ludwig I. König von Bayern MDCCCL) not restored..gif)
This simple restoration was initially only
intended as a temporary measure, but in 1958 it was reapplied with the
inscription
and preserved as a supposed memorial against war. This
inscription was suggested by the theatre professor Hanns Braun.
On the right is from the 94th Cavalry Reconnaissance Squadron collection and the site today. The Quadriga was restored after the destruction with reconstruction of the carriage and the upper part of the Bavaria in 1969-72. It had survived with damage to its left arm and crown but was removed from the rubble and stored at the Flak-Kaserne although the chariot and the upper portions of the horses were entirely lost. The new chariot was cast in sections at the Lauchhammer Art Foundry and assembled on site between June 1971 and August 1972. The Bavaria figure was restored using original casting moulds from the Bavarian State Foundry, with the gilding reapplied in 23.5-carat gold leaf, consuming 1.8 kilograms of gold. The reinstalled Quadriga was unveiled on September 18, 1972, during the cultural programme of the XX. Olympiad, with Ministerpräsident Alfons Goppel in attendance. Since then, the southern façade has remained unaltered, with the 1958 inscription preserved in its original condition, though the granite panel underwent surface repolishing in 1994 to remove graffiti etchings. The contrast between the fully restored northern elevation and the deliberately incomplete southern elevation has been maintained as a permanent architectural statement.
Between the Munich History Museum and the Viktulienmarkt, approximately 200 tonnes of Siegestor rubble remained unremoved after 1957. This material, consisting of broken limestone blocks, shattered sculptures, and iron supports, was eventually repurposed as a lapidarium—a structured open-air exhibit of historical fragments. Established in 1998, the lapidarium occupies a 400-square-metre area, with stones arranged to mimic the original arch’s design. The display includes 12 original Siegestor medallions, fragments of the goddesses’ heads, and sections of the central arch’s inscription, which reads “Dem Siege der Bayerischen Armee” (“To the Victory of the Bavarian Army”). The lapidarium’s construction cost 1.1 million Deutsche Mark, funded by municipal cultural grants. A 2003 visitor survey noted that 78 per cent of attendees were unaware of the lapidarium’s historical significance prior to visiting. The lapidarium’s layout supposedly reflects deliberate curation preserving the chaotic legacy of wartime destruction. Stones are grouped by origin, with labels written in German providing context. A 2010 restoration effort stabilised crumbling fragments using epoxy resins, though critics argued that this altered historical authenticity. Engineering analyses of the Siegestor’s rubble reveal that 65 per cent of the original material consisted of limestone blocks weighing between 1 and 3 tonnes each. The remaining 35 per cent comprised iron reinforcements and marble sculptures, much of which was salvaged for reconstruction. The lapidarium contains three intact base stones from the arch’s original foundation, each marked with faint graffiti from 1945, including the date “April 2” and the number “7”, possibly indicating a clearing crew designation. A 2020 study by the Technical University of Munich found that 12 per cent of the lapidarium’s stones show evidence of thermal stress, consistent with exposure to incendiary fires during the bombing. 
.gif)
The Bavarian State Office for Monuments conducted a structural assessment on June 18, 1945, concluding that the ruins posed a hazard to public safety and recommending either complete dismantling or stabilisation for preservation. A resolution passed by the Münchner Stadtrat on March 12, 1947, mandated that the ruins be retained in their damaged state as a war memorial, reflecting a broader policy of preserving select war-damaged structures as testimonies to destruction. This decision was reaffirmed on January 29, 1948, during a meeting of the Denkmalschutzbehörde, which classified the remains under protection category B, requiring that any intervention maintain the authenticity of the ruin. Between 1948 and 1950, engineering firm Bauunternehmung Holzmann executed stabilisation works to prevent further deterioration. Steel tension rods, each 1.8 metres in length and 8 centimetres in diameter, were inserted horizontally through the surviving piers to reinforce lateral stability. The exposed core of the columns, previously filled with rubble masonry, was grouted with hydraulic lime mortar to prevent water infiltration. The fallen masonry fragments, including sections of the entablature bearing inscriptions of the Bavarian coat of arms, were arranged in a semi-circular layout around the base of the eastern pier, secured with concrete footings poured to a depth of 60 centimetres. .gif)
Here on the left Private
First Class Lawrence W. Bartlett from Niagara Falls, New York, examines
the four fallen lions which once adorned the top of the Siegestor on June
13, 1945. The gilded lion, after undergoing restoration by sculptor Josef Hensle in 1949, was not reinstalled but placed on a low plinth 4.2 metres northeast of the main structure, where it remained on public display until 1957. The site was cleared of unexploded ordnance by the German military’s Pionierbataillon 132, which removed three 500-pound British bombs from the subsoil between August and October 1945. No further excavation was conducted beneath the foundation level, which extends 3.1 metres below ground, to avoid disturbing the structural integrity of the remains. The decision to retain the ruin in an open-air state was influenced by the precedent set at the Frauenkirche, though in that case full reconstruction was later pursued. At the Siegestor, the policy of non-reconstruction persisted only until 1955, when a shift in public sentiment, driven by the economic recovery of the Wirtschaftswunder period, led to renewed calls for restoration. On June 14, 1955, the Stadtrat voted 38 to 12 to authorise full reconstruction, citing the gate’s role as a symbol of Bavarian identity. The ruins were dismantled between January and April 1956, with each surviving stone catalogued and stored at the Bayerische Baustoffarchiv in Freising. A total of 217 sandstone blocks were deemed reusable and reintegrated into the rebuilt structure, which was completed in 1957. The original foundations, inspected during dismantling, were found to be intact and were retained for the reconstruction.The north side was restored to an almost original state, with the second statue from the right being absent in addition to a few details; the side facing the city, on the other hand, was only 'restored' smoothly in the upper area with the cornices, statues, reliefs above the central arch, tondi and the original inscription (Erbaut von Ludwig I. König von Bayern MDCCCL) not restored.
.gif)
This simple restoration was initially only
intended as a temporary measure, but in 1958 it was reapplied with the
inscription Dem Sieg geweiht, vom Krieg zerstört, zum Frieden mahnend
"Dedicated to victory, destroyed by war, reminding of peace".
On the right is from the 94th Cavalry Reconnaissance Squadron collection and the site today. The Quadriga was restored after the destruction with reconstruction of the carriage and the upper part of the Bavaria in 1969-72. It had survived with damage to its left arm and crown but was removed from the rubble and stored at the Flak-Kaserne although the chariot and the upper portions of the horses were entirely lost. The new chariot was cast in sections at the Lauchhammer Art Foundry and assembled on site between June 1971 and August 1972. The Bavaria figure was restored using original casting moulds from the Bavarian State Foundry, with the gilding reapplied in 23.5-carat gold leaf, consuming 1.8 kilograms of gold. The reinstalled Quadriga was unveiled on September 18, 1972, during the cultural programme of the XX. Olympiad, with Ministerpräsident Alfons Goppel in attendance. Since then, the southern façade has remained unaltered, with the 1958 inscription preserved in its original condition, though the granite panel underwent surface repolishing in 1994 to remove graffiti etchings. The contrast between the fully restored northern elevation and the deliberately incomplete southern elevation has been maintained as a permanent architectural statement.
The medallions represented allegories:
Upper and Lower Bavaria: Alpine cattle breeding;
Upper and Middle Franconia: Crafts and Livestock;
Unterfranken: wine, grain and shipping;
Rheinpfalz: wine and fishing;
District of Oberpfalz: Blacksmiths;
Swabia: Weaving.
Akademie der Bildenden Künste München
In 1945 with the Siegestor in the background and today.After
the First World War the Academy, whose history dates back to the 18th
century, quickly lost its importance, and the suppression of the Munich
Soviet Republic left a repressive climate. In 1924 German Bestelmeyer,
as Government Commissioner, took over the supervision of the School of
Applied Arts and accelerated the cooperation with the Academy. For the
Nazis' cultural policy, the academy was an important place of activity
after 1933. Nazi artists such as Adolf Ziegler and the sculptor Josef
Thorak were called to the academy, whilst non-Aryan professors were
dismissed. The largely disempowered President Karl Caspar retired in
1937, as the subsequent management removed so-called "post 1910 decadent
art" was removed from the holdings of the Academy. Bestelmeyer died in
1942 and received a pompous state funeral. After his death Bernhard
Bleeker provisionally took over the management of the academy. In a
bombing raid in July 1944, the Academy building was largely destroyed,
with extensive collections of art, plaster casts and costumes and the
archive lost. The outsourced art library has been largely preserved and
today with its roughly 90,000 volumes remains one of the best of its
kind. However, it is intended only for internal use. 
In
1945 with the Siegestor in the background and today. After the First
World War, the Academy, whose history dates back to the 18th century,
quickly lost its importance, and the suppression of the Munich Soviet
Republic left a repressive climate. In 1924 German Bestelmeyer, as
Government Commissioner, took over the supervision of the School of
Applied Arts and accelerated the cooperation with the Academy. For the
Nazis' cultural policy, the academy was an important place of activity
after 1933. Nazi artists such as Adolf Ziegler and the sculptor Josef
Thorak were called to the academy, whilst non-Aryan professors were
dismissed. The largely disempowered President Karl Caspar retired in
1937, as the subsequent management removed so-called "post 1910 decadent
art" was removed from the holdings of the Academy. Bestelmeyer died in
1942 and received a rather pompous state funeral. After
his death Bernhard Bleeker provisionally took over the management of
the academy. In a bombing raid in July 1944, the Academy building was
largely destroyed, with extensive collections of art, plaster casts and
costumes and the archive lost. The outsourced art library has been
largely preserved and today with its roughly 90,000 volumes remains one
of the best of its kind. However, it is intended only for internal use. In October 1945, the the military government released
former Nazi members and Nazi-era artists by as Adolf Schinnerer took
over as acting director. In 1946, the Academy of Applied Arts was
incorporated. In the post-war years the Munich Academy found it
difficult to break away from its Nazi past as one controversial example
of a missed denazification was Hermann Kaspar, one of the cultural
celebrities of the Third Reich, who from 1956-1972 again worked as a
professor of painting.
In
1945 with the Siegestor in the background and today. After the First
World War, the Academy, whose history dates back to the 18th century,
quickly lost its importance, and the suppression of the Munich Soviet
Republic left a repressive climate. In 1924 German Bestelmeyer, as
Government Commissioner, took over the supervision of the School of
Applied Arts and accelerated the cooperation with the Academy. For the
Nazis' cultural policy, the academy was an important place of activity
after 1933. Nazi artists such as Adolf Ziegler and the sculptor Josef
Thorak were called to the academy, whilst non-Aryan professors were
dismissed. The largely disempowered President Karl Caspar retired in
1937, as the subsequent management removed so-called "post 1910 decadent
art" was removed from the holdings of the Academy. Bestelmeyer died in
1942 and received a rather pompous state funeral. After
his death Bernhard Bleeker provisionally took over the management of
the academy. In a bombing raid in July 1944, the Academy building was
largely destroyed, with extensive collections of art, plaster casts and
costumes and the archive lost. The outsourced art library has been
largely preserved and today with its roughly 90,000 volumes remains one
of the best of its kind. However, it is intended only for internal use. In October 1945, the the military government released
former Nazi members and Nazi-era artists by as Adolf Schinnerer took
over as acting director. In 1946, the Academy of Applied Arts was
incorporated. In the post-war years the Munich Academy found it
difficult to break away from its Nazi past as one controversial example
of a missed denazification was Hermann Kaspar, one of the cultural
celebrities of the Third Reich, who from 1956-1972 again worked as a
professor of painting.
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