Earlier, this was where Hitler commanded the SA to break up a meeting of the rival Bavarian League on September 14, 1921, also ordering its main speaker—Otto Ballerstedt of the Bavarian League— to be assaulted, too. This federalist organisation objected to the centralism of the Weimar Constitution but accepted its social programme. Ballerstedt was an engineer whom Hitler regarded as "my most dangerous opponent". One Nazi, Hermann Esser, climbed upon a chair and shouted that the Jews were to blame for the misfortunes of Bavaria and the Nazis shouted demands that Ballerstedt yield the floor to Hitler. The Nazis beat up Ballerstedt and shoved him off the stage into the audience. Hitler and Esser were arrested and Hitler commented notoriously to the police commissioner, "It's all right. We got what we wanted. Ballerstedt did not speak". As the landmark documentary Nazis: A Warning From History reveals, on January 12, 1922 Hitler was sentenced to three months in gaol for this and ended up serving only a little over one month due to the sympathy of the judge who would later oversee his putsch trial.
During the Beer Hall Putsch attempt on the night of November 8, Ernst Röhm and some 2,000 SA, Bund Oberland, and
Reichskriegflagge men assembled here at the Lowenbräukeller where they
received the code word from the Burgerbräu to march in support of the
coup.
Following the destruction of the Burgerbraukeller by Georg Elser’s bomb
blast on November 8, 1939, the Hitler and others honoured the anniversary of the 1923 Burgerbraukeller Putsch
at the Lowenbraukeller throughout the rest of the war. On November 8 1940,
Kershaw writes how, on the late afternoon of November 8, 1941, Hitler gave a speech intended primarily for domestic consumption- the so-called Stalingrad Speech made during the height of the Battle of Stalingrad. This speech is portrayed in the film Stalingrad where a group of embattled Wehrmacht soldiers, entrenched from positions within the city of Stalingrad itself, listen to Hitler while they are in turn surrounded by Soviet forces. This speech is also featured in an episode of the 1988 miniseries "War and Remembrance," when Hitler was addressing party faithful. It occurred on the same day as the Allied invasion of North Africa.
the annual commemorative festivities began in the Löwenbräukeller in Munich. The usual site for the celebrations, the Bürgerbräukeller, destroyed in the mysterious explosion of the previous year, had not yet been completely restored. Though not invited to attend the 1940 festivities, the Royal Air Force nonetheless called at Munich to contribute a special fireworks display in the skies above the Bavarian capital.In a footnote on page 830 of Shirer writes:
Doramus (2113) The Complete Hitler
I learn from Hitler’s captured daily calendar book that the celebration had been moved from the old Buergerbraukeller, where the putsch had taken place, to a more elegant beer hall in Munich, the Loewenbraukeller. The Buergerbraukeller, it will be remembered, had been wrecked by a time bomb which had just missed killing the Fuehrer on the night of November 8, 1939.
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| Hitler and other Nazi officials celebrate Christmas at a party for ϟϟ officer cadets at the Lowenbraukeller on December 18, 1941. |
It aimed to boost morale, and to rally round the oldest and most loyal members of Hitler’s retinue after the difficult months of summer and autumn. Hitler described the scale of the Soviet losses. ‘My Party Comrades,’ he declared, ‘no army in the world, including the Russian, recovers from those.’ ‘Never before,’ he went on, ‘has a giant empire been smashed and struck down in a shorter time than Soviet Russia.’ He remarked on enemy claims that the war would last into 1942. ‘It can last as long as it wants,’ he retorted. ‘The last battalion in this field will be a German one.’ Despite the triumphalism, it was the strongest hint yet that the war was far from over.
The following year
This happened to be the same day as the Anglo-American landings in
North Africa and less than a week after the defeat of Rommel’s Africa Corps by the British at El Alamein. Given how catastrophic the effect all these events had been on German morale, Hitler would never
have given a speech but he had used
the commemoration of November 8 as a pretext for his stay at the
Berghof and had no choice but to speak at the Löwenbräukeller. Unsurprisingly, the speech was one of the most
miserable he ever gave and Doramus claims that the “'old marchers of 1923'” were so preoccupied
with thoughts of the Allied landing that they even forgot at times to
applaud the Führer’s most rousing proclamations." In fact, the opening lines of this speech were used at the beginning of the film Downfall when Hitler is made to dictate them for Traudl to type out for the qualification test:
when Hitler travelled to Munich to give his traditional address in the Löwenbräukeller to the marchers in the 1923 Putsch, the news from the Mediterranean had dramatically worsened. En route from Berlin to Munich, his special train was halted at a small station in the Thuringian Forest for him to receive a message from the Foreign Office: the Allied armada assembled at Gibraltar, which had for days given rise to speculation about a probable landing in Libya, was disembarking in Algiers and Oran. It would bring the first commitment of American ground-troops to the war in Europe.
This happened to be the same day as the Anglo-American landings in
North Africa and less than a week after the defeat of Rommel’s Africa Corps by the British at El Alamein. Given how catastrophic the effect all these events had been on German morale, Hitler would never
have given a speech but he had used
the commemoration of November 8 as a pretext for his stay at the
Berghof and had no choice but to speak at the Löwenbräukeller. Unsurprisingly, the speech was one of the most
miserable he ever gave and Doramus claims that the “'old marchers of 1923'” were so preoccupied
with thoughts of the Allied landing that they even forgot at times to
applaud the Führer’s most rousing proclamations." In fact, the opening lines of this speech were used at the beginning of the film Downfall when Hitler is made to dictate them for Traudl to type out for the qualification test:On November 9, 1943, the Führer celebrated the twentieth anniversary of the Burgerbraukeller Putsch with a speech here. Besides the dead of 1923, Hitler added the commemoration of the casualties of the war from thus far. As Kershaw described this,My German Volksgenossen! Party Comrades! I believe it is quite rare when a man can appear before his supporters after almost 20 years and, in these 20 years, did not need to make any changes whatsoever in his programme.
With colleagues on the anniversary
When (for the last time, as it turned out) Hitler addressed the party’s Old Guard in Munich’s Löwenbräukeller on the putsch anniversary, 8 November, he was as defiant as ever. There would be no capitulation, no repeat of 1918, he declared once again – the nightmare of that year indelibly imprinted on his psyche – and no undermining of the front by subversion at home. Any overheard subversive or defeatist remark, it was clear, would cost the person making it his or her head.
On December 17, 1944 the main hall was completely destroyed, only rebuilt in 1950. By 1955 the entire façade had been renovated, including the tower. On the night July 23-24 1986 the hall was burnt down and eventual restoration carried out according to the plans of the original architects.
Nazi Party Headquarters, November 1921 to July 1925
The dismal back room at the Sterneckerbrau which had served as a committee-room was abandoned for new and larger offices at 12 Corneliusstrasse. Bit by bit they accumulated office furniture, files, a typewriter, and a telephone.
Bullock (76-77) Hitler: A Study in Tyranny
Hitler himself wrote in Mein Kampf:
After eighteen months our business quarters had become too small, so we moved to a new place in the Cornelius Strasse. Again our office was in a restaurant, but instead of one room we now had three smaller rooms and one large room with great windows. At that time this appeared a wonderful thing to us. We remained there until the end of November 1923.
[Max] Amann thought that the small dark corner of the Sterneckergasse was not suited to attract members, and soon found a new business office in a former restaurant at Corneliusstraße 12. There was a large room at the front, later divided by a counter. The party’s business took place there. Membership dues were collected, propaganda materials distributed, information given. The membership records were later kept in a large iron safe. Julius Schreck and others ran the counter, as well as the telephone switchboard. During the winter months, the room was a shelter for unemployed party members and supporters who made a lot of noise playing cards. At times the din was so loud that one could not talk, and Christian Weber who ran the office had to come out and clear the area with his long “riding whip.”
There was a “meeting room” in the rear, in which an old billiards table served as the conference table. Later, the growing number of typists was housed here. There was another small and hidden room for the “party leadership” and business office, in which letters were dictated and visitors received. Another room was later the office of Lieutenant Brückner, leader of the Munich S.A. Göring, the S.A.’s national leader, had his office in 1923 in the editorial building of the [Völkischer Beobachter] Schellingstraße 39/41.
Memorial to the Freikorps
Ferdinand Liebermann's 'München Freikorpsdenkmal' a Nazi memorial to the Freikorps victory over the communists in Munich in May 1919, named 'Das Denkmal für die Befreier Münchens von den kommunistischen Horden’ ('Memorial for the liberators of Munich from the communist hordes’) inaugurated May 3, 1942. Its remains can be found at this traffic intersection on Giesinger Hill which had been the site of a May 1919 battle between the Freikorps and local communists. It was made up of a twenty-four foot high relief of a naked male figure strangling a snake symbolising Judeo-Bolshevik degeneration and decline. By May 2, 1919, the Freikorps and a coalition of Prussian and Bavarian troops, collectively known as the known as the Weisse Garde, had taken the City of Munich. It was not officially announced secure until May 6 after roughly 1,200 Communists had been killed.
Ferdinand Liebermann's 'München Freikorpsdenkmal' a Nazi memorial to the Freikorps victory over the communists in Munich in May 1919, named 'Das Denkmal für die Befreier Münchens von den kommunistischen Horden’ ('Memorial for the liberators of Munich from the communist hordes’) inaugurated May 3, 1942. Its remains can be found at this traffic intersection on Giesinger Hill which had been the site of a May 1919 battle between the Freikorps and local communists. It was made up of a twenty-four foot high relief of a naked male figure strangling a snake symbolising Judeo-Bolshevik degeneration and decline. By May 2, 1919, the Freikorps and a coalition of Prussian and Bavarian troops, collectively known as the known as the Weisse Garde, had taken the City of Munich. It was not officially announced secure until May 6 after roughly 1,200 Communists had been killed. 
The German army’s impotence after the Great War was apparent on Christmas Eve when its troops, ordered to remove radicals from the Royal Stables, dispersed and went home. It was thus that a proposal was made to supplement the Reichsheer through a broad creation of Freikorps units made up of volunteers which existed in some fashion from late 1918 until 1923 who would defend the new Republic. The best known of the volunteers were the Freikorps, or regular volunteers consisting of officers and soldiers, as well as students and civilians, driven by counterrevolutionary zeal, eager for adventure, or simply seeking the ‘‘companionship of the trenches’’ and regular meals. Numbering 200,000 to 400,000 men by the spring of 1919, the 103 major Freikorps units received little direct attention from the Reichsheer and were militarily and politically unreliable. During the first half of 1919 they were used to crush both real and imagined threats throughout Germany.
Vincent (137) An Historical Dictionary of Germany’s Weimar Republic
The Freikorps memorial itself was removed after the war, but its concrete base can still be seen today on Ichostraße. Its remains apparently serve as a memorial to victims of Nazism, although the childish symbols appear intentionally vague:
Although the emblems were removed as symbols of militarism prior to January 1 1947 in accordance with Allied denazification regulations, the martial male figure itself remained standing. To be sure, little sentimental feeling existed within the local population toward the figure which already during the Third Reich had been derisively referred to as "der nackerte Lackel" or "the naked oaf. For a time however city officials seemed to consider preserving the figure for 'artistic reasons.' Nevertheless, in December 1946, the surfacing of complaints by local citizens and the energetic lobbying of the Communist city council faction (KPD) to demolish the entire structure ultimately proved decisive. Shortly thereafter, the remaining figure was torn down and the accompanying wall reduced in height to the level of the surrounding retaining walls.
The White force had in it hardened desperadoes and they shot down without cause some twenty medical orderlies and eight surrendered Red soldiers. Most infamously, the Reds executed ten people by firing squad, including the Countess Westarp. This killing was the direct result of the White atrocities at Dachau which had caused Red soldiers to ask superiors if they could take revenge. Permission was granted and the victims were rounded up and brought to courtyard of the Luitpold gymnasium. In pairs, they were placed against a wall and shot. The news of this horrific event spread quickly and, by midday of 1 May, the killings had become public knowledge. There were protest meetings all over the city, and firefights erupted.Hofbräukeller
The Whites had decided to move on 2 May. They now advanced the attack to May Day. It was held to be just and proper that they were moving into the capital on the traditional workers’ holiday. As the Whites took Munich, atrocities appeared seemingly everywhere. All White killings were said to be justified by the Luitpold executions. The Luitpold killings had also had a demoralizing impact on Red troops not involved but who had heard of them. They began throwing down their arms, as the Whites entered the city to encounter scant opposition.
The Munich political scene, immediately after the demise of the Red Republics, was profoundly altered. The disappearance of the two republics resulted in an atmosphere changed lastingly... This was the heritage which carried over into the scene after the war.
On 16 October he was one of 111 people to attend a meeting at the Hofbrauhauskeller, at which Dr Erich Kühn, editor of the radical nationalist journal Deutschlands Emeuerung (Germany’s Renewal), spoke about the Jewish Question. Hitler spoke too. A reporter from the Munich Observer reported that he ‘used inflammatory words’ and incited those present against especially the Jewish press. Three days later, and notwithstanding Drexler’s prior offer, Hitler wrote requesting membership of the [German Workers'] party.Housden (45) Hitler Study of a Revolutionary?
On the wall outside is a plaque dedicated to the victims of the Freikorps during the smashing of the Räterepublik:A hundred and eleven people turned up, and Hitler rose to address his first public meeting as the second speaker of the evening. In a bitter stream of words the dammed-up emotions, the lonely man’s suffocated feelings of hatred and impotence, burst out; like an explosion after the restriction and apathy of the past years, hallucinatory images and accusations came pouring out; abandoning restraint, he talked till he was sweating and exhausted. ‘I spoke for thirty minutes,’ he writes, ‘and what I had always felt deep down in my heart, without being able to put it to the test, proved to be true.’ Jubilantly he made the overwhelming, liberating discovery. ‘I could make a good speech!
Joachim C. Fest The Face Of The Third Reich: Portraits Of The Nazi Leadership
Translated into English, it reads:
IN MEMORY OF THE CITIZENS from Perlach:Hotel Vier Jahreszeiten
JOSEPH LUDWIG ARTUR KOCH JOHANN KEIL SEBASTIAN HUFNAGEL ALBERT DENGLER ALBERT CANCER GEORG JAKOB JOSEPH JAKOB GEORG EICHNER KONRAD ZELLER AUGUST STÖBER JOHANN SPRUCEFollowing the military defeat of the Munich Soviet Republic, these workers and craftsmen were denounced and without legal judicial proceedings were taken by the Freikorps Lützow on 5 May 1919 to the garden of the Hofbräuhaus Keller and murdered.
The Hotel Vier Jahreszeiten on Maximilianstraße where the Thule Society was founded in the early 1920s and had its headquarters.
Members of the Thule Society, a right-wing, völkisch, anti-Semitic organisation, had got hold of the stamp of the Communist military chief of Munich, the twenty-one-year-old deserter from the navy Rudolf Eglhofer, and used it to forge orders and requisitions. Ten of the members of the Thule Society were taken as hostages from a meeting at the Hotel Vier Jahreszeiten, and then, as the government forces converged on Munich, they were executed in the courtyard of the Luitpold gymnasium as a reprisal for the deaths of eight members of the Red Guard who had been killed at Dachau.
The Making of Adolf Hitler: The Birth and Rise of Nazis, Eugene Davidson (128)
The ceremonial foundation of the Thule Society took place on 17 August 1918. The society met at the fashionable Hotel Vierjahreszeiten in Munich, in rooms decorated with the Thule emblem: a long dagger, its blade surrounded by oak leaves, superimposed on a shining, curved- armed swastika.
It was here in March 13, 1935 that
Lieutenant-Colonel Hoßbach, Hitler’s Wehrmacht adjutant, was ordered to present himself the next morning in the Hotel Vier Jahreszeiten in Munich. When he arrived, Hitler was still in bed. Only shortly before midday was the military adjutant summoned to be told that the Führer had decided to reintroduce conscription in the immediate future – a move which would in the eyes of the entire world graphically demonstrate Germany’s newly regained autonomy and cast aside the military restrictions of Versailles.Kershaw Hitler
WHAT of Himmler and Hitler? Both were totally unaware of what Goebbels had done until the synagogue next to Munich’s Four Seasons Hotel was set on fire around one a.m. Heydrich, Himmler’s national chief of police, was relaxing down in the hotel bar; he hurried up to Himmler’s room, then telexed instructions to all police authorities to restore law and order, protect Jews and Jewish property, and halt any on- going incidents. The hotel management telephoned Hitler’s apartment at Prinz- Regenten-Platz, and thus he too learned that something was going on. He sent for the local police chief, Friedrich von Eberstein. Eberstein found him livid with rage.
In fact, Evans points out
The only historical truth in this account was the assertion that Heydrich sent a telex to the German police authorities. Everything else was a blatant manipulation of the historical record. Even a cursory glance at the telex showed that it ordered the opposite of what Irving claimed it did. What Heydrich was telling the police was not to prevent the destruction of Jewish property or get in the way of violent acts against German Jews.(57) Lying About Hitler
This was also where Daladier and his entourage stayed September 29, 1938 during the Munich conference whilst Chamberlain and the Czech representatives went to the Regina Palast Hotel on Maximiliansplatz 5. Later that year after attending the midnight oath-taking ceremony for SS candidates on Odeonsplatz, Himmler retired here where he followed the news of the events of Kristallnacht.
The hotel also plays a significant role in the Fleming novel On Her Majesty’s Secret Service after James Bond arrives in Munich from Zurich where he is met at the airport by his fiancée Tracy, who drives him to her “favourite hotel in the world.” Bond drinks at the hotel bar and makes plans to dine at Walterspiel’s which had once been located inside the hotel.
She got up briskly. 'I suppose I've got to get used to doing what you say. I'll drive to Munich. To the Vier Jahreszeiten. It's my favourite hotel in the world. I'll wait for you there. They know me. They'll take me in without any luggage. Everything's at Samaden. I'll just have to send out for a toothbrush and stay in bed for two days until I can go out and get some things. You'll telephone me? Talk to me? When can we get married? I must tell Papa. He'll be terribly excited.'
'Let's get married in Munich. At the Consulate. I've got a kind of diplomatic immunity. I can get the papers through quickly. Then we can be married again in an English church, or Scottish rather. That's where I come from. I'll call you up tonight and tomorrow. I'll get to you just as soon as I can. I've got to finish this business first.'
Recently Harry Kane racked up a £1 million tab at his £10,000-a-night hotel suite here....
Editorial Offices of Münchner Neueste Nachrichten
Memorial plaque to Dr. Fritz Gerlich, editor-in-chief and subject of film "Hitler: The Rise of Evil." From 1920 to 1928 he was editor in chief of the Münchner Neueste Nachrichten (MNN), a predecessor to today's Süddeutsche Zeitung in that its circulation was one of the largest in southern Germany. As editor, Gerlich opposed the Nazis whom he described as and Hitler's Nazi Party as "murderous". In the early 1920s, he had seen proof of Nazi tyranny already in Munich. Once a conservative nationalist, after the 1923 Beer Hall Putsch Gerlich decisively turned against Hitler and became one of his fiercest critics. Other critics of the Nazis at the newspaper were later arrested within days of Gerlich, includingFritz Buechner, who followed Gerlich as the editor of the MNN, Erwein Freiherr von Aretin, who was domestic editor at the MNN, and Cossmann, who wrote for the MNN, all of whom had steered the MNN to support a return of the monarchy. After the Nazis seized power in Germany, they quickly decided to remove Gerlich as shown in this scene from the film where he is arrested on March 9, 1933 and brought to the Dachau concentration camp, where he was murdered on July 1, 1934 during the Night of the Long Knives according to David Irving, through the orders of Hermann Göring:
Who, other than Göring, would have ordered the pickax murder of seventy-one- year-old ex-dictator Gustav von Kahr and Munich journalist Fritz Gerlich? Kahr had betrayed the 1923 beer hall putsch. Gerlich had claimed that Göring broke his word of honour to escape; Göring had sued him for libel and lost. Now both those old scores were settled, permanently.
Göring (209)
After his death his wife received confirmation of her husband's death when his blood-spattered glasses were delivered to her home.
At Gerlich's former residence this plaque was placed: "The journalist Dr. Fritz Gerlich lived in this house up to his arrest on 9.3.1933. As an opponent of the Third Reich he was murdered on 30.6.1934 in the KZ Dachau." The video on the right is from Hitler: Rise of Evil
SA men after ransacking the offices of the Münchener Post at Wittelsbacher Platz 2 on March 9, 1933. The social-democratic paper was one of the Nazis' most vocal opponents who the latter referred to as the "Munich plague" and the "poison kitchen."
Ron Rosenbaum writes of
'the lost safe-deposit box. A place where allegedly revelatory documents - ones that might provide the missing link, the lost key to the Hitler psyche, the true source of his metamorphosis - seem to disappear beyond recovery." This mythology was inspired by real events in Munich in 1933, when Fritz Gerlich, the last anti- Hitler journalist in that city, made a desperate attempt to alert the world to the true nature of Hitler by means of a report of an unspecified scandal. On 9 March, just as Gerlich's newspaper, Der Gerade Weg, was about to go to press, SA storm troopers entered the premises and ripped it from the presses.
Although no copy of the Gerlich report has ever been found, rumours have been circulating for many years about the ultimate fate of the information with which Gerlich hoped to warn the world of the danger of Hitler, one of which involves a secret copy of the report that was smuggled out of the premises (along with supporting documentary material) by one Count Waldburg-Zeil. Waldburg-Zeil allegedly took the report and its supporting documents to his estate north of Munich, where he buried them somewhere in the grounds. According to Gerlich's biographer Erwin von Aretin, however, Waldburg-Zeil destroyed them during the war, fearful of what might happen should they be discovered by the Nazi authorities.
Rosenbaum informs us of an alternative version of these events, involving documents proving that Geli Raubal was indeed killed on the orders of Adolf Hitler. According to von Aretin's son, the historian Professor Karl-Ottmar Freiherr von Aretin, his father gave the documents to his cousin, Karl Ludwig Freiherr von Guttenberg, co-owner of the Munchener Neueste Nachrichten, who put them in a safe-deposit box in Switzerland. Guttenberg was killed following his involvement in the attempted coup against Hitler on 20 July 1944. For the sake of security, he had not told anyone the number of the safe- deposit-box account.Baker Invisible Eagle
Maximilianeum
Built as the home of a gifted students' foundation and has also housed the Bavarian Landtag (state parliament) since 1949 by leading architect Friedrich Bürklein, the building is situated on the bank of river Isar before the Maximilian Bridge and marks the eastern end of the Maximilianstrasse, one of Munich's royal avenues which is framed by neo-Gothic palaces influenced by the English Perpendicular style. Due to statical problems the construction was only completed in 1874 and the façade of the Maximilianeum which was originally planned also in neo-Gothic style had to be altered in renaissance style under the influence of Gottfried Semper. The façade was decorated with arches, columns, mosaics and niches filled with busts. The building was extended on its back for new parliament offices, several modern wings were added in 1958, 1964, 1992 and again in 2012.
The statue of Athena which stands on the bridge used as its model the daughter of renowned Munich
architect Friedrich von Thiersch. It would be Frieda Thiersch who would be responsible for the
swastika-motif mosaics in the ceiling panels of the Haus der Kunst's front portico and who also bound the text to Hitler’s speech
for the opening of the same House of German Art as related by expert Michael Shaughnessy. The fascination for Frieda Thiersch's work has remained unbroken to this day; her work remains sought-after collector's items, and the document portfolios in particular are so highly traded that large quantities of forgeries are in circulation. Both in terms of style and content, Frieda Thiersch's work is divided into two phases, which are also of interest to two completely different groups of collectors: on the one hand, the bibliophile works and on the other hand, the representational works after 1933, which pay homage to the monumental style, which despite all their technical perfection can be classified as largely artistically meaningless and which are very popular with collectors of Nazi paraphernalia. It is not known how Frieda Thiersch personally felt about the Nazis. What is certain, however, is that she used the system at least very uncritically and enjoyed being able to draw on the full potential of her work. Her long-term collaboration with Gerdy Troost, a close confidante of Winifred Wagner who was notorious for her unconditional admiration for Hitler, suggests that Frieda Thiersch didn't distance herself from National Socialist ideology either.
Hitler's supposed painting of the Maximilianeum and the view today. The palatial Maximilianeum was built as the home of a gifted students' foundation by King Maximilian II of Bavaria, who started the project in 1857. The building is situated on the bank of the Isar in front of the Maximilian Bridge and marks the eastern end of the Maximilianstrasse, one of Munich's royal avenues which is framed by neo-Gothic palaces influenced by the English Perpendicular style. It was only completed in 1874 and the facade of the Maximilianeum, which was originally planned also in neo-Gothic style, had to be altered in Renaissance style under the influence of Gottfried Semper, and decorated with arches, columns, mosaics and niches filled with busts. The purpose of the foundation went through its most turbulent time during the interwar years, surviving the abolition of the monarchy after the Great War unscathed when Max II had decreed that the post of protector would pass from the King to the President of the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität.
Nevertheless, the great inflation of the 1920s dealt a heavy blow to the institution, during which it lost almost all its money which was valued at roughly 1.5 million Reichsmarks. As the foundation could not survive on the entrance fees of the visitors to the gallery, parts of the building were let and the students had to pay for the privilege of living in the Maximilianeum. The situation didn't improve during the Third Reich as the Foundation was not only still out of funds but it was also faced with massive attempts to bring it into line. Despite intimidation, the foundation managed to protect its independence and successfully thwarted all plans to have Nazi Party institutions move in. It didn't do so unscathed however as Eduard Hamm, who had been German Minister for Economic Affairs between 1923 and 1925, was arrested and abused on September 2, 1944, before apparently taking his own life on September 23, 1944, by jumping out of a window during a Gestapo interrogation. However, there were some Maximilianeers who joined the Nazi movement such as Theodor von der Pfordten, one of Hitler's henchmen who was killed during the Beer Hall Putsch in front of the Feldherrnhalle, and Franz Gürtner, German Minister of Justice between 1932 and 1941.
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Outside the building on April 17, 1944 during the funeral ceremony of Munich Gauleiter Adolf Wagner after his body had lain in lay in state in the Maximilianeum before being interred beside an Ehrentempel next to the Brown House and today. After attending the funeral ceremony at the Congress Hall of the German Museum in Munich, Hitler awarded
him the Golden Cross with Oak Leaves of the German Order and laid a
wreath. Goebbels delivered the eulogy. Another wreath from the Führer
was laid for the “commander of the guard on duty at the Eternal Guard”
at the northern pantheon at the Königlicher Platz, where Wagner was
buried on Hitler’s orders. Hitler appointed Wagner’s successor Giesler
as Bavarian prime minister, which made him the successor of Ludwig
Siebert, too. In a solemn ceremony at the Führerbau on the Königlicher
Platz, Hitler personally presented Giesler with his certificates of
appointment.
Shortly before the end of the war, the Munich Art Exhibition was held in the gallery space. Towards the end of the war, two-thirds of the building was bombed. After the war, the building was rebuilt by Karl Kergl. In 1949, the Bavarian State Parliament elected the building as its headquarters, which necessitated corresponding changes in the gallery space. The former Bayrische Landtag on Prannerstraße had already been badly damaged during the war. When the construction of the Maximilianeum became too small for its intended use, the east wings were added with offices and meeting rooms.
German Research institute for Psychiatry
Opened in 1917, the Deutsche Forschungsanstalt für Psychiatrie on Kraepelinstraße 2 served during the NS era in the intellectual preparation and “justification” of the murder of “lebensunwert”. In 1934 it sponsored the “Law for Preventing Hereditary Illness into the Next Generation” ("Gesetz zur Verhütung erbkranken Nachwuchses") and approved of patient killings.
Research on eugenics was done primarily at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity, and Eugenics in Berlin-Dahlem (directed by Eugen Fischer from 1927, its founding, to 1942, and by Otmar von Verschuer from 1942 to 1945) and the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Genealogy and Demography of the Deutsche Forschungsanstalt (directed by Ernst Riidin) in Munich.
Kristie Macrakis (125) Surviving the Swastika : Scientific Research in Nazi Germany
The Headquarters of the Bayerische Vereinsbank on Prannerstraße adorned with Hitler's visage and swastika during the morning roll for the April 10, 1938 elections and today, extensively remodelled.
Deutschen Museum
Hitler toured the museum on April 1, 1935. The
museum had hosted a set of ideological Special exhibitions, which were
conceived in Munich as itinerant exhibitions. 1936 saw the opening of
the anti-Semitic and antisoviet propaganda exhibition "Der
Bolschewismus" in the presence of representatives from 37 states. It
had 350,000 visitors, who were brought in by special trains from
throughout Europe. On the left, Joseph
Goebbels and other Nazi officials are greeted by saluting Germans as
they proceed toward the Bibliothek des Deutschen Museums for the
opening of Der ewige Jude on November 8, 1937.
View from the "Uferstrasse" (now Museuminsel) to the library building of the German Museum, 1937. The huge poster of the propaganda exhibition "The Eternal Jew" was illuminated at night. Over
the past decades the Deutsches Museum, one of the largest science and
technology museums in the world, has carefully maintained an
interpretation of its history during the Third Reich. In this portrayal,
the museum was caught between the opposing poles of either cooperation
with or resistance to the regime, which, in the end, meant that the
museum counted itself among the victims of National Socialism. In fact,
according to Das Deutsche Museum in der Zeit des Nationalsozialismus
by Prof. Dr. Elisabeth Vaupel and Dr. Stefan L. Wolff, this
interpretation of the museum’s past as an apolitical, purely scientific and
technological educational institution, is nothing less than fictional. Here the exterior facing the Isar, shown sporting Nazi flags and the logo for Der ewige Jude exhibition, was extensively redeveloped in 1951 with the eagle replaced as shown.
Nevertheless, after 1934 the library building housed several special exhibitions focusing specifically on contemporary technological developments, such as television or “New German Synthetic Materials.” 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 library building also served as host to several other externally designed propaganda exhibits such as the infamous “The Eternal Jew” referred to above. Here Drake Winston is in front of the library entrance and as it appeared during the exhibition "Der ewige Jude" in November 1937. The exhibition
was held here in the Library of the German Museum until January 31, 1938 and was the largest pre-war anti-Semitic exhibit the Nazis held. It
emphasised supposed attempts by Jews to bolshevise Germany, It did
this by revealing an 'eastern' Jew - wearing a kaftan, and holding gold
coins in one hand and a whip in the other. Under his arm is a map of
the world, with the imprint of the hammer and sickle. The exhibition
attracted 412,300 visitors which was over 5,000 per day, seeing 400,000 visitors by January 1938.
View from the "Uferstrasse" (now Museuminsel) to the library building of the German Museum, 1937. The huge poster of the propaganda exhibition "The Eternal Jew" was illuminated at night. Over
the past decades the Deutsches Museum, one of the largest science and
technology museums in the world, has carefully maintained an
interpretation of its history during the Third Reich. In this portrayal,
the museum was caught between the opposing poles of either cooperation
with or resistance to the regime, which, in the end, meant that the
museum counted itself among the victims of National Socialism. In fact,
according to Das Deutsche Museum in der Zeit des Nationalsozialismus
by Prof. Dr. Elisabeth Vaupel and Dr. Stefan L. Wolff, this
interpretation of the museum’s past as an apolitical, purely scientific and
technological educational institution, is nothing less than fictional. Here the exterior facing the Isar, shown sporting Nazi flags and the logo for Der ewige Jude exhibition, was extensively redeveloped in 1951 with the eagle replaced as shown.
When the Nazis came to power, the Deutsches Museum was directed by ultimately by the museum founder Oskar von Miller. The local Munich Nazi party had been opposed to Miller as early as the end of the 1920s, especially after he had refused to allow a statue of Otto von Bismarck shown below to be erected on the museum grounds. Once the city government, controlled by the NSDAP, refused to support the museum’s yearly board meeting (as it had long been accustomed to do) and after Adolf Hitler refused to accept the honorary post of museum 
president (an honour gladly assumed by every chancellor since 1923), Miller feared he would no longer be of any service to his museum and therefore resigned his post on May 7, 1933 on his 78th birthday. His successor was Jonathan Zenneck who had already taken on many of Miller’s responsibilities during the few months prior to the announcement and who, as a member of the German National People’s Party (DNVP), sympathised with the regime and supported the Civil Service Act allowing for the removal of those opposed to it and any defined as having Jewish ancestry. Zenneck was responsible for carrying out the law’s provisions among the museum staff resulting in two employees being fired, one for political reasons, the other on racial grounds.
president (an honour gladly assumed by every chancellor since 1923), Miller feared he would no longer be of any service to his museum and therefore resigned his post on May 7, 1933 on his 78th birthday. His successor was Jonathan Zenneck who had already taken on many of Miller’s responsibilities during the few months prior to the announcement and who, as a member of the German National People’s Party (DNVP), sympathised with the regime and supported the Civil Service Act allowing for the removal of those opposed to it and any defined as having Jewish ancestry. Zenneck was responsible for carrying out the law’s provisions among the museum staff resulting in two employees being fired, one for political reasons, the other on racial grounds.
Miller then installed publisher Hugo Bruckmann as the head of the governing body despite the latter not possessing any particular qualifications for his position as the
head of the museum. He was related to Miller by marriage however and had been one of the early supporters of the NSDAP and had known Hitler personally for a number of years.
After Miller’s death on April 9, 1934, the museum tried to persuade important Nazi politicians to support and work for the museum such as Fritz Todt, Inspector General for German Roadways who had organised the exhibition “Die Strasse” in Munich in 1934. Museum officials wanted to use both Todt’s fame and connections as “head engineer of the Third Reich” to redesign the museum’s exhibition on streets which would feature the politically relevant theme of the Reich’s autobahn-building efforts. Officials hoped that Todt could prove useful assistance in realising this project, particularly in providing the necessary funds.
Hitler
on his first official visit to the Deutsches Museum on January 4, 1935
accompanied by Bruckmann (left of Hitler). Hitler
was particularly interested in the congress hall, the
airships, road construction, automotive and shipbuilding departments where he was especially captivated with the model of the battleship Deutschland,
donated to the museum in August 1934 from the Imperial
Navy Office and represented a prime specimen of the new German weapon
technology.
Nevertheless, after 1934 the library building housed several special exhibitions focusing specifically on contemporary technological developments, such as television or “New German Synthetic Materials.” 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 library building also served as host to several other externally designed propaganda exhibits such as the infamous “The Eternal Jew” referred to above. Here Drake Winston is in front of the library entrance and as it appeared during the exhibition "Der ewige Jude" in November 1937. The exhibition
was held here in the Library of the German Museum until January 31, 1938 and was the largest pre-war anti-Semitic exhibit the Nazis held. It
emphasised supposed attempts by Jews to bolshevise Germany, It did
this by revealing an 'eastern' Jew - wearing a kaftan, and holding gold
coins in one hand and a whip in the other. Under his arm is a map of
the world, with the imprint of the hammer and sickle. The exhibition
attracted 412,300 visitors which was over 5,000 per day, seeing 400,000 visitors by January 1938.
According to Hoffmann, Broadwin, Berghahn (173),SS-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 under handed, 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.
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 re- served for pornography, which is exactly the genre to which this film belongs.
In
1937 the three-man governing body was expanded to include five men
including Todt who sought to use the museum as an instrument for his own
political goals through the National Socialist Association for German
Technology (NSBDT), an organisation he himself led. He hoped to build a
new “House of Technology” on the Isar directly opposite the Deutsches
Museum, placing various technological developments in their different
political contexts. His plans remained unrealised after he died in a plane crash in 1942.
The Nazi-era eagle and arms of Munich remain on the façade below the astronomical clock. In the post-war period, these conflicts were stylised into a confrontation with National Socialism in general. Those areas in which the Deutsches Museum had sought to work with the regime were forgotten and repressed. Following the war the museum had to be closed for repairs and temporary tenants, such as the College of Technology and the Post Office used museum space as their own buildings were being reconstructed. The Museum was also home to the Central Committee of the Liberated Jews, representing Jewish displaced persons in the American Zone of Germany after the war.
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
Deutsches Museum Kongreßsaal
Standing in front of the Congress Hall 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).
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. 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 Ludwigsbruecke from before the war. On November 3 1935, Hitler delivered a speech at the official opening of the rebuilt Ludwig Bridge in Munich. 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.
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 hap pen 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
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 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 Ludwigsbruecke 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 organizational 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.
The largest thermometer in Germany on the Deutschen Museum's tower in 1930 and seen from the Boschbrücke today.
Entrance to the Deutsches Museum: Verkehrszentrum
View of the 1938 automobile exhibition. At the end of the hall alongside the Nazi eagle are busts of Benz, Daimler, Maybach and Bosch. After Hitler had made made another official visit to the Deutschen Museum in April 1935 to see a new temporary
exhibition, it was with some trepidation that Hugo Bruckmann led the
Führer through the dated automobile division. But because Hitler was
interested in introducing mass mobilisation to Germany, officials hoped
that the exhibit could be updated and made more relevant, following the
political trend of the times. Thanks to the assistance of two men who
sat on the museum’s governing boards, the museum could announce that
Hitler had promised two million Reichsmarks for the revision of both the
automobile and flight divisions which would be used to open a new
building with exhibition space in 1938 and financed the new automobile
exhibit. The
exhibition served as a model for the redesign of the land transport
exhibition in the Deutsches Museum. The revised land transport
exhibition of the Deutsches Museum consisted of two halls, one of which
was the so-called Reichsautobahnschau. The almost exclusive focus on the German autobahn led many at
the time to refer to the exhibit ironically as the “German autobahn
show” which seemed to move away from earlier museum practices, which
focused displaying only masterpieces of science and technology. The
display of a shovel that Hitler had used to break ground at the
beginning of the autobahn project near Frankfurt am Main did not meet
this criterion, nor did the Mercedes that was on display in the
automobile division because it had once been the Hitler’s. 
Nearby across the Bavaria Park is the Ruhmeshalle, shown after the war and today with the statue of Bavaria behind. Located on the
Theresienwiese, this was the site of one of Hitler's early showdowns against the ruling powers which
This is of course has traditionally been the site of Munich's Oktoberfest which during the Third Reich became thoroughly Nazified. From the beginning in 1933, the Nazis set the price for beer to ninety pfennigs. In addition, the Nazi-dominated city council waived the previously mandatory opening meal of the councillors. Instead there was an "unemployment benefit" every year with fried meat and Oktoberfest measure. Hitler, who is said to have been a strict teetotaler, never showed up at Oktoberfest. However, the fact that the dictator also knew about the Oktoberfest's propagandistic value is evidenced by a "Führer" order from 1938 in which he swarned against any possible redesign of the Theresienwiese, rejecting earlier plans by Nazi architects who planned to demolish the Hall of Fame and Bavaria. According to the dictator, the Oktoberfest was "something sacred for the people of Munich, an old tradition is associated with it and it must not be touched". Other top Nazis did use Oktoberfest to show their alleged closeness to the people; after first publicly having the fish, Hermann Göring laid siege to the crowd and distributed pretzels and chocolate hearts to cheering children in a beer tent. Goebbels too attended as one of the invited guests.
After the first Oktoberfest Sunday in 1935, when a huge pageant meandered through Munich city centre on the occasion of the 125th anniversary of the Oktoberfest, the Völkische Beobachter remaked on a "pageant that became the triumphal procession of the fraternization of peasants and townspeople" in which the Hitler Youth marched "welcomed by lively calls". The motto that year, "Proud City - Happy Country," demonstrated the alleged overcoming of the classes.
The majority of the sellers and innkeepers quickly adapted to the new regime; Standl owners boasted of "real German cheese", "German fruit" or "German grape must". Nevertheless, there were also forms of protest against the unjust state at the Oktoberfest: in the fall of 1938, for example, one operator of a children's railway by the name of Schieri incurred the regime's wrath when he had distributed hundreds of flags with the papal coat of arms to children in front of his ride. A Nazi party member who became aware of this denounced the him to the Nazi district leadership. The Gestapo immediately confiscated the remaining flags and interrogated the man who eventually claimed that he "did not look at" the gift flags at the time of purchase. Loyalty to the line was also the decisive criterion for the Nazis when awarding contracts at the Oktoberfest. Entrepreneurs who refused to face the dictatorship lived dangerously or had to fear for their economic existence. This was also felt by the Munich confectioner Gerlinger, who had supplied the town's "Glückshafen" booth at Oktoberfest in previous years. Despite multiple threats, the baker refused to join the NSV. In June 1937, a Nazi official asked the city to exclude Gerlinger from future orders for the Oktoberfest "because he is to be regarded as an opponent of the National Socialist state". Another confectioner then got the order. As early as 1936, one of the best-known Munich brewer dynasties, the Jewish Schülein family, had to flee to America from the Nazis. Hermann Schülein had brought Löwenbräu through the difficult twenties. His father Josef, who was also called "King of Haidhausen" because of his charity and employee-friendliness, had once merged Unionbräu, which he had founded, with Löwenbräu. In 1933 the Nazis banned Jews from working at the Oktoberfest.
Souvenirs added
swastikas to their depictions of the Münchner Kindl (Munich
Child),
the festival’s trademark. By 1936, swastika flags had replaced the
traditional Bavarian blue and white banners. In 1938, even the
festival’s name had changed. It was now called the Greater German
Folk Festival in honour of Austria’s recent ‘return’ to the Reich.
Throughout Germany, Fasching (Mardi Gras) parades were similarly
infused with Nazism, nowhere more so than in Cologne, home of the
renowned Karneval. While the regime dictated that carnival organizers
had to make sure a ‘happy mood’ reigned, the most menacing face of
Nazism was readily apparent: floats carrying anti-Semitic slogans and
stereotypical representations of Jews, such as ‘Deviserich’, the Jewish
banker, joined the parade from 1935 onwards.
Theresienwiese, this was the site of one of Hitler's early showdowns against the ruling powers which
came on May 1, 1923, the traditional International Workers' Day. Informed that Communists and Socialists planned big rallies for May Day, Hitler and the Nazis decided to thwart and attack them. Drawing their weapons out of the Reichswehr arsenal-where they had been stored under special arrangement with the army-Hitler's men assembled on Theresa's Meadow, the massive field where the Octoberfest is held every year. But the Nazis were kept a great distance from their leftist adversaries and were eventually surrounded by police and the Reichswehr. Along with their right-wing allies, Hitler's men were forced to stand down and return their weapons to the Reichswehr armoury. This was ... a nasty propaganda defeat for Hitler- the only one he would suffer in the months leading up to his putsch. Nursing his wounds, Hitler withdrew for several weeks to his preferred Alpine retreat, Berchtesgaden, near the Austrian border.Peter Ross Range, 1924: The Year That Made Hitler
This is of course has traditionally been the site of Munich's Oktoberfest which during the Third Reich became thoroughly Nazified. From the beginning in 1933, the Nazis set the price for beer to ninety pfennigs. In addition, the Nazi-dominated city council waived the previously mandatory opening meal of the councillors. Instead there was an "unemployment benefit" every year with fried meat and Oktoberfest measure. Hitler, who is said to have been a strict teetotaler, never showed up at Oktoberfest. However, the fact that the dictator also knew about the Oktoberfest's propagandistic value is evidenced by a "Führer" order from 1938 in which he swarned against any possible redesign of the Theresienwiese, rejecting earlier plans by Nazi architects who planned to demolish the Hall of Fame and Bavaria. According to the dictator, the Oktoberfest was "something sacred for the people of Munich, an old tradition is associated with it and it must not be touched". Other top Nazis did use Oktoberfest to show their alleged closeness to the people; after first publicly having the fish, Hermann Göring laid siege to the crowd and distributed pretzels and chocolate hearts to cheering children in a beer tent. Goebbels too attended as one of the invited guests. After the first Oktoberfest Sunday in 1935, when a huge pageant meandered through Munich city centre on the occasion of the 125th anniversary of the Oktoberfest, the Völkische Beobachter remaked on a "pageant that became the triumphal procession of the fraternization of peasants and townspeople" in which the Hitler Youth marched "welcomed by lively calls". The motto that year, "Proud City - Happy Country," demonstrated the alleged overcoming of the classes.
 |
| The site directly after the war and today |
Semmens (65) Seeing Hitler's Germany- Tourism in the Third Reich
In 1938 during the Munich conference, the instrumentalisation of the Oktoberfest by the Nazis reached its peak with the Nazis renaming Oktoberfest the "Großdeutsches Volksfest" with thousands of Austrians and Sudeten Germans enlisted to participate in it for propaganda purposes. During the war it did not take place given the fear of allied air raids. For three years after the war Munich celebrated only the "Autumn Fest" during which time the sale of proper Oktoberfest beer—2% stronger in gravity than normal beer—was not permitted; guests could only drink normal beer.
The statue of Bavaria with the Ruhmeshalle in the background in 1945 with American soldiers sitting in the left foreground and my bike in front today.More recently, Oktoberfest was the target for a right-wing terrorist attack when, on September 26, 1980, twelve people were killed and 211 injured by the explosion of an improvised explosive device at the main entrance. The attack remains the second-deadliest in Germany since the war and was attributed to the right-wing extremist and geology student Gundolf Köhler who was killed while placing the bomb; however, doubts remain as to whether he acted alone by many, including local politicians, victims and various journalists and attorneys given the known connections between Köhler and the Wehrsportgruppe Hoffmann, a known neo-Nazi militia, which were all but ignored in the final report. Additionally, numerous accounts of the attack itself mentioned Köhler speaking to two individuals wearing olive parkas immediately prior to the explosion as well as statements that a second individual was seen with Köhler looking into the plastic bag that the IED was believed to be in.The last remaining pieces of evidence from the attack such as shrapnel from the IED were disposed of in 1997, causing further controversy due to the political background of the attack and the lingering questions surrounding the official investigation.
The
Ruhmeshalle (Bavarian Hall of Fame) in ruins after the war and today, in front of which stands Ludwig Schwanthaler's nineteen metre high Bavaria from whose head one can have a remarkable view. Built in 1850, the Bavaria is considered the first colossal sculpture of modern times, The Bavaria with its unmistakably Old Germanic features through its clothing with simple dress and bearskin is the only large bronze that can be walked on in Germany. In its cavity one can climb a steep spiral staircase to a viewing platform within its head. The Hall of Fame was rebuilt from 1965 to 1972; in 1966, the Council of Ministers of the Free State of Bavaria decided to preserve the building and continue to honour personalities from Bavaria who had made a contribution to the people and the state. The
area its in, Versammlungsplatz, was one of the main preferential
rendezvous points of the left political spectrum since 1818. On
November 7, 1918 it was the scene of the demonstration for the end of
the Great War, leading to the collapse of the monarchy and to the
proclamation of the Free State of Bavaria. In February 1919 the place
was the starting point of the protest march against the murder of Karl
Liebknecht and Rosa Luxembourg. From 1922 the socialist trade unions
met here and its demonstrations on May 1, 1923 were threatened by armed
National Socialists and banned in 1924, 1925 and 1932. From 1933 May 1
was taken over by the Nazis as the 'Day of German Work' on the
Theresienwiese.
King Ludwig intended to create a hall of fame that honours laudable and distinguished people of his kingdom including the Palatinate, Franconia and Swabia, as he did also in the Walhalla memorial for all of Germany and the Hall today houses the marble busts of noteworthy
Bavarians including a recent one of von Stauffenberg. The bust itself
appears to have been mutilated; a probable example of the debate whether
his actions in launching the July Plot were those of an hero or
villain. A controversial new biography from 2019 by Thomas Karlaufhas, Stauffenberg. Porträt eines Attentäters, makes the point that Stauffenberg did not try to kill Hitler because of the extermination of the Jews, his repudiation of the regime he had earlier loyally served, or to renounce any land taken during the Nazi regime. He did it simply because Hitler was losing the war; the July Plot after came six weeks after D-Day, and Stauffenberg and the other plotters simply wanted to gettid of their leader in the hopes of being able to negotiate with the British and Americans, hopefully being able to ward off the Soviets and keep as much of their loot as possible. NSDAP Publishing House
Thierschstraße
11-17, the former headquarters of the Reich Chief for the Press and
President of the Reich Chamber of the Press. On December 17, 1920 the Nazis acquired the previously insignificant
company and founded, in the summer of 1923, its own publishing house. Up
until 1933 it formed the party's financial backbone. This was where Mein Kampf and other Nazi publications were produced, including the party newspaper Völkischer Beobachter,
an anti-Semitic gossip sheet which appeared twice a week. Exactly where the sixty thousand marks for its purchase came from was a secret which Hitler kept well, but it is known that Eckart and Roehm persuaded Major General Ritter von Epp, Roehm’s commanding officer in the Reichswehr and himself a member of the party, to raise the sum. Most likely it came from Army secret funds. At the beginning of 1923 the Voelkischer Beobachter became a daily, thus giving Hitler the prerequisite of all German political parties, a daily newspaper in which to preach the party’s gospels.The headquarters of the publishing house was a poorly representative, three-story building at Thierschstrasse 11 near Munich's Isartorplatz. In 1918 the sheet became the property of the Thule Society. The “ völkisch ” anti-Semite Rudolf von Sebottendorfacquired the publisher's license for the newspaper from his widow Friederike Eher for 5,000 Reichsmarks and from July 1918 also took over the editing. On September 14, 1918, Sebottendorff's wealthy friend Käthe Bierbaumer from Freiburg im Breisgau was entered in the commercial register as the owner of the Franz Eher Nachf publishing house and on September 30, 1919, it became the "Franz Eher Successor GmbH". In August 1919, the name was changed to Völkischer Beobachter. With a print run of around 7,000 copies, the paper accumulated debts of 250,000 marks by the end of 1920 and was facing bankruptcy. On December 17, 1920, the Nazis acquired the then ailing paper for 120,000 marks. The following day, the VB publicly operated as the Nazis' party newspaper, financed through the mediation of the anti-Semitic writer Dietrich Eckart by Major General Franz Ritter von Epp , who provided a loan of 60,000 marks, apparently from a secret fund of the Reichswehr to support right-wing extremist organizations.
Shirer (42) Rise And Fall Of The Third Reich
At the site of the building today. Hitler himself wrote numerous articles up to 1922, but was later only rarely active as an author. He remained editor until April 30, 1933. The circulation increased enormously with the success of the National Socialist movement, in 1931 it reached over 120,000, exceeded the million mark in 1941 and is said to have amounted to 1.7 million copies in 1944. From February 1941, the paper gave up the Fraktur typeface that had been
generally used in Germany up to that point and was set entirely in the
modern antiqua, which the Nazis described as "tasteful and clear" and
which should correspond to the "world status of the Reich" claimed by
the propaganda. A few days before the German surrender , the Völkischer Beobachter ceased its publication at the end of April 1945. The last edition of April 30, 1945 was no longer delivered. Its assets were transferred after the war
to the Bavarian State and the publishing house was liquidated in 1952. 
Bergverlag Rudolf Rother
At another publishing house, the metal grills at the office at Landshuter Allee 49 retain the swastikas:
This was the office of Bergverlag Rudolf Rother. Since 1950 the company has published the Alpine Club Guides in cooperation with the German Alpine Club (DAV), the Austrian Alpine Club (ÖAV) and the South Tyrol Alpine Club. Rother published a "famous series of English language guides" covering most of the popular walking destinations in the Alps and Europe. The company was founded on November 16, 1920 in Munich by Rudolf Rother, a bookseller and mountaineer, and is one of the oldest and most important specialist Alpine publishers. The publishing house was based on Verlag Walter Schmidkunz, which went out of business and in which Rother was a co-owner. After the firm had sold its in-house mail-order service, the magazine Bergwelt ("Mountain World") and its own printers in the 1980s, the family business was taken over in 1990 by Freytag-Berndt & Artaria.
Hitler visiting the Orthopädischen Klinik at Harlachinger Straße 12, on July 4, 1937.
Atelier Josef Thorak
Located just behind a children's playground today. Joseph Thorak was, alongside Arno Breker, the most important sculptor of the Third Reich.Hitler visited Thorak’s Berlin studio in 1936 and the two men discussed “great projects.” In January 1937, Thorak wrote Adolf Wagner—a Gauleiter and the Bavarian minister of interior, education, and culture—and requested a new studio, reporting, of course, on his recent meeting with Hitler.This initiative paid off, and in October, Wagner accompanied the recently appointed professor at the Munich Academy to the lake region fifteen kilometres southeast of Munich to inspect potential sites. This led to the construction of (the first) studio at Baldham, which was paid for with state funds—a sum in excess of RM 215,000.298 The initial structure, however, was soon perceived as too small, and the following year, Hitler commissioned Albert Speer, a good friend of Thorak’s, to design another. The new atelier was so large—over four stories high—that it easily accommodated figures with heights in excess of fifty feet, as was the case for the Autobahn monument. The massive stone atelier, which postwar experts considered razing but deemed “virtually indestructible,” cost around RM 1,500,000.300 This structure reflected the usual grand patronage of the Nazi leaders, but also their typical means of proceeding: after the war, the man who owned the land used for the Thorak structures claimed that it was “earlier his family property which he had sold only under pressure.” Such considerations were of slight importance at the time, however, and amidst the construction of Speer’s building in February 1939, Thorak held a huge party (ein Richtfest) which attracted a throng of Nazi Germany’s political and cultural luminaries.
Petropoulos (265-266) The Faustian Bargain - The Art World in Nazi Germany
During
the war, St. Joseph was nearly destroyed by a bomb attack on June 13,
1944 although, as shown here, the tower suffered little damage. The
entire interior decoration, whose main historically significant pieces
were the 14 monumental stations of the cross by Gebhard Fugel, were
destroyed. The heavily war-torn St. Joseph church was rebuilt in a
simplified manner. Until the reopening in 1952, services took place in a
wooden emergency church. The stucco in the barrel vault was only
installed 1983. The 1945 watercolours by G. Reitz show the extent of the
wartime damage.
The actual site
of the trial of the participants in the so-called Beer Hall putsch in
the barracks of the Infantry School on the corner of Blutenburgstraße
and Pappenheimstraße is much reduced. The inset photo was taken March 22, 1924 and shows
Erich Ludendorff leaving the building with my bike outside the same
entrance today. Here the main hearing took place, partly in camera, over
25 days of trial
from February 26 to April 1, 1924 against the defendants Hitler, Ludendorff, Ludendorff's step-son Heinz Otto Kurt Pernet, Ernst
Pöhner, Wilhelm Frick, Ernst Röhm, Hermann Kriebel, Friedrich Weber,
Wilhelm Friedrich Karl Brückner and Robert Wagner. Originally the trial
was to be conducted in the courthouse on Mariahilfplatz before
eventually it was decided to set the trial in the rooms of the former
war school on Blutenburgstraße. The site was heavily bombed and the top
photo shows all that is left of the building today. The conduct of the
negotiations by chairman Neithardt was marked by excessive benevolence
towards the accused. Hitler himself was given opportunities for long
propaganda speeches. In addition, Neithardt's questions were often asked
in such a way that the defendant's statements were actually offered.
This indulgence towards the defendants led to deep unease within the
state government. Neithardt however enjoyed the support of the
right-wing conservative Minister of Justice Franz Gürtner. The public
was largely on the side of the defendants. Corresponding opinions in the
courtroom were tolerated by the chairman.
The
building during the trial which proved an international media sensation. Hitler was
eventually convicted of high treason only to the minimum legal sentence
of five years imprisonment and a fine of 200 gold marks, as Kriebel,
Weber and Pöhner. Brückner, Röhm, Pernet, Wagner and Frick were each
sentenced to one year and three months imprisonment and 100 gold marks
as punishment. Ludendorff was acquitted based on the lie that he had
enjoyed no knowledge of Hitler's plans. The convicts Hitler, Pöhner,
Weber and Kriebel were promised by order of the People's Court after
serving another sentence of six months probation for the remainder of
the sentence. For Brückner, Röhm, Pernet, Wagner and Frick this
probation was approved immediately. The prosecution had requested a
sentence of eight years for Hitler. Of the mandatory expulsion of Hitler
as a foreigner under Section 9 (2) of the Law for the Protection of the
Republic, the People's Court expressly dismissed it. Likewise, it did
not take into account that Hitler, convicted of breach of the peace in
1922, was already under probation and therefore could not have been
granted probation again. The
people's courts were the first and last instance in Bavaria for the
cases assigned to them, so that no legal remedy was available against
their judgements making the verdict immediately final. From Hitler's
perspective, there were three positive benefits from this otherwise
ludicrous attempt to seize power. First, the putsch brought Hitler to
the attention of the German nation and generated front page headlines in
newspapers around the world. It gave Hitler a platform to publicise his
views and create his myth. The second benefit to Hitler was that he
used his time in prison to produce Mein Kampf,
which was dictated to his fellow prisoners Emil Maurice and Rudolf
Hess. On December 20, 1924, having served only nine months, Hitler was
released. The final benefit to Hitler was the insight that the path to
power was through legitimate means rather than revolution or force.
Accordingly, the most significant outcome of the putsch was a decision
by Hitler to change his tactics, which would demand an increasing
reliance on the development and furthering of Nazi propaganda.
This
marker represents the site of the neighbouring barracks, destroyed during the war.
During the time of the putsch, co-conspirators under Gerhard Rossbach
mobilised the students, cadets and officer candidates of the Reichswehr
of this officers infantry school to seize a number of objectives. Rossbach had been
a Freikorps leader and organiser of various nationalist groups after
the Great War and is generally credited with inventing the brown
uniforms of the Nazi Party after supplying surplus tropical khaki shirts
to early troops of the Sturmabteilung (SA).
The actual site
of the trial of the participants in the so-called Beer Hall putsch in
the barracks of the Infantry School on the corner of Blutenburgstraße
and Pappenheimstraße is much reduced. The inset photo was taken March 22, 1924 and shows
Erich Ludendorff leaving the building with my bike outside the same
entrance today. Here the main hearing took place, partly in camera, over
25 days of trial
from February 26 to April 1, 1924 against the defendants Hitler, Ludendorff, Ludendorff's step-son Heinz Otto Kurt Pernet, Ernst
Pöhner, Wilhelm Frick, Ernst Röhm, Hermann Kriebel, Friedrich Weber,
Wilhelm Friedrich Karl Brückner and Robert Wagner. Originally the trial
was to be conducted in the courthouse on Mariahilfplatz before
eventually it was decided to set the trial in the rooms of the former
war school on Blutenburgstraße. The site was heavily bombed and the top
photo shows all that is left of the building today. The conduct of the
negotiations by chairman Neithardt was marked by excessive benevolence
towards the accused. Hitler himself was given opportunities for long
propaganda speeches. In addition, Neithardt's questions were often asked
in such a way that the defendant's statements were actually offered.
This indulgence towards the defendants led to deep unease within the
state government. Neithardt however enjoyed the support of the
right-wing conservative Minister of Justice Franz Gürtner. The public
was largely on the side of the defendants. Corresponding opinions in the
courtroom were tolerated by the chairman. 
The
building during the trial which proved an international media sensation. Hitler was
eventually convicted of high treason only to the minimum legal sentence
of five years imprisonment and a fine of 200 gold marks, as Kriebel,
Weber and Pöhner. Brückner, Röhm, Pernet, Wagner and Frick were each
sentenced to one year and three months imprisonment and 100 gold marks
as punishment. Ludendorff was acquitted based on the lie that he had
enjoyed no knowledge of Hitler's plans. The convicts Hitler, Pöhner,
Weber and Kriebel were promised by order of the People's Court after
serving another sentence of six months probation for the remainder of
the sentence. For Brückner, Röhm, Pernet, Wagner and Frick this
probation was approved immediately. The prosecution had requested a
sentence of eight years for Hitler. Of the mandatory expulsion of Hitler
as a foreigner under Section 9 (2) of the Law for the Protection of the
Republic, the People's Court expressly dismissed it. Likewise, it did
not take into account that Hitler, convicted of breach of the peace in
1922, was already under probation and therefore could not have been
granted probation again. The
people's courts were the first and last instance in Bavaria for the
cases assigned to them, so that no legal remedy was available against
their judgements making the verdict immediately final. From Hitler's
perspective, there were three positive benefits from this otherwise
ludicrous attempt to seize power. First, the putsch brought Hitler to
the attention of the German nation and generated front page headlines in
newspapers around the world. It gave Hitler a platform to publicise his
views and create his myth. The second benefit to Hitler was that he
used his time in prison to produce Mein Kampf,
which was dictated to his fellow prisoners Emil Maurice and Rudolf
Hess. On December 20, 1924, having served only nine months, Hitler was
released. The final benefit to Hitler was the insight that the path to
power was through legitimate means rather than revolution or force.
Accordingly, the most significant outcome of the putsch was a decision
by Hitler to change his tactics, which would demand an increasing
reliance on the development and furthering of Nazi propaganda.
This
marker represents the site of the neighbouring barracks, destroyed during the war.
During the time of the putsch, co-conspirators under Gerhard Rossbach
mobilised the students, cadets and officer candidates of the Reichswehr
of this officers infantry school to seize a number of objectives. Rossbach had been
a Freikorps leader and organiser of various nationalist groups after
the Great War and is generally credited with inventing the brown
uniforms of the Nazi Party after supplying surplus tropical khaki shirts
to early troops of the Sturmabteilung (SA).