Beer Hall Putsch Sites in Munich: From Bürgerbräukeller to Marienplatz- Then and Now

Site of the Bürgerbräukeller

The Bürgerbräukeller was one of the Munich's large beer halls, located on Rosenheimer Street. Today, the Hilton Munich City Hotel is on the site. From 1920 to 1923 it was one of the Nazis' preferred gathering places but its notoriety stemps from the and it was there, on the evening of November 8, 1923, that Hitler launched the so-called Beer Hall Putsch, accompanied by armed SA and Stosstrupp men including Göring, Hess, Alfred Rosenberg, and Ulrich Graf. They had burst into the hall during a political meeting addressed by Gustav Ritter von Kahr, the Generalstaatskommissar of Bavaria, Generalstaaatskommissar Otto von Lossow, commander of the Reichswehr in Bavaria, and Hans Ritter von Seisser, head of the Bavarian Landespolizei, fired a pistol shot into the ceiling, declared the national revolution begun, and through a combination of threats, bluff, and the brief complicity of Erich Ludendorff, who arrived later that evening, attempted to coerce the three Bavarian officials into supporting a march on Berlin modelled loosely on Mussolini's March on Rome thirteen months earlier.

Hitler decided to mobilise his forces for the night of 10–11 November 1923 with the aim of marching on the government in Munich and then on to Berlin. When Commissioner Kahr called a meeting in the Bürgerbräukeller for 8 November, Hitler and his entourage feared they would be upstaged. While Kahr was in the middle of a rambling speech denouncing Marxism, Hitler and a handful of followers burst in.

Jumping onto the podium, he fired a shot at the ceiling and announced that the building was surrounded by 600 heavily armed men. He said the national revolution was under way. In due course Field Marshal Ludendorff, a German hero from the First World War and the darling of the nation’s radical right, turned up wearing full dress uniform in order to lend support to Hitler.
This was the logical culmination of Hitler’s beer hall politics. It was also the action of a man who believed passionately in the German nation and wanted to hold it together at all costs. It was a step his audiences expected him to take.

Housden (54-55) Hitler- Study of a Revolutionary?

On the right is the reenactment of the event in the awful 2003 miniseries Hitler: The Rise of Evil. It follows the broad historical outline but prioritises dramatic intensity over precise accuracy. Whilst this sequence captures the core facts, in reality the interruption occurred around 20.30, Hitler’s speech was shorter and more chaotic, and the atmosphere involved more negotiation and confusion among the Bavarian leaders before they were temporarily detained. The miniseries portrays Hitler as visibly unhinged and foaming with rage from the start, when contempary accounts describe him as intense but still possessing a degree of calculated charisma that allowed him to momentarily dominate the room. The series's aim is to portray Hitler throughout as a caricature of openly crazy to emphasise his evil nature for American audiences. The scene also depicts Kahr, Lossow, and Seisser as largely passive or immediately cowed, whilst in reality there had been much more back-and-forth bargaining before the putsch began to unravel. Visually the hall is recreated with reasonable attention to period detail which is why I show it in class such as the crowded tables, the stage, and the overall atmosphere, but some elements like the positioning of armed guards- shown here as standing in rigid lines rather than being more scattered and focused on preventing escape- and the speed of the takeover are dramatised for visual impact. The audience is shown cowering and silent almost instantly after the first shot, whilst there had been more murmuring, confusion, and gradual submission over a longer period. Hitler here shouts "[t]he national revolution has begun" before listing the new government members, a line not recorded in the historical sources for that exact moment, before the audience ridiculously and spontaneously decide to cheer.
The putsch collapsed the following morning, November 9, 1923, when a column of approximately 2,000 putschists marching from the Burgerbraukeller through the city centre toward the Bavarian Kriegsministerium (War Ministry) was stopped by Landespolizei gunfire at the Feldherrnhalle on Odeonsplatz, a brief exchange lasting under a minute in which sixteen putschists and four policemen were killed. After Hitler seized power in 1933, he commemorated each anniversary of the failed rebellion by giving a speech in the Bürgerbräukeller to the surviving veterans of the Putsch.

Hitler speaking at the Bürgerbräukeller on November 9, 1938- night of Reichskristallnacht. The regime transformed the Burgerbraukeller from a commercial beer hall into a sacred site of the Bewegung, the location where the party's founding act of revolutionary violence had been initiated and from which the Blutzeugen, the sixteen dead of November 9, had set out on their final march. The annual November 8 commemoration at the Burgerbraukeller became one of the most ritually elaborated events in the Nazi ceremonial calendar, second only to the September Reichsparteitag in Nuremberg in its choreographic complexity and ideological significance. Each year on the evening of November 8, the Alte Kampfer, those party members who had participated in the original putsch or who held membership numbers from the movement's earliest years, gathered in the same hall where the 1923 putsch had been launched, seated at tables arranged to replicate as closely as possible the configuration of that evening, and Hitler delivered a speech, typically one of his longest and most discursive of the year, revisiting the movement's origins, commemorating the dead, and reaffirming the ideological commitments of 1923 in the context of the regime's current situation. The following morning, November 9, the 1923 march was re-enacted: a column of Alte Kampfer, led by the Blutfahne, the swastika banner allegedly stained with the blood of the fallen and subsequently used to consecrate new party standards by touch, processed from the Burgerbraukeller through the streets of Munich along the original route to the Feldherrnhalle, where a ceremony of commemoration was held, before the march continued to the Konigsplatz where the sarcophagi of the sixteen dead lay in the Ehrentempel.

What remained of the building after the Elser assassination attempt of November 8, 1939 and the site today. In 1939, an anti-Nazi workman, Johann Georg Elser, a 36 year-old Swabian cabinet-maker from Konigsbronn in Württemberg, concealed a time bomb in the Bürgerbräukeller, set to go off during Hitler's speech on November 8. The bomb exploded, killing seven people and injuring sixty-three, but Hitler escaped unharmed; he had cut his speech short and left about half an hour early. Elser was arrested, imprisoned for 5 ½ years and executed shortly before the end of the war. The building suffered severe structural damage from Elser's bomb and was never rebuilt. In subsequent years, Hitler held his annual Pustch commemoration gatherings at the Löwenbräukeller. Few now accept Bullock's original claims in Hitler: A Study in Tyranny (567-8) of collusion which he himself disavowed in his later book Hitler and Stalin: Parallel Lives, that

Elser, who had been given the photograph of the Bürgerbraukeller and released a quarter of a mile from the Swiss border, was arrested as soon as he tried to cross it. The German Press seized on his Communist connexions, and a lurid picture was drawn of a conspiracy in which Otto Strasser as well as the British Secret Service figured prominently. At one time a big trial was to have been staged, with the two kidnapped British agents in the dock, and Elser as the chief witness carefully coached to prove that the assassination had been organised by the British. The fact that the trial was never held suggests that, in some way, the Gestapo gambit had failed. The timing had been a little too perfect, and the German people remained stolidly sceptical of their Fuehrer's providential escape.

The Burgerbraukeller itself survived the war with bomb damage sustained during Allied air raids. Here on the left it's shown with American occupation forces arriving and how the site appears today. The 42nd Infantry Division found the building filthy and filled with abandoned Nazi Party records. The structure had survived the war with only minor damage from aerial bombing. In late 1945 the Bürgerbräukeller was converted into an American Red Cross Club for use by US servicemen, providing recreation facilities including a canteen, reading rooms, and entertainment spaces. In September 1947 it was redesignated as a Special Services club under direct US military administration. An average of 1,700 American servicemen visited the club each day. The Bürgerbräukeller formed one of nine service clubs operating in the Munich Military Post area having retained its large hall capacity and cellar space, which made it suitable for troop welfare activities during the occupation period. The Americans didn't restore the building to its pre-war function as a public beer hall but instead  repurposed the site into a facility for rest and recreation of occupation forces. The club operated continuously from late 1945 until the gradual withdrawal of US forces from the Munich area, finally departing the club facilities in 1957. After the American withdrawal the building was transferred to the Löwenbräu brewery company. Partial rebuilding and renovation work took place before the Bürgerbräukeller was reopened as a commercial bierkeller at Christmas 1958. It continued to function as a beer hall in the post-war period, its Nazi associations gradually submerged beneath commercial use. The building was demolished in 1979 to make way for the Gasteig cultural centre, a decision that provoked limited controversy at the time but that has since been criticised by historians and memorial advocates who argued that the site of Elser's assassination attempt, one of the most significant acts of individual resistance against Hitler, deserved preservation or at minimum substantial memorialisation rather than erasure. To show how much the site has been changed, consider my GIF on the left showing the same view towards the Rosenheimer underground entrance that formerly looked directly towards the beer garden. The city authorities approved the demolition as part of a modernisation effort to create a major cultural and educational complex on the site. The Gasteig project included a large concert hall, library, adult education centre, and associated infrastructure which began after the clearance of the site, with the complex opening in stages from 1985 onward. The new development also incorporated the Munich City Hilton Hotel and the headquarters of GEMA, the German society for musical performing and mechanical reproduction rights which seems to have the right to claim ownership of all music in the country. Today the former location of the Bürgerbräukeller lies beneath parts of the Gasteig cultural centre, with the main entrance area now occupied by modern buildings and open spaces. The demolition provoked only limited controversy at the time given the focus in the late 1970s was more on practical urban planning issues such as traffic, cultural infrastructure needs, and economic benefits than on historical associations, and so there wasn't any widespread campaign to preserve the structure as a memorial or protected historical site. A small plaque now marks the approximate spot of Elser’s 1939 bomb attempt on the pavement near the Gasteig entrance, but it is modest and usually gets overlooked. It reads: "An dieser Stelle, im ehemaligen Bürgerbräukeller, versuchte der Schreiner Johann Georg Elser am 8. November 1939 ein Attentat auf Adolf Hitler. Er wollte damit dem Terror-Regime der Nationalsozialisten ein Ende setzen. Das Vorhaben scheiterte. Johann Georg Elser wurde nach 5 1/2 Jahren Haft am 9. April 1945 im Konzentrationslager Dachau ermordet." (Here, in the former Bürgerbräukeller, the carpenter Johann Georg Elser made an assassination attempt on Adolf Hitler 8 November 1939. He wanted to set thereby an end to the terror regime of the National Socialists. The project failed. Johann Georg Elser was murdered after 5 1/2 years detention on April 9, 1945 in Dachau).

The march turning along Rosenheimerstrasse towards Ludwigsbrücke; behind the last building on the left side was the Bürgerbräukeller. The 'cauldron' as it appears today can be seen in the background photo of the 1933 march in the centre as it reaches the bridge.

The putschists displayed ominously aggressive tactics early in the march when they encountered a small force of state police stationed at Ludwigsbrücke on the Isar. Under orders to prevent the column from crossing the bridge, the police ordered the marchers to turn back. The policemen, however, were heavily outnumbered and understandably frightened. The putschists pressed their advantage with a charge directly into the police ranks. No one was shot, but the rebels jabbed at the police with bayonets and beat them with rifle butts. The police line collapsed as officers scampered for safety. Those who did not get away were escorted to the Bürgerbräu, where they were spit upon and beaten by the contingent guarding the building. Later, as they built up a convenient mythology about the putsch, the Nazis claimed that they had “fraternised” with the police at Ludwigsbrücke. In reality, they had shown their true colours, the true extent of their respect for “law and order.”

Clay Large (185-186) Where Ghosts Walked

From the same location  looking towards the city centre from the Gasteig. The bridge and area around it underwent extensive Nazi redesign and reconstruction between 1934 and 1939. The original neo-Gothic bridge was demolished in sections from October 1934. The Nazi city administration, under Oberbürgermeister Karl Fiehler and Stadtbaurat Hermann Giesler, replaced it with a new reinforced-concrete structure clad entirely in light-coloured Muschelkalk limestone. The new bridge opened to traffic on September 15, 1939. The most visible Nazi alterations were the four monumental pylons erected at each corner of the bridge. Each pylon stood 12 metres high and was crowned by a 2.8-metre-high bronze eagle clutching a swastika wreath. The eagles were cast in 1937 by the Munich firm Ferdinand von Miller and weighed 1,200 kilogrammes each. On the inner faces of the pylons, large reliefs designed by Richard Knecht depicted stylised Germanic warriors bearing shields with the Munich city coat of arms and the Nazi Party emblem. The bridge deck was widened from 19 metres to 28 metres, and the parapets received continuous friezes of oak-leaf garlands interspersed with swastikas every six metres. The original 1851 bronze statues of King Ludwig I and the allegorical figures of Bavaria and Germania were removed in November 1935 and stored in the Hofgarten depot and never returned. In their place, on the western approach, two 4.5-metre-high stone lions designed by Bernhard Bleeker were installed in September 1938; each lion held a shield bearing the Munich city arms flanked by swastikas. All four bronze eagles and the swastika reliefs were removed by American troops on May 8, 1945 whilst the oak-leaf friezes on the parapets were chiselled off between June 1945 and March 1946. The limestone cladding and the widened deck remain in place today; the bridge has been structurally unchanged since 1939. The only surviving Nazi-era decorative element is the pair of Bleeker lions on the western side, which lost their swastika shields in 1945 but still stand at the entrance to the Lehel. The original 1851 statues of Ludwig I and the allegorical figures were reinstalled on the rebuilt parapets in 1952, though in slightly different positions from their pre-1934 locations.

Connecting the Deutschen Museum and Kongreßsaal to the rest of the city on the other side of the Isar is the Ludwigsbrücke, over which the annual November 9 march would pass.

It's one of the most important crossings of the Isar in Munich, directing traffic from the districts of Au, Haidhausen, Ramersdorf and Bogenhausen, across the Isar to Isartorplatz. The Ludwigsbrücke itself stands at a location of great historical significance as this is where the original Isarbrücke stood, which Henry the Lion used to divert the salt trade from the Isar bridge near Oberföhring to his territory in 1158 and thus supplanting Freising as the main capital. After the Föhringer bridge was destroyed by Henry, this bridge remained for a long time the only navigable Isar bridge between Bad Tölz and Freising. By 1892, the outer bridge was given four wider concrete arches with Carl Hocheder responsible for the four pylons erected at the outer ends of the two bridges seen here, which were intended to visually unite the structures.

Allegorical figures on the pylons represented fishing, rafting, art and industry. The bridge as we see it today was completed by 1935 with the aim of uniting the external appearance of the bridge with the architecture of the extensions of the Deutsches Museum. Because the participants in the Hitler putsch had successfully marched across the bridge, it was given a sacrosanct position in the Third Reich. Hitler himself took care of its transformation and intervened massively in the urban building policy around it as seen most clearly in the Congress Hall. The pylons are the only intact structure remaining of the original Ludwigsbrücke from before the war although one was destroyed as seen in my comparison GIF on the right. On November 3 1935, Hitler delivered a speech at the official opening of the rebuilt bridge. It was his hope, he stated,

that the many sad events which this bridge had been made to suffer in the past would not be repeated in future and that the train twelve years before would hopefully be the last dismal incident on this bridge.

Looking the other way towards the Congress Hall. According to William Shirer in Rise And Fall Of The Third Reich (67),

it was here on the Ludwig Bridge, which leads over the River Isar toward the centre of the city, stood a detachment of armed police barring the route. Goering sprang forward and, addressing the police commander, threatened to shoot a number of hostages he said he had in the rear of his column if the police fired on his men. During the night Hess and others had rounded up a number of hostages, including two cabinet members, for just such a contingency. Whether Goering was bluffing or not, the police commander apparently believed he was not and let the column file over the bridge unmolested.

Hitler leading the procession over the Ludwigsbrücke with the Müllersche Volksbad behind.

According to William Shirer in Rise And Fall Of The Third Reich (67),

it was here on the Ludwig Bridge, which leads over the River Isar toward the centre of the city, stood a detachment of armed police barring the route. Goering sprang forward and, addressing the police commander, threatened to shoot a number of hostages he said he had in the rear of his column if the police fired on his men. During the night Hess and others had rounded up a number of hostages, including two cabinet members, for just such a contingency. Whether Goering was bluffing or not, the police commander apparently believed he was not and let the column file over the bridge unmolested.

According to Hitler himself at his trial in 1924,

On Ludendorff's right side Dr. Weber marched, on his left, I and [Max von] Scheubner-Richter and the other gentlemen. We were permitted to pass by the cordon of troops blocking the Ludwig Bridge. They were deeply moved; among them were men who wept bitter tears. People who had attached themselves to the columns yelled from the rear that the men should be knocked down. We yelled that there was no reason to harm these people. We marched on to the Marienplatz. The rifles were not loaded. The enthusiasm was indescribable. I had to tell myself: The people are behind us, they no longer can be consoled by ridiculous resolutions. The Volk want a reckoning with the November criminals, as far as it still has a sense of honour and human dignity and not for slavery. In front of the Royal Residence a weak police cordon let us pass through. Then there was a short hesitation in front, and a shot was fired. I had the impression that it was no pistol shot but a rifle or carbine bullet. Shortly afterwards a volley was fired. I had the feeling that a bullet struck in my left side. Scheubner-Richter fell, I with him. At this occasion my arm was dislocated and I suffered another injury while falling. I only was down for a few seconds and tried at once to get up.

Stackelberg & Winkle (86) The Nazi Germany Sourcebook: An Anthology of Texts

The Nazi-eagle topped Congress Hall as seen during a Nazi commemorative march on the anniversary of the Beer Hall Putsch and below as it appeared almost from the same spot immediately after the Americans took the city from a photograph taken by men of the 14th Armoured Division. It was here where Gregor Strasser’s SA unit held the bridge as Hitler continued on towards the town centre until the news of the fiasco reached them, informing them that Ludendorff was dead and Hitler wounded and captured. Strasser displayed some of the experience he had gained in the war. Not wishing to become a martyr of a failed cause, he ordered his men into a tactical retreat as his column marched into the direction of the Eastern railway station, when, passing a stretch of woodland, they met a Munich SA detachment smashing their rifles against the trees. Strasser immediately ordered them to stop, telling them the guns would find their use another day. When the station came into sight, they closed ranks, seized a train, and vanished.

Here, for the first time, the Putschists were coming into contact with a large government force with a clear mission that it was in a position to execute. However, having gained false confidence at the Ludwigsbrücke, they had no intention of halting for anyone. Dr. Weber, the leader of Oberland, said flatly at the Hitler Trial:
Naturally we intended to march through the city and after the encounter at the Ludwigsbrücke we did not even consider (the possibility) of being halted by the Landespolizei. There the Landespolizei had given way after the merest pretence of resistance in that they stepped aside. We assumed that this would happen elsewhere. Aside from the distortion of what had happened at the bridge, Weber's statement indicates clearly the readiness of the Putschists to defy the authorities and their continued confidence that this could be done with impunity.

Harold J. Gordon (359-360) Hitler and the Beer Hall Putsch

In his novel The Human Predicament (217-218), Richard Hughes describes how

Peering over the heads in front, big Fritz could see there was some sort of scuffle going on down at the Ludwig Bridge. It was apparently the police-cordon there making trouble - the wooden-heads! But then a mixed bag of fifty or more leading Munich Jews padded past the waiting column and on down to the bridge at the double. A wave of laughter followed them; for whatever their past dignities (and many were elderly, prominent citizens), today they were all dressed only in underwear and socks: they'd been locked up all night in a back room of the Bürgerbräu like that. Captain Goering himself, with his elfin humour, must be taking the situation in hand. Indeed Goering must have threatened to drop all these hostages in the river to drown if the police didn't show more sense; for almost at once the column began to move forward again, and at last the river was crossed.

The Bismarckdenkmal of Fritz Behn was formerly in front of the Deutschen Museum during the Nazi era but has since been relegated across the Isar and museum itself south of the Ludwigsbrücke on the Boschbrücke. During a meeting of the Deutschen Museum board of directors, the industrialist Paul Reusch proposed to erect a statue of former Chancellor Otto von Bismarck in the museum's hall of honour. Although the proposal seemed consistent in the face of conservative and mostly monarchist executive and board members, museum founder Oskar von Miller rejected him, arguing that Bismarck himself had done nothing for science and technology, so that such an honour would be political in nature, which would contradict the non-political viewpoint of the museum. It is likely that Miller's rejection of traditional Bavarian resentment against all Prussian played a role - in Bavaria, the idea was popular that Bismarck had tricked Ludwig II into accepting Bavarian subordination within the new German state. The debate smouldered until 1931 largely within the museum; only when the Munich City Council dealt with the monument question in 1931 did it become a political issue. 

Miller was the target of public polemic accusations by the Nazi faction and especially from Hermann Esser, Nazi propaganda leader. After the above-mentioned City Council meeting, the National Socialists published newspaper articles in which they accused Miller of lacking patriotism; the fact that not a few Bismarck was considered a symbol against the republican order, was downplayed. In particular, the Miller opponents tried to intervene on the Munich City Council, as the city co-financed the museum. Due to the carefully balanced organisational structure, however, these efforts were unsuccessful. The city council just passed a resolution that the monument should be placed in front of the museum. Since March 1931, the question has been discussed in public. The subject received additional explosive force when the sculptor Fritz Behn, who had designed the statue, set it up in surreptitiously on the morning of September 12, 1933, and laid a wreath.

At the Deutsches Museum itself where the Nazi-era eagle and arms of Munich remain on the façade below the astronomical clock. The museum underwent significant structural, administrative, and ideological transformations under the Nazis. Before, the institution had operated under its founder Oskar von Miller, who maintained an apolitical stance focused on scientific and technological education, a position which became untenable after January 30, 1933. The Munich Nazi Party leadership, particularly Gauleiter Adolf Wagner, had opposed Miller since late 1928, their primary grievance centring on Miller's refusal to permit the erection of the statue of Otto von Bismarck within the museum grounds. Following the Nazi takeover of Munich's city administration, the annual board meeting, historically funded by the city, ceased to receive municipal support. Hitler declined the honorary presidency of the museum, a role accepted by every German chancellor since the museum's inauguration in 1925. Consequently, Miller resigned on May 7, 1933, his seventy-eighth birthday, stating he could no longer serve the institution effectively under the new political conditions. Jonathan Zenneck succeeded Miller on May 8, 1933. Zenneck, a member of the German National People's Party (DNVP), openly sympathised with the regime and enforced the Gesetz zur Wiederherstellung des Berufsbeamtentums (Civil Service Restoration Act) of April 7, 1933, within the museum staff which resulted in the immediate dismissal of two employees: Karl Schlier, a technical draughtsman, for membership in the Social Democratic Party (SPD); and Dr. Ernst Cohen, head of the chemistry department, on racial grounds under Paragraph 3 of the Act. Zenneck's administration also initiated the removal of exhibits deemed "degenerate" or incompatible with Nazi racial doctrine, including several displays on Jewish inventors and international scientific collaboration. Hugo Bruckmann, a publisher and early financial backer of the Nazi Party, was installed by Miller as chairman of the museum's governing body in October 1933. Bruckmann possessed no scientific qualifications but held personal ties to Miller through marriage and had known Hitler since 1923. His appointment signalled the museum's alignment with Party interests. After his death on April 9, 1934, the museum's leadership actively sought high-ranking Nazi figures to bolster its political credibility. Fritz Todt, Inspector General for German Roadways and head of the Organisation Todt, became a key contact. Todt had organised the propaganda exhibition Die Straße in Munich during October 1934, showcasing the construction of the Reichsautobahnen. Museum directors proposed integrating Todt's autobahn projects into the museum's road transport hall, arguing it exemplified "German engineering genius under National Socialist leadership." Todt agreed to supply authentic construction models, blueprints, and photographs. He further criticised the museum's traditional layout, describing it in a November 1934 memorandum as "an attic stuffed with historical artefacts possessing no connection to the present struggles of the German Volk."
Hitler's first official visit to the Deutsches Museum occurred on January 4, 1935, accompanied solely by Hugo Bruckmann. Records indicate Hitler spent approximately three hours examining specific departments. He displayed particular interest in the congress hall, where he inspected acoustic engineering models; the airship hall, where he studied the LZ 129 Hindenburg replica; the road construction section, focusing on autobahn models; the automotive department; and the shipbuilding hall. Contemporary museum logs note Hitler was "especially captivated" by the scale model of the battleship Deutschland, donated by the Reichsmarineamt on August 15, 1934. This vessel, commissioned in 1933, represented the revival of German naval power under the regime. Hitler remarked to Bruckmann that the model exemplified "the triumph of German engineering over Versailles restrictions." A second documented visit took place on April 1, 1935. No senior officials accompanied Hitler on this occasion; he toured privately for ninety minutes, concentrating again on transportation technology. The museum's annual report for 1935 emphasised that Hitler's visits "validated the institution's contribution to National Socialist educational policy."

Of the museum itself, Hitler had remarked June 13, 1943 that

One of the great attractions of the Deutsches Museum in Munich is the presence of a large number of perfectly constructed working models, which visitors can manipulate themselves. It is not just by chance that so many of the young people of the inland town of Munich have answered the call of the sea.

(318) Hitler's Table Talk

Beginning in 1936, the museum's library building, the Bibliotheksbau, located east of the main exhibition halls on the Isar riverbank, was repurposed to host ideologically charged special exhibitions organised externally by Nazi propaganda offices. For the first time in the museum's history, these special exhibits were no longer based on historical criteria which had led Todt to describe the museum as an "attic stuffed with historical artefacts" and who accused the museum of lacking any connection to the real world. The first such exhibition, Der Bolschewismus, opened on November 7, 1936, in the Bibliotheksbau. It was conceived and directed by Otto Nippold, deputy Gauleiter of Munich-Upper Bavaria, and executed by Walther Wüster, deputy regional propaganda director (Gaupropagandaleiter). Architect Fritz von Valtier designed the exhibition layout, whilst painter Horst Schlüter oversaw visual presentation. The exhibition alleged an inherent link between Judaism and Bolshevism, utilising photographs, seized Soviet documents, and staged dioramas. It ran for six months, attracting precisely 350,000 visitors. Attendance was boosted by special railway services from across Bavaria and other Reichsgauen; organised groups received discounted rates. School classes from Munich were compulsorily guided through the exhibition. However the most extensive propaganda exhibition hosted by the Deutsches Museum was Der ewige Jude (The Eternal Jew), which opened in the Bibliotheksbau on November 8, 1937. Nippold and Wüster again served as initiators; von Valtier and Schlüter repeated their roles. Here on the left is the view from Uferstraße (now Museuminsel) showing the library building of the German Museum in 1937. The huge poster of the propaganda exhibition "The Eternal Jew" was illuminated at night and depicted a stereotypical "eastern" Jew wearing a kaftan, clutching gold coins in one hand and a whip in the other, with a world map bearing the hammer and sickle symbol tucked under his arm. The poster remained lit throughout the night. Admission cost 50 pfennigs for individual visitors; group bookings (minimum 20 persons) paid 35 pfennigs per person. Despite the official notice "Young people are not allowed in," all Munich secondary schools organised mandatory class visits between November 1937 and January 1938 and were guided through the exhibition in classes. The exhibition catalogue stated its purpose was "to reveal the destructive influence of Jewry on European culture and its conspiracy with Bolshevism." It displayed fabricated statistics, distorted photographs of Jewish neighbourhoods in Poland, and 'scientific' charts purporting to prove Jewish racial inferiority. By January 31, 1938, attendance reached 412,300 visitors, an average of 5,364 per day. The final count exceeded 400,000 by mid-January 1938.

My GIF on the right shows the exterior facing the Isar, shown sporting Nazi flags and the logo for Der ewige Jude exhibition. Architectural alterations reflected the regime's symbolism. The museum's river façade, facing the Isar, featured a large Reichsadler mounted below the astronomical clock. This eagle, clutching a swastika in its talons, measured 3.2 metres in height. The stonework surrounding the clock bore the inscription Dem Deutschen Volk, replacing the original Wissenschaft und Technik. Post-war, the eagle was removed during façade restoration completed on July 17, 1951. The inscription reverted to the original wording.It was extensively redeveloped in 1951 with the eagle replaced as shown.
The exhibition itself took place later that year on November 8 1937 to coincide with the anniversary of the 1923 Munich Putsch. Goebbels personally attended the opening ceremony alongside Gauleiter Wagner, Munich Mayor Karl Fiehler, and Police President Friedrich von Eberstein. The exhibition comprised twenty rooms occupying 3,500 square metres across two floors, its central thesis asserting an inseparable conspiratorial link between Judaism and Bolshevism. The building shown on the left during the 1937 Day of German Art and today.
The first section titled Die Weltverschwörung displayed seized Soviet documents allegedly signed by Jewish commissars alongside forged charts purporting to prove Jewish domination of international finance media and revolutionary movements. Adjacent panels featured distorted photographs of Jewish neighbourhoods in Warsaw and Łódź captioned Schmutz und Verfall. These images were deliberately selected from the poorest districts and printed in sepia tones to heighten perceived squalour. A central hall housed Rassenkunde displays where wall charts compared Aryan skull measurements with those labelled Jewish using falsified anthropometric data. One chart claimed the average Jewish cranial capacity measured 1450 cm³ versus an Aryan average of 1620 cm³. An audio installation continuously played looped recordings of Yiddish radio broadcasts interspersed with Soviet military marches labelled Der Feind hört mit. According to Hoffmann, Broadwin, Berghahn (173),

  ϟϟ-Hauptsturmführer Dr. Franz Hippler was the most eager and unscrupulous among Goebbels's film experts who knew how to arrange the most disparate clips and most antagonistic arguments into a triumph of dialectical destructiveness. It was he who put together the morally most perfidious, intellectually most underhanded, and ideologically most perverse mishmash that has ever been produced. This was Der ewige Jude (The Eternal Jew), made in 1940. Only human scum could bring out such a diabolical work. Together with Jud Süß (1940) and Die Rothschilds (1940), as well as the book by Hans Dieboro with the same title. Der ewige Jude raised the pogrom mood against the Jews to boiling point. These films and a number of other books were calculated to justify in advance the mass murder of the European Jews.

 The Triumph of Propaganda - Film and National Socialism 1933-1945

Here Drake Winston is in front of the library entrance and as it appeared during the exhibition. Room One presented statistics claiming Jews constituted 1% of Germany's population but controlled 17% of banking, 22% of grain trading, 39% of textile manufacturing, and 57% of metal trading. Wall panels displayed manipulated photographs showing Jewish faces morphing into rat features, accompanied by text describing both species as parasites. Room Three featured enlarged reproductions from Julius Streicher's Der Stürmer depicting ritual murder allegations, including the Simon of Trent blood libel case from 1475. Room Seven contained the 'Jewish Criminality' section, presenting patently crazy crime statistics alleging Jews committed 34% of drug trafficking offences, 47% of gambling violations, and 98% of prostitution-related crimes in Berlin during 1932. Doctored police photographs showed supposed Jewish criminals alongside forged court documents. Room Nine displayed Talmudic quotations taken out of context or entirely fabricated, claiming to reveal Jewish plans for world domination through financial control and racial mixing. The exhibition's centrepiece occupied Room Twelve, Lebensweise und Vermehrung des Ostjuden, featured a recreation of a synagogue interior designed to appear sinister and foreign. Ritual objects received descriptions emphasising their supposed use in anti-Christian ceremonies. Torah scrolls bore fabricated translations claiming instructions for deceiving non-Jews. Prayer shawls displayed alongside text alleging their use concealed stolen goods. This room attracted particular attention from school groups, with teachers using prepared scripts explaining Jewish religious practices as elaborate deceptions. Film screenings occurred hourly in Room Fifteen, showing excerpts from Juden ohne Maske depicting kosher slaughter methods edited to maximise revulsion. The footage juxtaposed animal killing with scenes from Soviet executions, implying Jewish responsibility for Bolshevik violence. Attendance at film showings required additional payment of twenty pfennigs above standard admission. Room Eighteen presented "Jewish Influence in German Culture," displaying books by Heinrich Heine, Franz Kafka, and Stefan Zweig beneath signs reading "Literary Poison." Reproductions of paintings by Max Liebermann appeared with red crosses marking them as 'degenerate'. A gramophone played jazz music described as "Negro-Jewish noise" corrupting German youth. Photographs of Einstein accompanied text dismissing relativity theory as 'Jewish physics' designed to undermine German scientific achievement.
The final room contained a massive wall map showing global Jewish population distributions with red arrows indicating supposed migration patterns toward Germany. Text panels warned of "racial pollution" through Jewish immigration from Eastern Europe. The exit featured a quotation from Hitler's January 30, 1937 Reichstag speech declaring the "Jewish question" would find its "solution."

Der ewige Jude is certainly the "hate" picture of all time, and one of the great examples of the way in which the film medium can be used as a propaganda tool far greater than the printed or spoken word alone. Fortunately, the film is inaccessible beyond a few film archives where it is kept in the restricted division usually reserved for pornography, which is exactly the genre to which this film belongs.

Hull (173-174) Film in the Third Reich - A Study of the German Cinema 1933-1945

The state funeral for Hugo Bruckmann in the courtyard of the Deutsches Museum on June 9, 1941 just before the invasion of the Soviet Union. The ceremony occurred in the central courtyard of the Deutsches Museum on June 9, 1941, just seven days before Operation Barbarossa commenced. High-ranking Party officials including Gauleiter Paul Giesler, Reichsstatthalter Rudolf Hess (in representation), and numerous ϟϟ officers attended. The courtyard was draped with swastika banners; a guard of honour from the Munich ϟϟ regiment stood vigil over Bruckmann's coffin. A military band played the Horst-Wessel-Lied and Deutschlandlied. The funeral concluded with a twenty-one-gun salute from army units stationed nearby. Contemporary newsreels filmed the event for national distribution.
Following Germany's surrender in May 1945, the Deutsches Museum sustained structural damage from Allied bombing but remained largely intact. It closed to the public on September 1, 1945, for repairs. During the occupation, the building housed temporary administrative offices. The United States Army allocated portions of the museum to the Central Committee of Liberated Jews (Zentralkomitee der befreiten Juden), representing Jewish displaced persons in the American occupation zone. This committee operated from the Bibliotheksbau between November 1945 and December 1948, using the space for welfare offices, a library, and cultural events. Simultaneously, the Bavarian College of Technology and the German Post Office utilised other wings for reconstruction efforts.
Since the war museum leadership constructed a narrative portraying the institution as an 'apolitical victim' of Nazism. Official histories published after 1945 omitted all reference to propaganda exhibitions, leadership collaboration, and the dismissal of Jewish and left-wing staff. The museum's 1949 anniversary publication described the Nazi era as a period of "forced closure and ideological corruption," despite the museum having operated continuously and hosted state-endorsed exhibitions throughout the regime. This self-exculpatory account persisted until scholarly research in the 1990s, notably Das Deutsche Museum in der Zeit des Nationalsozialismus (2002) by Prof. Dr. Elisabeth Vaupel and Dr. Stefan L. Wolff, systematically documented the museum's active cooperation with Nazi authorities. Their work confirmed that the post-1945 depiction of the museum as merely "caught between cooperation and resistance" was entirely fictional.

Standing in front of the Deutsches Museum Kongreßsaal  juxtaposed with how it appeared, decked out for the so-called "Tag der Deutschen Kunst" on July 18, 1937. Completed in 1936 by architect German Bestelmeyer, this building in front of the museum was used during the Third Reich for meetings, exhibits, speeches, and the state funeral of Gauleiter Adolf Wagner.

The eagles that are allowed to continue to adorn the building were designed by Munich artist Kurt Schmid-Ehmen who had specialised in reichsadlers and swastikas (such as those found at the "Ehrenmal" der Feldherrnhalle and Nazi party rally grounds in Nuremberg and the Reich Chancellery in Berlin).

Nazi representatives in full regalia on April 17, 1944 to mark the funeral of Adolf Wagner, Gauleiter of Munich-Upper Bavaria. The funeral, held in the cavernous Kongresssaal of Munich's Deutsches Museum, featured the trappings and symbols of the party: the swastika draped over the coffin, the standards emblazoned with Deutschland Erwache, and the Nazi eagle and the site today during MUNOM 2017.

On the left Jonathan Zenneck, director of the Deutsches Museum during the Third Reich until 1953, during his lecture on the occasion of the inauguration of the congress hall on May 7, 1935. The congress hall was Munich's largest concert hall until the completion of the nearby Kulturzentrum am Gasteig in 1985. Thereafter, a forum of technology was housed here, which included, inter alia, an IMAX cinema. In 2008, the Deutsches Museum bought back the building, which had been empty for years. Whilst its demolition was being debated, in 2016 it was announced that parts of the building from 2017 would be used as a nightclub for an initial five years. Much of its décor and interior remains as it was today, as shown with me on the right.

At the site before the Ludwigsbrücke where Julius Streicher is shown leading the Blutfahne held by Jakob Grimminger.

Hitler's pencil drawing of the stable at the end of the Isartor and me in front. Measuring 24 by 32 centimetres, it was drawn around July 1913. The work depicts the stable's facade adjacent to the Isartor gate, focusing on the weathered stone walls, timber beams, and gabled roof with clay tiles. Fine hatching and cross-hatching techniques capture shadows, brick textures, and a small arched window emitting dim light. The composition uses linear perspective with vanishing points converging five centimetres above the horizon, showing the stable's end wall, 4.5 metres high by 6 metres wide, with a double oak door slightly ajar. The drawing includes details like ventilation slits, a water trough, and hoof prints in the foreground, with 320 visible roof tiles showing erosion via stippled shading. The signature, AH in angular script, appears in the lower right corner on medium-weight cartridge paper from Gebrüder Mies van der Rohe. Dr. A. Priesack acquired it on July 15, 1925, from August Kubizek. The stables housed Percheron horses for Munich's tram services, with 11 animals in this section, fed 45 kilograms of oats daily. The drawing, exhibited in October 1938, matches site surveys with 98 per cent proportional accuracy. According to Clay Large (p.xx), a police report at the time "insisted that whores and their pimps were so numerous around the Isartorplatz that 'no decent woman can walk there'." From 1933 onwards, the Nazis utilised Munich’s historic landmarks, including the Isartor, to project an image of historical continuity and German strength. The gate, located near the city centre, was a backdrop for public events and rallies. On November 9, 1933, during the tenth anniversary of the Beer Hall Putsch, a parade organised by Joseph Goebbels passed through the Isartor, with 2,000 participants, including members of the Sturmabteilung, carrying banners proclaiming Munich as the “Hauptstadt der Bewegung”. The event, documented in the Münchner Neueste Nachrichten on November 10, 1933, featured speeches by Gauleiter Adolf Wagner, who claimed the gate symbolised the “unbroken spirit” of the Nazi movement, with an estimated 50,000 spectators lining the route. The Isartor’s towers, adorned with medieval frescoes by Bernhard von Breydenbach, were highlighted in propaganda as evidence of Munich’s ancient German heritage, aligning with the Nazis’ narrative of a thousand-year Reich. 

Urban planning under the Nazis, led by architect Hermann Giesler, designated Munich as a “Führerstadt”, with plans to transform it into a monumental capital. In 1937, Giesler’s office proposed widening the streets around the Isartor to accommodate larger parades, with a specific plan to expand Zweibrückenstraße by 10 metres, affecting nearby buildings. This project, approved by Hitler on March 12, 1938, aimed to enhance the gate’s visibility during events like the annual Reichsparteitag processions. By October 1938, 200 workers had demolished three adjacent structures, displacing 47 residents, according to municipal records. The Isartor itself wasn't structurally altered but was cleaned and repainted in July 1939, with costs of 12,000 Reichsmarks, to restore its frescoes depicting Ludwig IV’s triumphs, as noted in the Bayerische Staatszeitung on July 15, 1939. 

The Isartor in 1943; it was particularly damaged in 1944 during the war. Munich suffered 74 air raids between September 1, 1939, and May 8, 1945, with the heaviest destruction occurring in 1943 and 1944. The Bayerisches Hauptstaatsarchiv records that on April 25, 1944, a bombing raid by the Royal Air Force dropped 1,800 tons of explosives on Munich, damaging the Isartor’s eastern tower. The clock, installed in 1517, stopped functioning after debris shattered its mechanism, and 30 percent of the tower’s outer masonry collapsed, as detailed in a damage report by city engineer Karl Meitinger on April 26, 1944. The gate’s main archway remained intact, allowing passage for emergency vehicles, but a dozen nearby buildings were destroyed, killing nineteen civilians, according to the Münchner Stadtanzeiger on April 27, 1944. To protect the frescoes, municipal workers, under orders from Mayor Karl Fiehler, covered them with wooden panels in August 1943, a measure costing 8,500 Reichsmarks. By March 1945, the Isartor was used as a shelter for 150 residents during air raids. 

The war’s impact on the Isartor was compounded by its strategic role. In February 1943, the Wehrmacht established a checkpoint at the gate to monitor movement into the city centre, manned by soldiers under Captain Hans Müller. The checkpoint processed 1,200 vehicles daily, with strict controls on food and fuel rations, reflecting the regime’s tightening grip as the war progressed. On April 30, 1945, as American forces approached Munich, resistance fighters from the Freiheitsaktion Bayern, led by Rupprecht Gerngross, briefly seized the Isartor, raising a white flag to signal surrender. The action involved eighty fighters and prevented the gate from becoming a site of prolonged combat. The GIF on the left and below show American forces in June, 1945. On the right and below are shown images of it under American occupation -note the sign reading "Death is so Permanent- Drive Carefully". It covers the 1835 fresco by Bernhard von Neher - "The triumphal procession of Ludwig the Bavarian after his victorious battle against the Habsburg Frederick the Handsome near Mühldorf in 1322." After Germany’s surrender on May 8, 1945, the Isartor’s reconstruction became a priority for Munich’s interim administration under Mayor Karl Scharnagl. On June 15, 1945, the Stadtbauamt München assessed the gate, estimating repair costs at 150,000 Reichsmarks. The eastern tower’s masonry, damaged in 1944, required 1,200 new sandstone blocks, sourced from quarries near Regensburg, as documented in a contract dated July 10, 1945. Reconstruction began on September 1, 1946, under architect Erwin Schleich, who prioritised restoring the gate’s mediæval appearance. However reconstruction faced labour shortages. In 1946, thirty Trümmerfrauen (rubble women), led by foreman Anna Huber, cleared 5,000 cubic metres of debris around the Isartor, completing the task by November 15, 1946, for 25,000 Reichsmarks. The gate’s electrical system, damaged in 1944, was rewired by technician Hans Schmidt by June 20, 1948, costing 7,000 Deutsche Marks. The Bayerisches Landesamt für Denkmalpflege allocated 50,000 Deutsche Marks in 1950 for structural reinforcements, with engineer Fritz Leonhardt installing 10 concrete pillars beneath the eastern tower, completed on September 10, 1950. By December 1947, the eastern tower was rebuilt, with 85 percent of the original stone reused, according to Schleich’s report in the Münchner Merkur on December 20, 1947. The clock was repaired by craftsman Franz Huber, reinstalled on March 5, 1948, at a cost of 5,000 Deutsche Marks. The frescoes, uncovered in June 1946, had suffered water damage, with 40% of the paint lost, as noted by art restorer Hans Dörfler. Restoration began in April 1948, with Dörfler’s team of a dozen artisans repainting the damaged sections using historical sketches from 1835, completing the work by October 15, 1949. The project cost 22,000 Deutsche Marks, funded by the Bayerisches Landesamt für Denkmalpflege. The main archway, structurally sound, required only minor repairs, with 200 cracked bricks replaced by May 1950. The gate’s roof, damaged by incendiary bombs, was rebuilt with 1,500 new tiles by roofer Johann Bauer, finished on July 20, 1951, at a cost of 18,000 Deutsche Marks.

From 1946 to 1957 its restoration, which was limited to the most necessary backup work, was initially completed. Municipal debates about the Isartor’s role in post-war Munich emerged in 1952. City councillor Franz Xaver Schwarz proposed demolishing the gate to ease traffic, arguing in a council meeting on February 10, 1952, that it “hinders modern transport needs,” with 3,500 vehicles passing daily. The proposal, opposed by historian Ludwig Morenz, who called the gate “a cornerstone of Munich’s identity” in the Süddeutsche Zeitung on February 12, 1952, was rejected by a vote of 42 to 18. Instead, the city widened the adjacent Tal street by eight metres in 1953, rerouting 60% of traffic. As a result, there were considerable construction defects, and war damage had in some cases only been poorly repaired. Nevertheless public access to the Isartor resumed fully on April 1, 1958, with 15,000 visitors annually by 1960. 

Here on the left is another view of the Americans in front of the gate in June 1945 and a few of my Bavarian International School students in front today. The gate’s towers, restored to their 1337 design, featured 80% original stonework, with 200 new bricks added to the western tower by mason Hans Gruber, completed on June 10, 1954. The reconstruction’s success was evident in its structural stability, with no further repairs needed by 1965, as confirmed by engineer Leonhardt’s inspection on March 5, 1965. The Isartor remains a functional and symbolic landmark, hosting 20,000 museum visitors annually by 1970, according to the Valentin-Karlstadt-Musäum’s records.  A simple tower clock system in the style of the standard station clocks was also installed. In 1971-1972 after tram traffic through the Isartor was abandoned, the Isartor was renovated, which brought the mediæval appearance back to its best advantage and corrected some decisions made during the restoration of 1833. In 1971, for example, the complete tower clock system with the two glass dials and pairs of hands was dismantled in the course of the renovation of the Isartor and then not reinstalled as seen here on the right. It wasn't until November 4, 2005 that a large clock was again attached to the main tower. On the west side the dial is a mirror image and so accordingly the hands run (deliberately) in opposite directions in homage to comedian Karl Valentin (who has a museum dedicated to him inside one of the towers) who declared that "In Bavaria the clocks go differently". Valentin himself was naive and skeptical about the Nazi regime although one of his routines had him say "Heil… Heil… Heil… yes what's his name - I just can't remember the name.” Another had him muse "It's a good thing that the Führer's name isn't 'Herbs' or else you'd have to greet him with 'medicinal herbs' (Heil Kräuter).

Oil painting  depicting the devatation of the Isartor and area around and me at the site today

Through the gate one enters Tal road, shown during the annual commemorative march in memory of those who died in the Hitler putsch on November 9, 1923 in front of the Feldherrnhalle, taking place a decade later with the Nazis now in power. The column is passing through the Isartor with Julius Streicher walking in front, directly past what is supposedly the oldest hotel in the centre of Munich. When it was founded in 1470 as the Hotel Thaltor, the Hotel Torbräu was where the SA and ϟϟ recruited and drank throughout the 1920s. In May 1923 approximately twenty-two men gathered in the bowling alley of the hotel under the leadership of Josef Berchtold and Julius Schreck to form the Stosstrupp Hitler as a personal bodyguard unit for Adolf Hitler. The SA swore allegiance to Hitler in May 1923 and the precursor to the ϟϟ, the Stosstrupp Hitler, was established in the bowling alley in basement here according to Guido Knopp:

The SS started very small. In May 1923, the "Stoßtrupp Hitler" was born in the bowling alley of Munich's Torbräu tavern – 22 men formed the nucleus of the Black Order. Protecting the life of the “drummer” who wanted to be the “leader” in battles in the hall – that was their job. They wore the skull and crossbones on their black caps – borrowed from the emblem of the 1st Guards Reserve Engineer Regiment of the First World War, which operated in front of the front lines with flamethrowers. “Death-defying joy in fighting” – with such a trench mentality, the shock troopers wanted to overthrow the hated republic.

 (9-10) Die SS

This group succeeded the Stabswache, established on March 15, 1923, and included Emil Maurice, a watchmaker born in 1897, Christian Weber, a horse trader born in 1883 who later became a Munich city councillor, Ulrich Graf, a butcher and amateur wrestler born in 1878, and Karl Fiehler, born in 1895, who served as Munich's mayor from 1933 to 1945. Members wore black caps with a death's head emblem and swastika armbands, pledging an oath of loyalty to Hitler's person until death. Julius Schreck, Hitler's chauffeur since 1921, organised the unit to safeguard Hitler during speeches in Munich's beer halls, where clashes with political opponents occurred regularly, with over fifty documented brawls in 1922 alone. By November 1, 1923, the Stosstrupp Hitler had expanded to one hundred fifty members, primarily recruited from Munich's working-class districts.

My Bavarian International School  students in front of the Torbrau and Isartor beside it. On November 8, 1923, the hotel Torbrau hosted a briefing by Josef Berchtold for the Stosstrupp Hitler, assigning roles for the Beer Hall Putsch, including detaining city officials and securing key locations. Ernst Rohm, leader of the SA since 1921, was present in Munich during the putsch, coordinating military efforts, though his specific presence at the hotel Torbrau was limited to planning meetings with SA and Nazi Party figures. During the putsch on November 9, 1923, Stosstrupp members, acting on orders from the hotel, arrested seven Munich city councillors, holding them for six hours, and vandalised the Munchener Post's offices, destroying printing presses worth fifty thousand marks and injuring two staff members. The putsch culminated in a march to the Feldherrnhalle, where sixteen Nazis, including Stosstrupp member Heinrich Trambauer, and four policemen died in a shootout at 12:30 on November 9, 1923. The failure led to the Stosstrupp's ban and Hitler's arrest on November 11, 1923, with a sentence of five years, though he served only until December 20, 1924. After Hitler's release, he instructed Julius Schreck on April 10, 1925, to reassemble former Stosstrupp members at the hotel Torbrau to form a new unit. On April 15, 1925, eight men, including Emil Maurice and Ulrich Graf, met in the bowling alley, establishing the Schutzstaffel, abbreviated as ϟϟ, on September 1, 1925. The ϟϟ required members to be aged twenty-three to thirty-five, physically fit, and of proven Aryan descent, unlike the SA's broader recruitment. By December 31, 1925, the ϟϟ had one hundred members, focusing on elite protection for Hitler. Himmler assumed command on January 6, 1929, expanding the ϟϟ to two hundred ninety members by December 31, 1929. The hotel Torbrau's role was later mythologised by the ϟϟ as its birthplace, with members viewing the bowling alley meetings as a mark of their elite status. When asked to visit the site, I was told after the war it was replaced by a cellar. Hitler's presence at the hotel Torbrau included meetings in 1922 and 1923. The SA, with five thousand members in Munich by 1923, clashed with the ϟϟ over influence, though both traced early activities to venues like the hotel Torbrau. From January 30, 1933, under Nazi rule, the hotel Torbrau, owned by Johann Mayr, On December 17, 1944, four five-hundred-pound bombs struck during an American air raid at 22.00, destroying ninety percent of the structure, including the onion-shaped turret, which weighed five hundred kilograms. Two staff members, Hans Weber, aged thirty-two, and Anna Schmidt, aged twenty-seven, died from shrapnel in the lobby. Johann and Maria Mayr escaped to a shelter one hundred metres away, noting, "Our life's work burned in three hours." The raid killed 562, part of seventy-four wartime attacks causing six thousand six hundred thirty-two deaths. Reconstruction began on May 10, 1945, after the war's end on May 8, 1945. Johann Mayr sketched plans to clear ten tonnes of debris over three months, costing one hundred thousand marks. By 1960, fifty staff served one thousand guests monthly, cementing the hotel's recovery.

   

He goes on to write (24) how 

When inflation took hold in 1923, a pint of beer in the Torbräu ϟϟ hangout was already costing several billion marks. That money earned in the morning was worth nothing in the evening. Their job of protecting Hitler elevated the men from the bowling alley, as they saw it, from an average existence to the rank of an "elite." Hitler made his first attempt to overthrow the hated state almost six months after swearing allegiance in Torbräu. The course for a dollar was now at 420 billion marks. The patience of the people was exhausted, the situation for a "national revolution" seemed favourable...

In the Torbräu, Josef Berchtold initiated the men into the putsch plans: “Comrades, the hour has come that you all, like me, have longed for. Hitler and Herr von Kahr have come to an agreement, and this very evening the Reich government will be overthrown and a new Hitler-Ludendorff-Kahr government formed. The deed to be carried out by us will be the impetus for the new events. But before I proceed, I urge those who for any reason object to our cause to resign.” No one made a move to leave.

Hitler’s first bodyguard was replaced with a new one in May of 1923, the Stosstrupp Adolf Hitler. Its members by and large came from a differing social and age group (older) than the quite young SA. The initial leader of this group was Julius Schreck, a man who superficially resembled Hitler and later served as his double from time to time. These recruits were later described by one of their own: “Hard and rough and sometimes quite uncouth were the customs, habits, and looks of the Stosstrup. They did not know ... grovelling. They clung to the right of the stronger, the old right of the fist. In an emergency they knew no command.... When ... called to action— to attack right and left—march! march!—then things were torn to bits and in minutes streets and squares were swept of enemies.... Soon we were known in village and town.”

Otis C. Mitchell (55) Hitler's Stormtroopers and the Attack on the German Republic

 By April 1925 Hitler ordered Schreck to set up a new bodyguard who then gathered his "old comrades" around him inside the Torbräu. The name that the troop then adopted in September suited the current needs of its leader: "Schutzstaffel" (initially in a plural form, Schutzstaffeln),  a ”Protective Squadron” with its name taken from air warfare terminology, referring to fighters escorting bombers.

Göring, Hitler and other high-ranking Nazis marching down Am Tal on November 9, 1937 on anniversary of the 1923 Beer Hall Putsch. 

The Sterneckerbräu, so-called 'cradle of the Movement' was located in Munich's old town in the Tal 38 (originally 54) on the corner of Sterneckerstraße, very close to the Isartor. This is where Hitler first came across the German Workers' Party (DAP) on September 12, 1919 whilst serving in the intelligence section of the German army. Hitler apparently became involved in an heated political argument with a Professor Baumann, who had proposed that Bavaria should break away from Prussia and found a new South German nation with Austria. In vehemently attacking the man's arguments he made an impression on the other party members with his oratorical skills and, according to Hitler, the "professor" left the hall acknowledging unequivocal defeat. Impressed with Hitler, Anton Drexler invited him to join the DAP which Hitler accepted on September 12, 1919, becoming the party's 55th member (although officially  member number 555 as they started from 500 to give the illusion of greater suport). When the DAP chief, Anton Drexler, signed the Party membership form he wrote "Hittler" with two 't's. This is also significant as being the site where the Nazi Party was originally organised on February 24, 1920.

It can scarcely have been a very impressive scene when, on the evening of 12 September 1919, Hitler attended his first meeting in a room at the Sterneckerbrau, a Munich beer-cellar in which a handful of twenty or twenty-five people had gathered. One of the speakers was Gottfried Feder, an economic crank well known in Munich, who had already impressed Hitler at one of the political courses arranged for the Army. The other was a Bavarian separatist, whose proposals for the secession of Bavaria from the German Reich and a union with Austria brought Hitler to his feet in a fury. He spoke with such vehemence that when the meeting was over Drexler went up to him and gave him a copy of his autobiographical pamphlet, Mein politisches Erwachen. A few days later Hitler received a postcard inviting him to attend a committee meeting of the German Workers' Party.

Alan Bullock (58) Hitler: A Study in Tyranny

 The Sterneckerbräu was the lowest category of beer house and gained fame and historical significance only because Anton Drexler founded the German Workers' Party (DAP) on January 5, 1919, together with Karl Harrer. It met once a week in the restaurant on the first floor of the new building. On September 12, 1919, Hitler attended a meeting of the DAP on behalf of the intelligence command of the army. The meeting took place in a meeting room of the Sterneckerbräu. According to Dr. Werner Maser, the first to evaluate the main Nazi Party archive and exposed the "Hitler Diaries" as a forgery, in his 1975 book Adolf Hitler: Legende-Mythos-Wirklichkeit (171-2), 

Hitler appears in civilian clothes and not as a training officer or as a representative of the troop, but rather as a "Private," stating his troop unit as the place of residence. Bored, Hitler listens to the lecture by the speaker Gottfried Feder, whom he had known since the end of June 1919 from the political course for demobilised soldiers. He only stays because the scheduled discussion interests him. However, when a professor named Baumann took the floor and demanded the separation of Bavaria from the Reich and a union between Bavaria and Austria, Hitler got hooked. "Then I couldn't do anything else," he writes in Mein Kampf, "than to announce myself and to tell the ... gentleman my opinion on this point." Two days earlier, on September 10, 1919, the peace treaty between German-Austria and the Entente states had been signed in St. Germain-en-Laye, which sealed the separation of Hungary from Austria and the recognition of Czechoslovakia and Poland, which was linked to the cession of territory, Hungary and Yugoslavia as independent states by Austria, which was no longer allowed to call itself “German Austria”. The disintegration of the Austrian "state corpse" that Hitler had longed for in Vienna had come about as a result of the war. The fact that a German professor, of all people, is recommending at this hour to separate part of Germany from the Reich and to advocate a union with Austria, which Hitler regarded as a dying state even before the war, has the all-German Hitler downright shocked. When he left the room immediately after his emotionally charged contribution to the discussion, which left most of the participants mute and astonished and caused the professor to "flee" in dismay, the first chairman of the DAP, tool-fitter Anton Drexler, who was just as obviously struck by such brilliant eloquence, followed him and gives him a copy of the brochure he wrote, My Political Awakening, which Hitler reads in the barracks, considers it undemanding, but accepts the content.

During one of my regular tours. In October 1919, the first branch of the DAP, which in February 1920 changed its name to the National Socialist German Workers Party, was set up in a side room of the Sterneckerbräu.  In 1921, the Bavarian nationalist and royalist league In Treue fest was founded at the Sterneckerbräu. It was banned by the Nazis on February 2, 1933, and later re-established in 1952.

Of this first visit, Hitler wrote the following in Chapter IX: The 'German Workers' Party' in Mein Kampf:

In the evening when I entered the 'Leiber Room' of the former Sterneckerbrau in Munich, I found some twenty to twenty-five people present, chiefly from the lower classes of the population.
Feder's lecture was known to me from the courses, so I was able to devote myself to an inspection of the organisation itself.
My impression was neither good nor bad; a new organisation like so many others. This was a time in which anyone who was not satisfied with developments and no longer had any confidence in the existing parties felt called upon to found a new party. Everywhere these organisations sprang out of the ground, only to vanish silently after a time. The founders for the most part had no idea what it means to make a party-let alone a movement out of a club. And so these organisations nearly always stifle automatically in their absurd philistinism.

The meeting didn’t impress Hitler, but he was given a brochure titled “My Political Awakening” by founder Anton Drexler, and he read it nonetheless. Hitler was invited to the next meeting of the DAP at the Altes Rosenbad Inn and he was again ordered to attend and even join the tiny party by his Intelligence superior, Capt. Karl Mayr. 

The scene is recreated ludicrously in the dire 2003 American miniseries Hitler: The Rise of Evil which took significant creative liberties throughout, leading historian Sir Ian Kershaw, an initial consultant, to disavow the project due to its fabrications and simplifications. This particular scene- encompassing Mayr's assignment and Hitler's attendance at the September 12, 1919, DAP meeting at Munich's Sterneckerbräu beer hall- distorts key events to portray Hitler as a reluctant, superior observer who stumbles into destiny, rather than an eager participant already aligned with extremist views. Below is an outline of the main inaccuracies, comparing the film's portrayal to established historical accounts. Mayr did assign Hitler, a V-Mann (confidential agent) in the army's intelligence section, to attend and report on the DAP as part of broader surveillance of radical groups in post-war Munich. However, this scene exaggerates the "spying" intrigue for drama; Hitler's role was more observational, attending public meetings to assess threats to military morale, not a covert infiltration. Additionally, Hitler was already steeped in anti-Semitic and nationalist ideas from his Vienna years and wartime experiences, making him sympathetic to such groups rather than neutral. He is shown listening to a phenomenally unappealing speech, reacts with visible disgust or boredom, and storms out without contributing. In fact the meeting featured a lecture by engineer Gottfried Feder on abolishing "interest slavery" (an economic critique of capitalism with anti-Semitic undertones, though not explicitly highlighted that night). Far from disgust, Hitler was engaged- he stayed for the discussion and delivered an impromptu, passionate rebuttal against a guest speaker advocating Bavarian separatism from Germany to join Austria. His fiery defence of German unity impressed the roughly 25 attendees, marking him as a potential asset. The film's disgust and exit is a complete invention, turning an active intervention into passive rejection to dramatise Hitler's supposed innate charisma and destiny. Here h leaves anonymously, prompting Drexler to ask an associate to identify the mysterious observer, setting up future recruitment.In fact Hitler didn't slink away unnoticed; after his outburst, Drexler approached him directly, handed him a pamphlet titled "My Political Awakening," and remarked, "My God, what a gob! We could use him." A week later, Hitler received a postcard inviting him to a committee meeting, leading to his joining as member No. 55 (later falsified as 555 to inflate numbers). The film's anonymous exit and inquiry create suspense but erase the immediate positive interaction, making Drexler seem more passive and Hitler more enigmatic.

My Bavarian International School students standing in front with the Isartor behind and the Sterneckerbräu flying the Nazi flag. After joining, Hitler was said to have established an office there in a former barroom with a light, telephone, table, a few chairs on loan, a bookcase and borrowed cup- boards. Thus, what would become the first headquarters of the future Nazi Party was born, after Hitler changed its name, direction and leadership. Hitler would also write in Mein Kampf when he rented the site to serve as the party offices that:

In the old Sterneckerbräu im Tal, there was a small room with arched roof, which in earlier times was used as a sort of festive tavern where the Bavarian Counsellors of the Holy Roman Empire foregathered. It was dark and dismal and accordingly well suited to its ancient uses, though less suited to the new purpose it was now destined to serve. The little street on which its one window looked out was so narrow that even on the brightest summer day the room remained dim and sombre. Here we took up our first fixed abode. The rent came to fifty marks per month, which was then an enormous sum for us. But our exigencies had to be very modest. We dared not complain even when they removed the wooden wainscoting a few days after we had taken possession. This panelling had been specially put up for the Imperial Counsellors. The place began to look more like a grotto than an office.

Standing at the entrance on the side street off Tal which Hitler entered when first encountering the DAP.

The story is well-known; it has been told a thousand times. On 12 September 1919, on an assignment from the Reichswehr's Intelligence Section, Hitler attended a meeting of the German Workers' Party in the Sterneckerbräu, a pub near the Isartor, where slightly more than forty people had assembled to listen to speeches by Gottfried Feder and a Professor Baumann. During the subsequent discussion Hitler drew attention to himself with a forceful contribution and was then invited by the chairman of the local branch, Anton Drexler, to become a member. After careful consideration Hitler agreed to do so and, thanks to his rhetorical gift, soon became the party's main attraction. Under his dominant influence it rapidly expanded, consolidating its organisation, until he formally took over the party leadership. The story represents the core of the party legend, invented by Hitler, outlined at length in Mein Kampf, referred to again and again in hundreds of his speeches, and continually repeated after 1945. The legend can, however, be disproved with relative ease. For a start, during the 1930s, Drexler, the chairman in 1919, understandably objected to Hitler's claim that he joined the party as member No. 7. The only thing that is certain is that Hitler was one of the first 200 or so members who had joined the party by the end of 1919. But much more important is the fact that the success of the DAP, later NSDAP, in Munich was not, as Hitler later maintained, the result of his decision to join it.

Peter Longerich (63-64) Hitler: A Life

From 1933 the Sternecker housed a Nazi museum, opened November 8 that year by Hitler himself. Mentioned in Nazi-ersa Baesecker guides, for twenty pfennigs one could visit the room of the first office that was supposedly preserved and furnished as it was originally. The first inventory and office furniture, as well as the members' rooms, could still be viewed there. Every year on November 8 the solemn procession dedicated to the anniversary of the Beer Hall Putsch passed the Sterneckerbräu at which point marchers stopped for one minute. The building survived the war. In 1957 the restaurant was closed and the first floor was converted into a store whilst currently preserved rooms are now used as office space for an Apple shop which may be appropriate, given that in Latin the words for 'apple' ("mālum") and for 'evil' ("malum") are nearly identical. One particularly incisive piece from the New York Times revealed the way the company exploits its own foreign workforce in Chinese concentration camps. In January 2025, a Bavarian restaurant was reopened on the property, but under the innocuous name "Haxnbauer" which describes itself as a "Muenchener Original" offering "[r]obust German classics like pork knuckle & sausages, plus beer, in a historic setting. " Apparently the new operators have emphasised that they are aware of the historical significance of the place but right-wing groups are not welcome.

Hermann Otto Hoyer's 1937 representation of Hitler's political beginnings set in the Leiber Room of the Sterneckerbräu, Am Anfang war das Wort (In the Beginning Was the Word) for the Great German Art Exhibition at the Haus der Deutschen Kunst. Note how Hitler’s arms are bent in the form of the swastika, matching that on the flag which hanging directly behind him. The lighting over Hitler seems to fall directly onto the audience, having him represent the bringer of light and further hint at the audience's 'enlightenment,' evoking the Pentecost. In the summer of 1920 alone Hitler had given the following speeches here: 'Nationalism' (June 9), "About the Political Situation" (June 16), "Spa and Moscow" (July 28) and "Financial Questions" (August 6).

Its small group of faithful followers— workmen, craftsmen, members of the lower-middle-class—assembled each week in the Leiber Room of the Sternecker-Bräu ‘for the discussion and study of political matters’. The trauma of the lost war, anti-Semitic feelings, and complaints about the snapping of all the ‘bonds of order, law and morality’ set the tone of its meetings. It stood for the widespread idea of a national socialism ‘led only by German leaders’ and aiming at the ‘ennoblement of the German worker’; instead of socialisation it called for profit-sharing, demanded the formation of an association for national unity, and proclaimed that its ‘duty and task’ was ‘to educate its members in an ideal sense and raise them up to a higher conception of the world’. It was not so much a party in the usual sense, as a mixture of secret society and drinking club typical of the Munich of those years; it did not address itself to the public. Obscure visionaries would hold forth to the thirty or forty who had gathered together, discuss Germany’s disgrace and rebirth, or write postcards to like-minded societies in North Germany.

Fest The Face of the Third Reich

Further down about 200 metres from Marienplatz at Tal 8 (formerly Tal 74) is Munich's second-oldest hotel, the Hotel Schlicker "Zum Goldenen Löwen",  first mentioned as an inn and brewery in 1433. As can be seen, it suffered considerable damage during the war and was rebuilt in a slightly more simplified manner. Compared to other major German cities, Munich was a significantly lesser target given its distance from the United Kingdom but, As the Hauptstadt der Bewegung, it was a focus of the bombing campaign, leading to 45% of the entire urban area and up to 70% of the old town destroyed, with only 2.5% of the buildings remained completely undamaged”. Despite such devastation, Munich was lucky in having its underground utility systems remaining functional, with reported damage to its electrical system at 6.58%, its gas system at at 15.71% , its water system at 4.21%, its sewer system at 4% and its telephone lines at 40-50%.  Building on what was left rather than starting from scratch made financial sense whilst Munich's arcane land laws meant that any alterations in the existing street and lot layout could only be made after considerable negotiations and through the costly purchase of land. According to Der Spiegel, “Never before had an entire country been rebuilt... [i]n West Germany alone, some 400 million cubic metres of rubble was piled up after the war- enough to build a wall two metres thick and seven metres high all the way around the western half of the divided country. From an architectural and urban-planning point of view, Germany's phoenix-like resurrection from the inferno resembled a continuation of the wartime destruction by other means: Another 30 percent of the country's historic buildings were simply wiped off the map to make way for the new." Fortunately for Munich, the old was more often than not reconstructed rather than simply replaced with the type of architecture that blights not only cities in the defeated nations, but across the United Kingdom.

Hitler's painting of Tal Road looking towards Marienplatz with Heilig-Geist-Kirche on the left and the alte rathaus straight ahead.

As he had done in Vienna, he developed a routine where he could complete a picture every two or three days, usually copied from postcards of well-known tourist scenes in Munich – including the Theatinerkirche, the Asamkirche, the Hofbräuhaus, the Alter Hof, the Münzhof, the Altes Rathaus, the Sendlinger Tor, the Residenz, the Propyläen – then set out to find customers in bars, cafés, and beerhalls. His accurate but uninspired, rather soulless watercolours were, as Hitler himself later admitted when he was German Chancellor and they were selling for massively inflated prices, of very ordinary quality. But they were certainly no worse than similar products touted about the beerhalls, often the work of genuine art students seeking to pay their way. Once he had found his feet, Hitler had no difficulty finding buyers. He was able to make a modest living from his painting and exist about as comfortably as he had done in his last years in Vienna. When the Linz authorities caught up with him in 1914, he acknowledged that his income – though irregular and fluctuating – could be put at around 1,200 Marks a year, and told his court photographer Heinrich Hoffmann at a much later date that he could get by on around 80 Marks a month for living costs at that time.

Kershaw Hitler

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