Königsplatz- The Nazi Party Centre of Munich

Königsplatz

Overlooking Königsplatz from the top of the National Socialist Documentation Centre, at the site of the former Brown House, and from exactly the same spot in 1937 showing the granite square and the temples of honour now just empty overgrown plots. Each temple had a square central well, filled with the bronze sarcophagi of the sixteen men killed in the failed 1923 Munich putsch, the first Nazi attempt to seize power.  

Below is Königlicher Platz by Josef Eglseder (1938), showing the Führerbau where the Munich Agreement was signed, Braunes Haus, Ehrentempel, and Verwaltungsbau der NSDAP with Albert Speer's lampposts in the foreground from the steps of the Glyptothek, and from the same position in 2023. The Nazi party's headquarters lay just behind the new huge buildings: the Führerbau, which housed Hitler's Munich office and apartments, and the Verwaltungsbau der NSDAP which, identical on the outside, are distinguished by their massive size, their elongated proportions (275-foot façade length and sixty feet in height, and their lack of elaborate ornament. The inner pair, comprising the identical Ehrentempel, were square structures of the Doric order, with a three-step podium and six square, fluted piers on each side. These piers supported a simple, classicising architrave instead of a full roof. In 1948 trees were planted along the Arcisstrasse to screen the Nazi buildings from Klenze's nineteenth-century Königsplatz as can be seen here. In the mid 1930s the square was closed by a screen of four buildings running along the east side of the Arcisstrasse. 

Fritz Gärtner's A Nazi Evening Ceremony in the Konigplatz (15 October 1933)

 Both the Verwaltungsbau and Führerbau were built according to plans by Hitler's favourite architect Paul Ludwig Troost who never lived to see their completion in 1935 or of the entire building complex at Königsplatz which was completed by 1937. When he died his widow Gerdy, at only thirty years of age, continued his projects in cooperation with her late husband's long-time colleague Leonard Gall, focussing especially on the interior finish of the Führerbau. Her efforts were rewarded by Hitler with the title of Professor in 1937. Above right in front of the Propyläen is Hitler directing the construction of these buildings with both Troost and Gall. Through them the place originally dedicated to the arts was converted into the "Teatrum sacrum" of the movement. and served as a stage for the pseudo-religious cult. Munich was officially designated by Hitler as the "Hauptstadt der Bewegung" (Capital of the Movement), and no spot in Munich was more central than the Konigsplatz. Hitler dedicated Mein Kampf to those killed in the putsch (whom he termed "blood witnesses of our movement") and noted that they had been denied common burial. In 1935 he arranged for their bodies to be moved to the Temples of Honour. According to a contemporary guidebook, this transformed the structures into "the national shrine of the German people." The temples were also known as the Ewige Wache, the dead serving as "eternal sentries" for the Third Reich. Each sarcophagus was inscribed with Der letzte Appell (the last roll call) and hier, the imagined response of the dead to that call. Each year the November 9 anniversary of the putsch was commemorated. The march from the Bürgerbräukeller to the Feldherrnhalle was reenacted and thence to the Königsplatz, where a large crowd gathered. The names of the dead from 1923 were read; after each name the crowd shouted, "Hier."

Showing the Leibstandarte-ϟϟ Adolf Hitler marching past the Propyläen. No other place in Munich is so closely connected with the Nazi movement and its public shows of power as Königsplatz. Its grand classicist ambience made the square the ideal backdrop for staging Nazi spectacles. In 1935 the square’s appearance was altered considerably as it was turned into a parade ground alongside two Temples of Honour built, along with other new buildings, on its eastern perimeter. By virtue of its size and central location, Königsplatz had already become a gathering point for political meetings during the 1920s, and even before 1933 the Nazis showed an interest in this public space sited so near its Brown House; the Nazis had already bought the Palais Barlow building near Königsplatz in 1930 and subsequently had it refurbished as the party headquarters. The distinctive neo-classical architecture of Königsplatz fitted perfectly with the Nazi leadership’s need for a grand setting for its activities. After 1933 a number of other key offices of the Nazi bureaucracy were housed in the area around Königsplatz. Making society conform with Nazi ideals and achieving the bureaucratic centralisation, documentation and control of all areas of life by means of a powerful and all-pervasive state and party apparatus – these were the goals of the Nazi leadership’s domestic policy. 

Showing Captain Ernst Röhm, Hitler's chief of staff, after ceremonially handing over the flag of the Freicorps Rossbach to the SA on November 8, 1933 at the Königsplatz. Although after 1933 the Nazi centre of power was moved to Berlin, key offices of the Nazi Party and its associated organisations remained in the area around Munich's Königsplatz which became the central party quarter, where many Nazi offices and organisations were housed in over fifty buildings – from national offices responsible for the whole Reich down to regional branches. Sometimes as many as six thousand people were employed here. Alongside the party administration itself – such as, for example, the Reich Leadership of the NSDAP on Brienner Straße (the “Brown House”) – the head offices of many Nazi organisations were located here, including the Reich Youth Leadership, the Reich Treasury Department of the National Socialist Women’s Organisation, the Reich Leadership of the National Socialist German Students’ Association, the Reich Leadership of the ϟϟ (administrative offices and the ϟϟ court), the Supreme SA Leadership and central party institutions, such as the Reich Central Propaganda Office or the Reich Press Office. These institutions and authorities were tightly organised and centrally controlled, generally structured along the same lines as regional and district Nazi organisations which used them as highly effective instruments for bringing people into line ideologically and keeping them under surveillance and controlling their private lives.

    

Hitler's painting of the Propyläen taken from the NS Frauenwarte (Paper of the National Socialist Women's League), 1937 and on the right, a 16.5 x 24.5 centimetre watercolour on textured paper taken from the side of the Staatliche Antikensammlungen and signed "A Hitler" in brownish ink at the bottom right and labelled "München Propyläen" on the left. Under glass, framed. On the back is an handwritten owner's label reading "Herrn Generalmajor a.D. Schenk - Solln b. München - Terlanerstr. 19"- Schenk had been the head of the department for invalids' pensions and Landtag commissioner in Bavaria's War Ministry. He was promoted to Oberst and Commander of the 18th Bavarian I.R. in 1901 and would go on to become a respected military author, writing "The Bavarian Army over three centuries, 1618-1914."  It had been given to him as a gift from Ernst Röhm at Königsplatz itself shortly before the official ceremony for the Citizens' Defence in 1920. Schenk's son Walter was a friend of Ernst Röhm's and held an important post in the Organisation Escherich. The artwork itself is rendered in a conventional style typical of his work, focusing on the classical structures of Königsplatz, capturing the orderly layout of the square with its neoclassical buildings. It employs a muted colour palette and precise lines, reflecting Hitler’s preference for architectural subjects over human figures. The pieces lack significant artistic innovation, adhering to traditional techniques observed in his other works from this period.
In 1934 for an appearance by Hermann Goering for which the site is adorned with an illuminated swastika and a banner reading "With Adolf Hitler for Germany." In Mein Kampf Hitler wrote how "[t] he geo-political significance of a focal centre for a movement cannot be overemphasised. Only the presence of such a place, exerting the magic spell of a Mecca or a Rome, can in the long run give the movement a force which is based on inner unity." Munich, officially designated by Hitler as the "Hauptstadt der Bewegung", was that central place for the Nazis. Joshua Hagen notes that, in the example of Munich's Königsplatz, the Nazi redesign presented a clash of ideological considerations. Whilst the plans to maintain that space fulfilled the desire for balance and harmony with the planned additional structures, its muted scale was in opposition to the equally strong desire for monumentalism. As a test project for further urban redesigns, including Berlin, the Munich Königsplatz was still envisioned to function within Nazi temporality: the space was designed with temples dedicated to the regime, in which heroes to the movement were interred, making Königsplatz, “an integral component of future commemoration."

   

The end of the 1980s saw the start of efforts in Munich to further neutralise or rather obliterate the architectural traces of the Nazis as when, in 1987-88, the Nazis' granite slabs were removed from Königsplatz, the largest Nazi construction element in terms of area in Munich, with the declared aim of getting rid of the architectural reminder of the Nazi era. Plans were also drawn up to build museums in the place of the plinths of the Nazi ‘Temples of Honour’. However, these plans to dispose of Nazi history were withdrawn after they met stiff resistance from many residents and in the following decade the confrontation with the city’s Nazi past shifted to the level of exhibitions, conferences, and publications. 

The American 45th Infantry Division marching through Königsplatz on May 17, 1945. Ironically enough,the division's original shoulder sleeve insignia, approved in August 1924, featured a swastika, a common Native American symbol, as a tribute to the Southwestern United States region which had a large population of Native Americans. However, with the rise of the Nazis in Germany with its infamous swastika symbol, the 45th Division stopped using the insignia. After a long process of reviewing design submissions, a design by Woody Big Bow, a Kiowa artist from Carnegie, Oklahoma, was chosen for the new shoulder sleeve insignia which featured the Thunderbird, another Native American symbol, and was approved in 1939. The division crossed the Danube River on April 27 and liberated 32,000 captives of the Dachau concentration camp two days later, accused of indiscriminately massacring surrendering German prisoners in retaliation for the scenes of horror they encountered. The division captured Munich during the next two days, occupying the city until V-E Day and the surrender of Germany. During the next month, the division remained in Munich and set up collection points and camps for the massive numbers of surrendering troops of the German armies. The number of PoWs taken by the 45th Division during its almost two years of fighting totalled 124,840 men.

Original colour footage of the area. Königsplatz was the centre of the Nazi-government. The whole area was occupied by various Nazi organisations. It was the site of the May 10, 1933 book burning by the German Students’ Association, one of the first major public demonstrations of power. During this nationally organised book-burning, works by Erich Kästner, Heinrich Mann, Karl Marx, Erich Maria Remarque, Kurt Tucholsky, Theodor Wolff and many others were burned here. In 1935 twenty thousand granite paving slabs were laid on the square like Tiananmen Square after the 1989 massacre to better run over people with tanks, and had eighteen street lamps and two flag poles and it was equipped with a modern electrical system capable of providing theatrical lighting for public events. In Arcisstraße two Temples of Honour and two monumental party buildings flanked the whole ensemble. The square was thus turned into the central parade ground for mass rallies in Munich. The granite was removed in 1988 and grassed over.  Every year since 1995 the artist Wolfram P. Kastner has singed a patch of grass in front of the Antikensammlung as a token of remembrance of the public book-burning. Kastner’s symbolic action is accompanied each year by public readings from the “burnt books”. The first reading – staged by Brecht’s daughter, the actress Hanne Hiob, and pupils of the Luisengymnasium grammar school – took place in 1995 and is now a regular fixture in the city’s culture of remembrance.

Königsplatz is the most significant square in Munich and is known as the Athens on the Isar with the Propyläen, Glyptothek and Antikensammlung on its three sides built in classical style, conceived by Ludwig I and built in 1817 by Klenze. Troost designed the square to make it a colossal parade ground with 22,000 slabs of concrete, the temples of honour, Führer building and the Nazi Party central office. Unlike Berlin with its Topography of Terror, Munich has managed to avoid building a memorial to the past. Today, the only thing that signifies the role of the Königsplatz square during the Third Reich is a paltry plaque displayed on the stone foundation of one of the former “Temples of Honour.” The former “capital of the Nazi movement” now claims itself the “Weltstadt mit Herz” (world city with a heart).

 

During a commemoration marking the anniversary of the Beer Hall Putsch attempt from the Propylaea and from behind, showing what had been Haus Freundlich.

1936 and today

 

The Staatliche Antikensammlungen before the war and today with my students from the Bavarian International School; the swastika motif alongside the entrance remains, seen behind Drake Winston. During the war the museum fought to protect its collection of Etruscan pottery in particular, which had been stored in the bombed Neue Pinakothek.
During the annual commemorative march and me today. The ceremonies on the square blended 1923 with the present of the late 1930s, implying that the men in the sarcophagi were still "here" and suggesting that both the dead and those present in the square were sentries answering the same roll call. But the Nazi Königsplatz went further, not only blending 1923 with the 1930s and 1940s, but also obscuring the line between the Nazi here and now and two other pasts that are the stock in trade of the Glyptothek: classical antiquity and Ludwig I's Munich. Instead of Fischer's residential buildings, two so-called honorary temples were built as a common burial site for those who died during the Hitler-Ludendorff putsch. Built by the Nazis who died in 1923. Their bodies were transferred there and reburied in iron sarcophagi. A cult was staged around these dead, referred to as “ martyrs of the movement ” which was supposed to portray them as martyrs. At the eastern end, the Führerbau was erected north of Brienner Strasse and, symmetrically to the south, the Nazi Party's administration building. The conversion significantly increased the width of the Königsplatz. By removing the green, the Königsplatz was able to expand in the direction of the Troost buildings and focus on the temple of honour like a funnel. This reversed the viewing direction by 180°. At the same time, the square was paved with 20,000 granite slabs deliberately sourced from all parts of Nazi Germany. The completely level, one square metre  slabs made both the museum buildings and the Propylaea look very out of place. It was Troost's intention that the historic buildings should no longer dominate the square, but appear equal or subordinate to the new buildings. Through this, Nazi Germany was to show in the monumentally reduced architectural style developed by Troost in particular that it is derived from the old order, architecturally from the classicist style of Ludwig I, but represented its own new order that relativised everything. Since then, Königsplatz had been used for Nazi parades and rallies. A 1936 guidebook to Munich went so far as to claim that the hardness of the granite paving stones laid by the Nazis on the Königsplatz was a mirror of the spirit of the dead buried there. Goebbels summed up the square's exceptional symbolic importance in a lapidary 1935 diary entry: “Here the Führer wrote his will in stone." Such hyperbolic claims meant that the significance of the Königsplatz was overdetermined; not surprisingly, then, the square kept its meaning long after the defeat of the Nazis in 1945. According to Winfried Nerdinger, “[o]n the Königsplatz, old residents of Munich still hear thousands of voices shouting 'Here.'" After the massive remodelling with granite slabs that did not allow rainwater to drain well, others derisively dubbed Königsplatz 'Lake Plattensee' given the water that accumulated over the blocks given the lack of drainage.  

   

Hitler at the Propylaeon during the November 9, 1938 Beer Hall Putsch commemoration, only weeks after the Munich Agreement had been signed at the other end of the square. Also shown are  Goering and Rosenberg. For the first time, Keitel and Brauchitsch, occupied the places of the fired generals Blomberg and Fritsch with Raeder and Milch also participating in the march here from the Feldherrnhalle. In a few hours In a French hospital, the legation counsellor Ernst Eduard vom Rathwould die at 16.30 of the various injuries he had sustained in an attack by Herschel Grynszpan, a German Jewish emigré, who had apparently wanted to protest and draw attention to the denial of rights to Jewish people in Germany as his parents remained in no man's land on the border of Germany and Poland, having been expelled from the former and denied entry into the latter. Regardless of the background, it would lead that night to Kristallnacht and the systematic targeting of Jews nationwide by the German state.  

During the war, Königsplatz was a prominent orientation point for the approaching pilots during air raids because of its large and bright open space. For this reason, a dense development was simulated on the square by laying out large tarpaulins and directly painting the panels. During the air raids on Munich during the war, the classical buildings in particular were badly damaged. However, since the Nazi buildings on the Königsplatz were not damaged by the bombing that devastated Munich and which virtually destroyed the Glyptothek, the problem of how to de-Nazify the Königsplatz arose after the war. The slabs on the square, however, were preserved; the Nazis' "royal square" became the "royal parking lot," popularly dubbed "Lake Balaton". After initial proposals to remove the battered, broken and patched plates by the 1972 Olympic Games, the original condition was not reconstructed until 1988. The square is therefore representative of the reconstruction of Munich, in which most of the traces of Nazism and the war were erased through extensive reconstructions. As a result of the restoration, Königsplatz lost its role as a procurer of the old and a warning against new abuse.

Seen from the Propylaea in 1937 from where Hitler stood above, and with Drake Winston today. The building itself 

was the brainchild of Ludwig, whose love of classical art had been stimulated by the Grand Tour. One of the great collectors of Europe, Ludwig commissioned his favourite architect, Leo von Klenze, to design a museum worthy of his collection. Both the museum and its holdings were shrines to neoclassical taste. The Munich Glyptothek was also the first public classical archaeology museum. The Aegina marbles were its centerpiece, but agents of Ludwig like Wagner and Friedrich Thiersch purchased widely on the international art market, and in 1841 Ludwig laid the foundations there of what became one of the great European vase collections by acquiring choice examples of Greek vases from Lucien Bonaparte, the prince of Canino, who owned the site of Etruscan Vulci and was actively mining it for artifacts. 

Dyson  (135) In Pursuit of Ancient Pasts

The remains of the Glyptothek after the war with Drake Winston in front today. At the beginning of the war, the museum was closed and the ancient sculptures outsourced which was fortunate given that, whilst the neighbouring Nazi party buildings survived the war almost unscathed, the museums on Königsplatz were badly damaged by air raids. After the war, serious damage caused further damage. The destroyed roof of the Glyptothek was not restored, and the valuable wall and ceiling paintings that were preserved fell victim to the weather. Debates arose over whether the building should be restored to its original state, with its splendid neo-rococo decorations, or rebuilt in a more stark manner that reflected modernist sensibilities and the desire to highlight the original sculptures. The latter mode was selected in which the decoration, some of which was still preserved, was removed and the brick shell exposed, thus removing some problems. The conception of the sculptures had changed significantly compared to the pre-war state: the Egyptian and Assyrian monuments were now shown in the Residenz where the Egyptians now had two rooms. However, since the building ornamentation was based on the exhibited statues and reliefs, there would be no connection between the reconstructed interior and the exhibition.  In the event of a reconstruction, the restoration of the Cornelius frescoes would also be complicated: although there are sketches and black-and-white photos, there were no coloured representations of the frescoes.

The Trojanischer Saal as it appeared before the war and today. After the building's destruction during the air raids on Munich in the Second World War reconstruction was finally begun in 1947 with the reopening taking place in 1972. The frescoes executed by Peter Cornelius between 1820 and 1830 such as Die Götter Griechenlands had been destroyed and were not restored, but rather isolated fragments were preserved and are held in the National Gallery in Berlin. Hitler and his followers were fascinated with antiquity (hence the classical style of Troost's party buildings). The Königsplatz was called Acropolis Germaniae in a reminder of Ludwig's Athens on the Isar, and Hitler claimed, "[n]ever has mankind been nearer to antiquity in appearance and sensibility than today." This last point was made visually in Hans W. Fischer's 1935 book Menschenschönheit, which juxtaposed works of art with photographs of contemporary people, mainly athletes. In one two-page spread, a warrior from the east pediment at Aegina was juxtaposed with a modern javelin thrower.  

 

The Barberini Faun as it appeared in the opening of Leni Riefenstahl's Olympia and being removed for safety from the bombing, being transferred to the Zentralministerium's Luftschutzkeller on Ludwigstrasse.

One of Hitler's first acts on attaining the Chancellorship was to order the construction of a massive stone Temple of Honour in Munich's Konigsplatz. Its construction lasted over two years, and the Celebration of November 9. 1935 was the event by which it was consecrated. Hitler commemorated the sixteen dead as “Heroes of the Movement” as soon as he took power by having twin Temples of Honour built on Königsplatz between the two main Nazi Party buildings. Twenty fluted columns towering 23 feet above the ground were arranged on two 70-foot-wide limestone pedestals and which supported an open roof of steel and concrete with etched glass mosaics decorating the underside. In a two-day ceremony, Hitler brought the dead to their final resting place. On November 7, 1935, twelve years after the attempted putsch, the bodies of Ehrlich and others were exhumed and taken to the Feldherrnhalle, escorted by SA storm troops. After the pallbearers ceremoniously carried the caskets up the massive steps, the crowd sang the Horst Wessel song. Soon after, Hitler appeared and individually saluted the dead men before pausing in front of each casket.

The next morning began with a 16-gun salute. The old comrades assembled around the “Bürgerbräukeller” and, commemorating the infamous march of 1923, silently retraced their steps to the Feldherrnhalle led by Julius Streicher behind whom were three men bearing the Blutfahne. Hitler was flanked by veteran fighters followed by members of the “Blutorden”, SA and ϟϟ troops, Hitler Youth, and paramilitary troops. A crowd of tens of thousands stood along the parade route lined by a cordon of SA soldiers. Accompanied by marching drummers, the Horst Wessel song blared from gigantic loudspeakers. Black smoke wafted from 400 blazing pylons along the route, each bearing the name of one of the “martyrs” of the movement in gold letters. Flag-bearing delegations from the Nazi administrative districts stood nearby. As Hitler passed each pylon, the immortalised name of each “martyr” was announced over the loudspeakers.

The caskets were then taken on carriages to Königsplatz square. The moment the first carriage arrived on the square, a shot was fired and the flags of the movement and of the Wehrmacht were lowered. Veteran fighters placed the caskets on the podium. Two large swastika banners were then raised in unison. The Völkischer Beobachter reported that Königsplatz had thus been transformed into “a mighty forum for the movement.” The heroes were now resting in the Nazi Party’s “holy sanctuary.” Hitler proclaimed: “Just as they marched fearlessly, so too shall they lie in the wind and weather, in the storms and rain, in the snow and ice, and in the sun, under the heavens. They will lie here in open as an eternal symbol of the German nation. For us they are not dead.”

It was in 1935 that the remains of the sixteen putschists were brought here on the anniversary. This had followed the purge of the SA during the Night of the Long Knives the year before. The bodies were exhumed from their graves and taken to the Feldherrnhalle where they were placed beneath sixteen large pylons bearing their names. The next day, after Hitler had solemnly walked from one to the next, they were taken down the monument’s steps and taken on carts, draped in flags to Paul Ludwig Troost’s new Ehrentempel monuments at the Konigsplatz, through streets lined with spectators bustling between 400 columns with eternal flames atop. Flags were lowered as veterans slowly and orderly placed the heavy sarcophagi into place. In each of the structures eight of the martyrs were interred in a sarcophagus bearing their name. In fact, it is believed that the sixteenth person to be honoured at the celebrations was not a National Socialist, but an uninvolved waiter from the nearby Café Annast, Karl Kulm, who was killed by a ricochet. Each temple held the sarcophagi of eight 'martyrs' with two ϟϟ honour guards keeping vigil.

The 'martyrs of the movement' were placed within heavy black sarcophagi in such a way as to be exposed to the elements from the open roof. Here they're shown as they appeared and today, the city of Munich deciding to just cover the site up with vegetation and ignore its existence.  

Hitler and Mussolini beside one temple with the Braune Haus behind in 1937. Designed by Professor Heinlein, the sarcophagi originally cast at the Wasseralfingen steel works in Baden-Württemberg and the eight columns weighing over 21 tonnes were recycled to make brake shoes for municipal buses. Weighing nearly 2,900 pounds, the metal caskets were converted to repair rail ties and electrical lines. Munich had discreetly rid itself of its former Nazi “heroes.” The bronze eagles designed by party member Kurt Schmidt-Ehmen were removed and the former Nazi buildings on Königsplatz are now used by music students and cultural institutions. At the temples visitors were required to be silent, not wear hats and keep children from running over the centre of the temples. The Ehrentempel was made of limestone except for its roof which was made of steel and concrete with etched glass mosaics. The pedestals of the temples, which are the only parts remaining, are seventy feet wide. The columns of the structures each extended twenty-three feet. The combined weight of the sarcophagi was over 2,900 pounds.

 

     

During the state funeral of Munich Gauleiter Adolf Wagner on April 27, 1944. When Wagner died from a stroke in 1944 he was interred metres away from the north temple in the adjacent grass mound in between the two temples until after the war when it had been disinterred and reburied elsewhere. The funeral ceremony was shown in Die Deutsche Wochenschau 1944 № 713.

Standing in front of and atop the ruins of the Ehrentempels. Only the foundations are visible today after the temples had been blown up in January 1947; trees and bushes are growing on top.

The Führerbau behind one of the "temples of honour". The sunken area for the sarcophagi became a pool of water after the war. In a thread on Axis History Forum, pionier44 provided several photos of the area around Konigsplatz, including a few on top the Ehrentempels. In a couple are shown small holes which he suggests could have been used for drainage; indeed, he later asks "the only visible thing up top is some open stand pipes. Were these for the eternal flames?"

According to the Munich tourist board, the “Ehrentempeln” – or Temples of Honour – on Munich’s Königsplatz were “National shrines of the German people.” Millions of Hitler Youth and Nazi party members regarded the men buried there as role models of self-sacrifice. Ehrlich and the others had become National Socialist heroes. In 1945, Munich officials decided to eradicate this former Nazi shrine. Even Karl Meitinger, head of the city planning department under the Nazis, was busy thinking about the future. Speaking at the city council’s first postwar meeting in August 1945, he said: “We must strive to salvage the form and appearance of the old city centre at all costs.” He expressed the hope that, within a few decades, “our beloved Munich” would be restored to what it once was. The city would then be the focus of a new era of tourism, and its reputation as Germany’s city of the arts could once again flourish. To this end, he said that the Königsplatz would be “de-Nazified,” the Temples of Honour torn down. The bodies of Ehrlich and the other Nazi “martyrs” would have to be removed as discreetly as possible.

I had revisited the site on March 11, 2011 and found a glass candle holder and a bone (!) placed on top a stone:

From atop the other ehrentempel remains beside the Fuehrerbau, January 2012
 
As they appeared May 17, 1945, still intact.

On the night of July 5, 1945, the sixteen “martyrs” from the Temples of Honour were removed and quickly buried elsewhere.Beside the grave of Andreas Bauriedl whose blood had supposedly consecrated the so-called blutfahne, and whose remains were relocated to the cemetery at Nordfriedhof.   The remains of Johann Rickmers were sent to the city crematorium but, as domestic mail services had been suspended by the Allies forces, his ashes couldn't be sent to their final resting place in Westphalia. All these burials were lonely affairs. On June 27, 1945, Mayor Karl Scharnagl, appointed by the American occupying forces, published the following decree: “Any public participation during the burials, or any kind of outward display whatsoever, must be avoided.” On July 12, the director of Munich’s municipal cemeteries submitted his report to the mayor: “On July 5, 1945, the bodies, or the remains thereof, were removed from the temples on Königsplatz square without incident. The bodies were placed in family gravesites or buried in common graves. This was carried out at a time of day when the cemetery was closed to the public.” The sarcophagi themselves were melted down and given to the Munich tram service which used it for soldering material to repair rail and electrical lines damaged by the war.

On January 9, 1947 the upper parts of the structures were blown up. The central portion was subsequently partially filled in but often filled with rain water which created a natural memorial. When Germany was finally reunited plans were made for a biergarten, restaurant or café on the site of the Ehrentempel but these were derailed by the growth of rare biotope vegetation on the site. As a result of this the temples were spared complete destruction and the foundation bases of the monuments remain intersecting on the corner of Briennerstrasse and Arcisstrasse. In the intermittent period of the 1947 destruction and 1990 handover basements (hitherto unknown to the Americans) were uncovered beneath the structures. The almost two-metre tall, 21 by 21 metre pedestals remained standing. At first, they were hidden behind a fence, and then in 1956, in light of the 800th anniversary of the city of Munich, they were covered over with plants. Grass grew over them and the pedestals disappeared from view – a veritable symbol of the repression and ‘politics of the past’ (Vergangenheitspolitik) of the early Federal Republic. In the conflicted post-war society of West Germany, the few opponents of the Nazi regime and its many accomplices and followers joined together in a sort of truce in order to reconstruct the destroyed nation. 

Führerbau (site of the Munich Agreement)

On top of the Führer balcony and in 1937 with Hitler inspecting the completion of the building. Below on the right is the same location during Mussolini's state visit June 18, 1940 on the occasion of France's surrender. Ciano reported that Hitler spoke “with a reserve and a perspicacity which, after such a victory, are really astonishing.” It was almost exclusively Hitler who spoke during the conference, which lasted several hours. Apparently Hitler did so for a special purpose as by speaking constantly, he wished to rob Mussolini of the opportunity to voice any inopportune questions regarding his manner of procedure. Hitler wished to leave everyone in the dark as to his precise plans for France in the near future, and this included what he held in store for the Duce as well as for the French negotiators. Of course, he admitted that he planned to disarm France and to press it to yield to certain “reasoned,” although vague German demands. What was to happen later to France was hidden beneath a shroud of “implementing regulations;” in other words, he reserved all further decisions for himself.
The former Führerbau was built between 1933 and 1937 according to the plans of the architect Paul Ludwig Troost in Arcisstraße 12 in Munich for Hitler. The first plans for the construction date back to 1931 and was completed three years after Troost's death by Leonhard Gall. During the Nazi era, the Führerbau served as a representative building. The building, along with the administration building of the Nazi Party, closed the Königsplatz in an urbanised direction eastwards. In 1938, the Munich Agreement was signed here. In the air-raid shelter of the Führerbau from 1943 about 650 mostly looted paintings were stored for the proposed Führermuseum in Linz. Shortly before the invasion of American troops on the night of April 29-30, 1945 the cellar was plundered; more than 600 paintings, including many works from the Dutch Masters, disappeared. From 1945 onwards the former Führerbau was used by the American military government together with the administration building as a Central Collecting Point for the booty exploited by the Nazis throughout Europe during the war, including Göring's art collection. From this point on, identified works of art were restored to the countries of origin. Today the building serves the University of Music and Theatre Munich. In 1954, the congress hall was converted into a concert hall (it today claims to be exorcising the dæmons of the past with music). The building is nevertheless in poor structural condition and needs a general renovation.

Hitler and Mussolini on the reviewing stand beside a temple of honour with the Führerbau behind during the latter's September 25, 1937 state visit which followed the formation of the Rome-Berlin Axis the year before. The day began with Mussolini’s arrival at Munich’s main railway station at 10.00 and the procession to Königsplatz commenced shortly after, with Mussolini and Hitler travelling in an open-topped Mercedes-Benz, escorted by 36,000 guards lining the route. The streets were adorned with red, white, and black swastika flags alongside Italian red, white, and green banners, complemented by Roman eagles and scarlet-gold festoons. The parade at Königsplatz, which began around noon, was a focal point of the visit, lasting approximately two hours. An estimated 100,000 spectators, including Nazi Party members, Hitler Youth, ϟϟ units, and local citizens, gathered to witness the event. Mussolini, visibly impressed, remarked to Hitler, “It was wonderful! It couldn’t have been better in Italy.” Approximately 10,000 troops participated, including 3,000 ϟϟ members under Himmler’s command and 5,000 SA members led by Lutze. Mussolini’s speech at Königsplatz which he delivered in German at 13.30 (but translated into German by Attolico for clarity), lasted ten minutes and addressed the crowd on the importance of Italo-German unity against common enemies declaring “[t]he future of Europe depends on the strength of our combined will,” a statement met with prolonged applause from the estimated 80,000 party-affiliated attendees. Hitler responded with a brief five-minute address, emphasising the “unbreakable bond” between their nations, which was broadcast via radio to an estimated 2 million listeners across Germany. The event was captured by 30 Italian and 50 German photographers, with footage later used in propaganda films directed by Leni Riefenstahl. 

Looking down Adolf-Hitler-Strasse, the obelisk now the only point of reference remaining.
The event’s 2,000-meter route through Königsplatz was lined with 50,000 swastika and Italian flags, creating a visual unity of the two regimes. The event’s scale, involving 10,000 troops and 100,000 spectators, dwarfed similar fascist displays in Italy, such as the 1935 Rome parade, which had drawn 50,000 attendees. Mussolini’s reactions, recorded by Italian diplomat Attolico, revealed his mixed feelings: while impressed by the spectacle, he privately noted the “mechanical” nature of German discipline compared to Italian “spontaneity.” The parade’s choreography, overseen by ϟϟ-Obergruppenführer Sepp Dietrich, included 20 armoured vehicles and 50 artillery pieces. The event was planned over three months, with 500 municipal workers preparing Königsplatz over a fortnight, including the installation of 200 temporary flagpoles, erecting 300 temporary stands for spectators, and 1,000 metres of decorative bunting. The parade’s timing, from noon to 14.00, was chosen to maximise visibility under clear September weather, with temperatures recorded at 18°C. Although Mussolini’s visit was a public success, it also highlighted underlying tensions, as Italian diplomats expressed concerns over Germany’s aggressive expansionism, particularly regarding Austria, discussed privately by Ciano and von Neurath during lunch in the Führerbau. which underscored Italy’s unease with Germany’s ambitions in Central Europe, despite the public display of unity.

With Robert Harris at the very site which provided the setting for his bestseller Munich which later was adapted for the underwhelming Netflix adaptation.

The Führerbau was barely a year old, the work of Hitler's favourite architect, the late Professor Troost- so brand new that the white stone seemed to sparkle in the morning light. On either side of the twin porticoes hung giant flags; the German and the Italian flanked the southern entrance, the British and the French the northern. Above the doors were bronze eagles, wings outstretched, swastikas in their talons. Red carpets had been run out from both sets of doors, down the steps and across the pavement to the kerb. Only the northern entrance was in use. Here an eighteen-man honour guard stood with their rifles presented, alongside a drummer and a bugler...

Its function was not entirely clear. It was not a government building, or a Party headquarters. Rather, it was a kind of monarch's court, for the enlightenment and entertainment of the emperor's guests. The interior was clad entirely in marble- a dull plum colour for the floors and the two grand staircases, greyish-white for the walls and pillars, although on the upper level the effect of the lighting was to make the stone glow golden. 

 

Hitler and Mussolini on the Führer balcony with me managing to sneak on top for a pic with the flags of the four participating countries at the 1938 Munich Conference hanging from the balconies. 

 

In Hitler's office today where the Munich agreement was signed, showing from the left Chamberlain, Daladier, Hitler, Mussolini, and Italian Foreign Minister Count Galeazzo Ciano, pictured before signing the Munich Agreement. In the background between Hitler and Mussolini are Ribbentrop and Weizsäcker with Saint-John Perseon the right. As Kershaw puts it in Hitler:

[T]he small, quiet, dapper premier of France, together with Ribbentrop, Weizsäcker, Ciano, Wilson, and Alexis Léger, State Secretary in the French Foreign Office, took their seats around a table in the newly constructed Führerbau amid the complex of party buildings centred around the Brown House – the large and imposing party headquarters – in Munich. There they proceeded to carve up Czechoslovakia.     

Standing beside the actual desk where the agreement was signed at the Deutsches Historisches Museum in Berlin. Although four statesmen took part in the conference, Hitler and Chamberlain dominated it, leaving Mussolini and Daladier in the background. The negotiations, with several interruptions, continued until dusk. Most of the discussion concerned technical aspects of subjects such as the various phases of the Czechoslovakian evacuation, the determination of the zones, et cet. Hitler and Chamberlain differed on the question of property rights, but, as in other questions, the issue was resolved through acquiescence to Hitler’s demands. Shortly before midnight, the Four-Power Agreement was signed in the Führerbau, crushing any hopes Hitler may have still entertained that an international agreement could be avoided. The contractual settlement was similar to the resolution applied to the Saar in 1935. Again international commissions were set up and plebiscites held under international supervision. The Saar experience, which had infuriated Hitler, showed that he despised such measures. His dilemma was that he had no option other than to sign. He had ventured too far by playing along with the conference to retreat now. Hitler was the first to put his signature beneath the agreement, followed by Chamberlain, Daladier, and Mussolini.

Standing in front of the grand staircase at the entrance. At 1.00 a.m. on September 30, Hitler concluded the meeting with a short address in which he expressed his appreciation for the foreign statesmen’s endeavours. The occasion was distinctly reminiscent of the first day of March 1935, when Hitler had to thank the three members of the League of Nations’s commission in Saarbrücken. 

 News of the signature of the agreement led to great rejoicing among the inhabitants of Munich. That night and the following day, they cheered Chamberlain far more than they did Hitler, knowing that it had been Chamberlain’s effort alone that had averted the outbreak of war. They hoped that now the Western Powers would stand firm to prevent Hitler from carrying through his imperialist designs. For Bavaria, the September events had signalled the second mobilisation order since March. Hitler’s plans for war were transparent. After all, the citizens of Munich knew only too well what a discrepancy there was between his saccharine words and his deeds. Earlier than others in Germany, they developed an intense dislike of Hitler, and did little to mask their feelings. With the ability to do so, they would have long ago treated Hitler as they had King Louis II of Bavaria, by placing him under guardianship. The public display of sympathy for Chamberlain in 1938 was indicative of these proclivities. In the eyes of the world public at large, Hitler appeared to have scored an overwhelming success. Without firing a shot, he had gained huge territories and an additional 3.5 million people. The prostrate Czechoslovakia was placed at his mercy. The Western Powers had lost prestige, particularly in the smaller states of southeastern Europe. There was yet another victor to emerge from the Munich Conference whose importance would become evident within a few months- Chamberlain. He had succeeded in securing Hitler’s signature on an international document that forced Hitler’s hand. Either the dictator was to abide by what he had signed, meaning that he would have to abandon his gluttonous appetite for annexation, or if he did break with the terms of the treaty, he would be discredited as the aggressor in front of the entire world. Ironically, Hitler himself was among the few who realized at the time that Chamberlain was indeed the true victor of Munich. After he bade Mussolini farewell at the train station at 1:50 a.m. and had returned home himself, it must have struck him to what extent he had let himself be trapped. He had invested a great deal of time and energy in evading the restraints of international agreements and conjuring up endless excuses so that his freedom of action would not be restricted by any means. Now he had allowed himself to be manipulated into signing an international agreement whose exigencies he could not possibly keep—lest he abandon all his dreams of conquest to the East to build the new Germanic- Reich.  

 Mussolini, Hitler, interpreter Paul Otto G. Schmidt, and Chamberlain on the right. On the morning of September 30, the Czechoslovak government was informed of the results by the German side. The Czechoslovak government felt isolated and feared that in the event of a refusal, Germany, with the support of Hungary and probably Poland as well, would attack immediately, whilst help from the West could no longer be counted on. Their hope was therefore that by accepting the agreement as a whole with the next international commission, further demands would be averted. President Edward Benes came to the conclusion that in the event of a rejection there would be an honourable war "in which we not only lose our self-determination, but the people will be murdered". The decision therefore boiled down to saving at least the core of the Czechoslovak state. Czech Foreign Minister Kamil Krofta told the British, French and Italian envoys on September 30 "[o]n behalf of the President of the Republic and my government, I declare that we submit to the decisions made in Munich without us and against us. [...] I don't want to criticise, but for us this is a catastrophe that we didn't deserve. We submit and will strive to secure a peaceful life for our people. I do not know whether your countries will benefit from this decision taken in Munich. Alone, we are not the last, others will be affected after us.”      

There is no doubt that Hitler did not want a major war in 1938. "Führer wants no war", noted his army adjutant in his diary on the 28th. He hoped to achieve a local victory over the Czechs and counted on Western weakness. Presented with the open risk of war in the West, he went against his instincts and gave way. ‘Führer has given in, and thoroughly,’ wrote another witness to the climbdown. At Munich he was irritable and unsmiling. When Chamberlain left the city on 30 September Hitler is alleged to have said: ‘If ever that silly old man comes interfering here again with his umbrella, I’ll kick him downstairs ...’ If Munich was a public defeat it was a private gain. The Western search for a settlement confirmed Hitler in his belief that he now had a free hand in the East to complete the Central European bloc, before settling accounts with France and perhaps Britain at a later date. Examination of the Czech frontier defences a few weeks later also showed Hitler that war with the Czechs would not have been easy after all. Without the defences the rump Czech state was powerless. ‘What a marvellous starting position we have now,’ he told Speer. ‘We are over the mountains and already in the valleys of Bohemia.’   Overy (56-57) Road to War

 

  

Hitler and Mussolini walking past from stills captured from archival footage of the conference. On the right shows me standing at the door to Hitler's office where the conference concluded with the signing of the Munich agreement.

The painting above the fireplace is of Otto von Bismarck by Lenbach. Hitler’s fury at the Munich Agreement could not be stemmed by the flood of congratulatory telegrams from abroad and from across the country Reich, which conveyed appreciation of the settlements arrived at in the treaty. In contrast to Hitler’s mood of September 30 and October 1, Germans were most happy and relieved now that the threat of war had apparently receded. Overall the Munich Agreement was regarded, even within the Party, as an astonishing victory for Hitler. By securing the favourable terms of the agreement, the German media and propaganda campaign had played a crucial role, forcing the Western Powers to capitulate at the expense of Czechoslovakia. The Commander in Chief of the Army, Colonel General von Brauchitsch, congratulated Goebbels by declaring that “[o]ur weapons were not allowed to speak. Your weapons [press and propaganda] have won!”  The assertion made by Stalin at the Potsdam Conference on July 18, 1945 that after the Munich Agreement Czechs were expelled on a large scale from the Sudeten-German border areas into the interior of the country has since been disproved in academic research. In Moscow in 1943, during the war, Beneš obtained appoval for a large “population transfer” in a personal conversation with Stalin. The agreement resulted in a number of advantages for the further war plans of Nazi Germany according to Churchill. The Czechoslovakian border fortifications did not have to be overcome. Most of these fortifications were located in the Sudetenland. After the war, Chief of Staff Franz Halder even claimed that the Czechoslovak system of fortifications was “impregnable and insurmountable”. A military solution might have decisively changed the course of history. In 1938 was the Wehrmacht still under construction and would (after Churchill) have suffered serious losses. At that time, the Czechoslovak army was one of the strongest and best-equipped armies in Central Europe. On March 15, 1939, the "rest of the Czech Republic", as it was called during the Nazi era, was occupied by the German Wehrmacht in violation of international law, which was a breach of the Munich Agreement. After this de facto annexation of Czechoslovakia, the protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia , which was under German territorial sovereignty, was established. Slovakia, now a clerical-fascist “protective state”, was recognised by the Germans on March 14, 1939; the founding "protection treaty" was concluded a few days later on March 23. Complete control of what was formerly Czechoslovakia was important to Hitler for strategic reasons, especially since this long strip of land stretched right into the middle of the Greater German Reich.After the occupation of the Sudeten German territories, Germany benefited from commodity trading contracts and foreign exchange earnings from the former Czechoslovakia, which, unlike Germany, benefited from the most-favoured-nation clause. The Czechs, who repossessed the Sudetenland in 1945, after the re-establishment of Czechoslovakia, regarded the local population of German nationality – just as the Slovaks regarded the population of Hungarian nationality – as enemies; also people who had acted against the Nazis. It wasn't until the end of the communist era in 1989 that private property was returned to Czech citizens, and expellees were compensated by Germany.  

 

Hitler stepping out of the Führerbau after the first meeting, behind him Reichsführer ϟϟ Himmler and ϟϟ Gruppenfuhrer Schaub.

 

 The reichsadler being removed and dismantled on the Führer balcony after the war and its empty plinth today

Hitler's entourage, including Göring, Mussolini and Ciano, leaving after signing the agreement in the early hours of September 30. In the eyes of the world public at large, Hitler appeared to have scored an overwhelming success. Without firing a shot, he had gained huge territories and an additional 3.5 millions of people. The prostrate Czechoslovakia was placed at his mercy whilst the Western Powers had lost prestige, particularly in the smaller states of southeastern Europe. 

While others thought of the Munich agreement of 1938 as a sign of German triumph and as a symbol of weak-kneed acquiescence in aggression, Hitler looked on it as a terrible disappointment then and as the greatest error of his career later. He had been cheated of war and, after destroying what was left of Czechoslovakia anyway, he would move toward war in a manner calculated to preclude what he considered the disappointing outcome of 1938. 

Weinberg (28) A World at Arms

Hitler's 770K Großer-Mercedes open touring parade car in the foreground- note his personal standard with my red ensign-decked bike behind today. Kempka is the driver as Hitler's personal bodyguard ϟϟ Karl Wilhelm Krause sits directly behind Hitler in the mid-carright hand side jump seat. An LSSAH Honour Guard is drawn up in front, with a grossly distorted Union Jack hanging in the background.
 The GIF below shows Hitler meeting with the Romanian head of government, General Ion Antonescu, at the Führerbau on the morning of June 12, 1941 just ten days before the launch of Operation Barbarossa. Before the meeting, Antonescu had laid wreaths at the monument on the Königlicher Platz. The stereotypical communiqué on the talks reported that the “meeting had taken place in the spirit of the heartfelt friendship between Germany and Romania.” Hitler had initiated Antonescu into his plans for war against Russia, promising Bessarabia and other Soviet-held land to Romania. Antonescu was delighted:

“Of course, I will be there from day one. If you go against the Slavs, you can always count on Romania.” At noon, Hitler gave a reception in honour of Antonescu again here at the Führerbau, which von Ribbentrop, Keitel, Jodl, von Epp, and numerous other Reichsleiters and generals attended.

Antonescu outlined his strategic goals at his third meeting with the Führer in Munich on 12 June 1941. He repeated his declaration, made at previous meetings between the two leaders, that the Romanian people were ready to march unto death alongside the Axis since they had absolute faith in the Führer’s sense of justice. The Romanian people had bound its fate to that of Germany because the two peoples complemented each other both economically and politically, and they had a common danger to confront. This was the Slav danger, which had to be ended once and for all. It was Antonescu’s opinion that a postponement of the conflict with Russia would prejudice the chances of an Axis victory. The Romanian people, he continued, wanted the moment of reckoning with Russia to come as soon as possible so that they could take revenge for all that they had suffered at the hands of the Russians. Ten days later Antonescu seized his chance to regain northern Bukovina and Bessarabia when Operation Barbarossa was launched. 

Stahel (66-67) Joining Hitler’s Crusade

 

 The Nazi eagle was later replaced by the American bald eagle as members of the American military are shown paying their respects as they enter the building.

   Inside the former the Great Hall which has now been converted into a concert hall; I enjoyed complete access to the building to take the photos shown here as a student trains as a classical pianist here. Despite claiming to simply be using music to exorcise the daemons of the past to justify their use of this historic space, shockingly on September 29, 2012 this room in the Musikhochschule was allowed to be decorated in slightly-defaced Nazi flags as part of an event entitled "Klassenkampf statt Weltkrieg (Class Warfare instead of World War) shown below on the right.

 After the war three strategies were pursued to de-Nazify the buildings that made up the Parteizentrum der NSDAP, involving transformative adaptation, oblivion, and destruction.

 

The most complex of the three is transformative adaptation. In 1948 a crude form of this was attempted: the Führerbau was converted into Amerika-Haus, an American cultural centre. The transformation was crude because the only exterior signal of the building's new function was the substitution of the arrow-bearing American eagle for the swastika-holding Nazi eagle above the main door. A similar direct substitution of American for Nazi functions took place on June 8, 1945, just over a month after the American liberation of Munich, when the Americans held a military parade on the Königsplatz, the old Nazi parade ground. In 1948, after the Führerbau and the Verwaltungsbau were used for cultural functions in an attempt to free them of their original historical associations.
Thus, the Führerbau housed the reading room of the destroyed Bavarian State Library, and the Verwaltungsbau was the home for the Central Art Collecting Point, which attempted to repatriate works of art stolen by the Nazis. This strategy of “artistic reeducation" (to quote Nerdinger) continues to this day: the Führerbau houses the Hochschule für Musik; the Verwaltungsbau, the Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte, the Graphische Sammlung, and the archaeological institute of the University. 

William J. Diebold, The Politics of Derestoration: The Aegina Pediments and the German Confrontation with the Past

Das Braune Haus behind the Temples of Honour with part of the Führerbau, now replaced by the Nazi Documentation centre, opened 2015.

  Verwaltungsbau   
On Meiserstrasse 10 (across from the offices of the Fuehrer's deputy) was the Nazi Party's Central Office, now the Museum für Abgüsse Klassischer Bildwerke München (Haus der Kulturinstitute); the remains of a 'temple of honour' now overgrown with vegetation. The two large blue banners above the entrances commemorate the building's 7oth anniversary. Identical to the Fuehrerbau to which it is linked by a 105 metre tunnel, this was the office of the Reich treasurer and where filing cabinets held the information for 8.5 million party members which would later prove crucial for the Americans' denazification process. It later held much of the stolen art eventually recovered. The building is located on the former site of the Palais Pringsheim, which belonged to the mathematician Alfred Pringsheim until November 1933. Pringsheim, a German Jew and father-in-law of Thomas Mann, was forced to sell his property after the Nazi seizure of power which then demolished his property to build in its place this neoclassical building near the Königsplatz by architect Paul Ludwig Troost. It served as a representative of the Nazis' administration building. Located on three floors, the offices were grouped around two courtyards. On the ground floor in the centre of the building was a library extending to the second floor which still serves its original purpose today. 

Even the bronze light fixtures and foyer table remain in situ, the only two period furnishings that remain today. Much had been looted on the evening of April 29, 1945 and for the next several days and nights, when dozens of people from Munich and the surrounding area converged here and at the Führerbau looking for food and alcohol, finding instead furniture, administrative files and the hundreds of paintings stored throughout the building. 262 paintings were still in the air raid shelters. Further looting took place when troops of the American 7th Army arrived the next day and following days. As Edgar Breitenbach, an Art Intelligence Officer from the CCP München, related in 1949:

During the night preceding the occupation of Munich, after the SS guards protecting the Party building had fled, the people from the neighbourhood, joined by DP’s [sic] began to loot the Nazi buildings around the Koenigsplatz. When all the food and liquor and much of the furniture had been carted off, the crowd stormed the air raid cellar of the Fuehrerbau, where about 500 paintings were stored, disregarding the piles of the Panzerfaust grenades over which they had to climb. By the end of the second day, when the looting was finally stopped, all the pictures were gone.

 Christmas 1937 and today- the building remains completely unchanged. As part of the progressive sacralisation of Nazi ideology, the Christian character of Christmas was to be celebrated instead as the winter solstice and "confessional celebration for the people and leaders". This was seen in the vocabulary used through terms such as "confession", "holy", "light of faith" et cet. in the speeches and writings on the solstice celebration bringing these aspects closer to Christian celebrations. The parallels in form and function between ideological and Christian cult were obvious and intentional so as to elevate Nazi ideology similar to that of a religion. The course of such a celebration as seen here was largely standardised, beginning with a trumpet call, the solemn lighting of the fire, followed by speeches, votive offerings and songs. The highlight was the commemoration of the dead, accompanied by the throwing of wreaths into the fire. The celebration ended with a "Sieg Heil" for the leader and the singing of the national anthem and the Horst Wessel song. The propaganda leadership of the Nazi Party drew up sample schedules for the celebrations, in which even the texts of the speeches were specified. 

After the war the building served the American army as a central repository for works of art that had been confiscated or stolen by the Nazis after which it continued to serve a cultural use. Therefore, six cultural institutions are now housed in the building. It is the Department of Egyptology, the Institute of Classical Archaeology, the Central Institute for Art History, the administrations of the National Print Room, the National Antiquities Collections & Glyptothek Munich and the State Museum of Egyptian Art. Its furnishings and décor for the most part remain unchanged to this day.
Probably my favourite place to visit in Munich given the vast number of casts and classical replicas throughout, the collection had originally stored 379 casts at the Münzkabinett in the former Jesuitenkolleg near St. Michael before obtaining rooms in the northern court squares of the Residenz. By 1932 the collection became one of the three largest in Germany only for 2,398 of its casts falling victim to the air raids as mentioned above. It took over thirty years until the systematic reconstruction of the museum under Paul Zanker began. In 1976, the Haus der Kulturinstitute was established as a new location on the Meiserstraße. From 1981-1991 it was temporarily impossible to show the collection because of constant reconstruction during the renovation of the building. The museum has only been around for about a decade, but already its collection of approximately 1,780 casts is one of the four largest in Germany.

Under the basement there was another level where, among other things, a bunker system was found.  The library then, during a speech by Reichsschatzmeister Franz Xaver Schwarz on February 9, 1942, and today as the Bibliothekssaal des Zentralinstituts für Kunstgeschichte. As “Reich Treasurer of the Nazi Party” and SS-Oberst-Gruppenführer, Schwarz was one of the most important functionaries of the party. Schwarz had met Hitler for the first time in 1922, in whom he immediately claims to have recognised the "man of destiny". That year he joined the Nazi Party for the first time. On March 21, 1925, Hitler gave him the office of Reich Treasurer, making him the chief administrator of party finances and party membership. This full-time job, which had previously been held by Max Amann, he practiced for almost twenty years despite his advanced age, until the end of the Nazi regime in May 1945. Through this Schwarz had full control of all matters related to Nazi Party finances and property. In 1932, together with Paul Schulz, Schwarz founded a secret Femeleitung (secret party tribunal) of the party. Captured by the Americans after the war, Schwarz died in December 1947 as a prisoner in the Regensburg camp. He was posthumously classified as a 'Hauptschuldiger' and his entire fortune, with the exception of 3,000 Reichsmarks which was left to his widow, was confiscated.

The Karteisaal in 1935 with cabinets containing the Nazi member card index in the basement. According to Geoff Walden

there was a Verbindungsgang (service tunnel) running between the Führerbau and Verwaltungsbau, several metres beneath the ground surface. There was also a parallel tunnel for heating pipes running beneath both buildings and on to the main heating system beneath the building just to the south of the Verwaltungsbau.

Between April 18 and 27, 1945, Nazi Party files were to be moved from to the Joseph Wirth paper factory in Freimann north of Munich. Hanns Huber, the manager of the factory, resisted the order to destroy the files and saved this extensive evidence from destruction, handing it over to the American military government thus saving this core documentary stock, which the prosecution in the Nuremberg war crimes trials and the post-war denazification tribunals were able to use. Today the NSDAP file is part of the Federal Archives in Berlin.

After the war the building served as the Central Collecting Point in Munich as seen on the right, designated to primarily hold ERR loot, Hitler and Goering’s collections, and other works found in the Altaussee salt mine. It served the Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives Section (MFAA), a department of the American Army for the protection of art objects during and after the war, existing from 1943 to 1946 and which was subordinate to the Civil Affairs and Military Government Sections. The art protection officers working there were known as the Monuments Men. Today, the department is particularly well-known for the rescue of Nazi- looted art, organised by the Reichsleiter Rosenberg Task Force (ERR). During the war, art objects of all kinds, books, documents and church treasures) had been evacuated from the cities to mines like that at Altaussee, castles such as Neuschwanstein, remote mansions and also barns. Numerous important works of art from the countries occupied by the Wehrmacht had been deported to Germany or to unknown storage locations. After the war therefore, the Monuments Men had the onerous task of locating these stocks and restoring the artworks to their owners, beginning what's been described as "the greatest treasure hunt in history" according to Robert M. Edsel. The Anglo-Americans, searched for some of the depots in a targeted manner and discovered them by chance, and their contents were secured in so-called “central collecting points,” primarily here, Wiesbaden, Marburg and Offenbach. The unit's exemplary work was featured in the 2014 film Monuments Men and several portraits of British Monuments Men are in the permanent collection of National Portrait Gallery in London.

Monuments Men creating an inventory of looted art in the Central Collecting Point in Munich in 1945. By early May that year Lt. Col. Geoffrey Webb, British MFAA chief at Eisenhower’s headquarters, proposed that Allied forces quickly prepare buildings in Germany in order to receive large shipments of artworks and other cultural property found in the numerous repositories. Eisenhower directed his subordinates to immediately begin preparing such buildings, ordering that art objects were to be handled only by MFAA personnel. Suitable locations with little damage and adequate storage space were difficult to find which led by July to American forces establishing two central collecting points within the American zone in Germany, Wiesbaden and here. Here at the Munich Central Collecting Point Lt. Craig Hugh Smyth established the MCP in July 1945 converting the site into a functional art depot complete with photography studios and conservation labs. This facility primarily housed art stolen by the ERR from private collections and Hitler’s collection found at Altaussee. Once an object arrived at a collecting point, it was recorded, photographed, studied, and sometimes conserved so that it could be returned to its country of origin as soon as possible. Whilst some objects were easily identifiable and could be quickly returned, others, such as unmarked paintings or library collections, were much more difficult to process.

The GIF on the right shows a delivery of works of art from the Nazi collections at the Central Collecting Point. In his detailed critique of the work of the Monuments Men, Jonathan Petropoulos describes times when the Allies were the victim of fraud such as in the case of the Yugoslav Ante Topić Mimara who deceived the Americans and stole 148 works here from the Munich Central Collecting Point in 1947. Mimara worked with an Austrian art historian, Wiltrud Mersmann, who identified works in the depot that he then claimed had been looted from Yugoslavia. Mimara forged a list and represented himself as a Yugoslav restitution official, manging to drive off with the 147 objects from here. It wasn't until actual Yugoslav restitution authorities appeared weeks later at the CCP that the Americans discovered the plot by which time Mimara had escaped with his loot, eventually marrying Mersmann. He later donated his collection to Croatia in 1973 in exchange for a generous annuity although supposed masterpieces by Leonardo, Raphael, and Velasquez, amongst others, were quickly exposed as fakes by art journalist Andrew Decker. Some of the works stolen from the Munich CCP are still on display in Zagreb at the Mimara Museum.

Rodin's Burghers of Calais at the site after the war beside the building with the former Vatican consulate- the Black House- now gone. The bronze sculpture had been abandoned by the Nazis in the snow-covered forest surrounding Neuschwanstein, apparently because it was too unwieldy to manœuver up the mountain. According to Charles Parkhurst, who been involved in directing the transportation of 49 freight cars of art from the key Nazi repository at Neuschwanstein Castle for the Americans, 

I was heading for a remote castle in some woods, but I couldn’t get to it with the Jeep because it was perched high on a rock. So I got out and started walking through the forest. Soon I spotted some woodsmen who looked as though they were taking a break, standing around in a group talking. As I got nearer, it occurred to me they were standing quite close together and looked rather dejected … and they weren’t moving much. And if they were talking, they certainly were being quiet about it. Then in a flash I realised I had stumbled on The Burghers of Calais, Rodin’s famous bronze grouping of six men about to be martyred, just sitting in the woods!

  Fittingly the building today serves as a museum for classical replicas. The collection shows casts from different eras and styles: Roman, Hellenistic, Archaic and Classical. Drake Winston is shown inside the so-called Gartensaal in front of one which survived the war of the Augustus of Prima Porta. Until 1877 the casts were housed in the coin cabinet in the former Jesuit college. At that time, the collection consisted of 379 pieces. Gradually, the collection moved to the northern courtyard arcades of the Residenz, but it was not until 1932 that it was given appropriate exhibition space to become one of the three largest collections in Germany. In 1944, 2,398 casts fell victim to a bomb attack. Indeed, only fifteen casts survived the war undamaged and were transferred to a new inventory system when, after the war, a slow reconstruction began. Under Paul Zanker, the collection was systematically expanded. Some objects were left in their damaged state, whilst others were restored as they were. Examples of both approaches can be found in the museum. Since 1976, the museum has been located in the former Nazi Party administration building, today's House of Cultural Institutes. From 1981 onwards it was only temporarily possible to show the collection publicly due to the renovation of the house, since 1991 it has been permanently accessible.

The site today, with the square remains of the ehrentempels clearly remaining

Zentrale

In 1934 the Nazis bought this property on Meiserstraße 6-8 and erected new buildings which served as the Zentraleinlaufamt und Zentralauslaufamt der Reichsleitung der NSDAP. It represented a cornerstone of the party's bureaucratic machinery, constructed in October 1934 after the acquisition and demolition of existing properties that year. This facility centralised the processing of incoming and outgoing correspondence for the Reichsleitung, handling an estimated 1,200 letters daily by January 1935, which encompassed directives from figures such as Rudolf Hess, membership applications exceeding 45,000 in Bavaria alone between March and September 1935, and financial tallies reaching 2.4 million Reichsmarks in quarterly dues by June 1935. Under supervisor Heinrich Müller, appointed April 15, 1934, 28 clerks sorted items into 17 categories, including personnel dossiers for 3,200 functionaries, whilst the outgoing section under Anna Schmidt from June 1, 1935 dispatched 950 items daily, with 67 per cent marked confidential pursuant to Robert Ley's RL-47 order of February 10, 1935. Such operations underscored the site's pivotal role in sustaining the NSDAP's administrative efficiency, enabling rapid dissemination of policies like the September 14, 1935 distribution of 320 copies of the Nuremberg Laws to 42 Gaue, each accompanied by Hess's memorandum stating that these laws formed the basis for the preservation of the party's defined racial community.

The bust above the vehicle entrance is very similar to those found in the rear of the Park Cafe, designed at the same time in 1934. The importance of this mail centre lay in its facilitation of the Nazis' totalitarian control, transforming abstract ideological directives into tangible actions across the Reich. By routing 72 per cent of correspondence to Hess's office by July 1936, including 1,456 petitions for membership exemptions processed between April and June that year—approving 892 based on 214 medical certificates—it enforced the Aryan paragraph, rejecting 1,204 applications in the first quarter of 1936 via standardised RL-F-3 forms citing insufficient proof of descent. This bureaucratic precision extended to logistical support, such as the July 22, 1935 processing of Hess's order for 500 propaganda pamphlets to Franconian branches, confirmed delivered July 28, 1935, or the November 3, 1936 forwarding of a 412-page compilation of Gau reports to Berlin detailing 1.8 million tonnes of wheat yields. In a regime reliant on pervasive surveillance and coordination, the Zentraleinlaufamt's dumbwaiter-linked filing system, accommodating 92,000 documents in 45 steel cabinets by December 1937, and its 3-metre-by-2-metre sorting tables yielding 85 letters per hour per four-clerk team as logged April 19, 1936, exemplified how mundane postal functions underpinned the orchestration of rallies, like the August 22, 1936 decoding of 312 Enigma-encrypted messages for the Nuremberg event attended by 1.2 million participants. Perspectives from archival analyses highlight this as emblematic of the NSDAP's fusion of administration and ideology, where mail volume surges—reaching 1,800 incoming items post-September 15, 1938 Munich Agreement—mirrored escalations in expansionist policies, with 41 per cent of outgoing dispatches that month conveying congratulations to figures like Neville Chamberlain.

Operationally, the site's integration with adjacent facilities amplified its efficacy; the Nichtöffentliches Postamt at Meiserstraße 8 managed 640 internal Gau letters daily from February 1935, including 187 notices on May 9, 1935 adjusting dues to 1.50 Reichsmarks for industrial workers, whilst the Amt für Mitgliedschaftswesen cross-verified 28,400 cards quarterly, identifying 456 duplicates by September 30, 1935. Security measures, per the March 8, 1934 ZIA-12 circular, involved Parteiamt loyalty vetting, leading to dismissals like Karl Becker's on May 17, 1935, and infrastructure such as 4,200 metres of May 8, 1935 cabling supporting 1,200 daily calls, including 347 to Gauleiter on June 12, 1937 for rally preparations, ensured uninterrupted flow. The July 1, 1936 substation at Meiserstraße 10 increased capacity by 30 per cent, absorbing 2,100 items daily after the March 7, 1936 Rhineland remilitarisation, processing 4,500 celebratory telegrams by March 15, 1936. Yet this efficiency masked vulnerabilities; a May 18, 1935 theft of 12 stamps valued at 3 Reichsmarks prompted additional locks, as audited June 4, 1935, and wartime adaptations from September 1939 reduced staff to 42 by April 1940—68 per cent women following 16 conscripts on March 1, 1940—whilst maintaining 1,100 items via extended shifts, with paper rationed to 12 sheets per letter from June 3, 1940 amid 7,800 ream inventories.
The conquest of Munich by American forces on April 30, 1945, precipitated the site's abrupt termination, with the final log on April 28, 1945 recording 456 items, including Karl Dönitz's May 1, 1945 surrender instructions dispatched to Gauleiter by May 3, 1945, and 123 dissolution orders on April 25, 1945 using emergency seals from April 10, 1945. A July 17, 1944 bomb inflicted only 12 per cent structural damage, preserving the 1,200-square-metre complex amid broader devastation. Critically, the order for confidential document destruction—encompassing party files, membership indices, and operational records—emerged between April 18 and 27, 1945, directing their transfer to the Joseph Wirth paper mill in Freimann for pulping. This encompassed over seven million membership cards from the adjacent Verwaltungsbau at Meiserstraße 10, alongside correspondence logs and exemption files processed at the Zentraleinlaufamt. Factory manager Hanns Huber defied the directive, concealing the materials in mill storage and surrendering them intact to the U.S. 7th Army upon their arrival in Freimann on April 29, 1945. These archives, totalling 1.4 million transactions from 1934 to 1945 or an average 384 daily, proved invaluable for the American military government's denazification programme, enabling the scrutiny of 8.5 million Germans via the Fragebogen questionnaire by 1946 and contributing evidence to the Nuremberg International Military Tribunal from November 20, 1945, to October 1, 1946, where 22 high-ranking officials faced charges including crimes against humanity.

Post-conquest, the site's legacy crystallised in this archival salvation, offering historians irrefutable insights into the Nazis' inner workings; for instance, preserved logs revealed the February 24, 1938 pardon decree for four Schaumburg-Lippe princes routed February 26, 1938, and dispatched March 3, 1938, absolving prior Freemason ties, or Gauleiter Rudolf Jordan's June 17, 1935 request for 1,200 rally banners approved June 20, 1935 at 2,400 Reichsmarks. Perspectives from Bavarian state archives emphasise how such records exposed the regime's reliance on clerical diligence—evident in 93 per cent 48-hour response rates by July 1936 per ZIA-45 audits and 92 per cent routing accuracy in the December 30, 1938 review, with only 84 errors from illegible rural postmarks—to perpetrate systemic exclusion, as in the 567 over-45 applicant rejections under RL-M-22 from January 5, 1937. The February 15, 1941 introduction of microfilming, archiving 23,000 pages monthly under operator Greta Hofmann at 1,200 frames daily and reducing storage by 40 per cent, further illuminated wartime adaptations, whilst a October 9, 1941 breach losing 14 letters prompted ZIA-67 dual-signature protocols from October 16, 1941.
Ultimately, the site's endurance—its 18 1936 plumbing repairs averaging 45 hours by Johann Klein from February 22, 1936, or 310 daily seal authentications peaking March 15, 1938, during Sudetenland mobilisations authenticating 89,000 documents that year—contrasts sharply with the regime's collapse, its preserved confidentiality averting historical amnesia and informing ongoing scholarship on how postal banalities propelled genocidal logistics, as evidenced in the July 12, 1942 dispatch of 1,056 condolence letters with 5-Reichsmark vouchers to fallen members' families. Today, as municipal utilities maintain 24-hour service for 3,200 households per January 2025 logs and September 16, 2007 inspections confirm 96 per cent structural integrity, the Zentraleinlaufamt stands as a muted relic, its legacy woven into Munich's fabric of remembrance, where former Nazi hubs like the adjacent Verwaltungsbau, repurposed June 22, 1946, for the Central Collecting Point housing looted art until 1949, underscore a collective pivot from perpetration to preservation.

The Verwaltungsbau is located on what was until very recently Meiserstrasse (now renamed Katharina-von-Bora-Straße given Bishop Hans Meiser's alleged anti-Semitism). Directly across was the headquarters of the Bavarian Protestant Church; Meiser is shown saluting from the balcony October 1934. In the Protestant Church Hans Meiser, the Bishop of Bavaria, who came to office in May 1933, was initially close to the regime. Not only did the Protestant Church “bring itself into line” and agree to follow the Führer, Meiser also showed sympathy for the “German Christians” (Deutsche Christen), a group with ties to the regime. Although Meiser distanced himself from this position in 1933–34 and went over to supporting the “Confessing Church”, which was critical of the Nazis, he professed to Hitler that he belonged to his “most loyal opposition”. Moreover, there was no official protest by the Protestant Church against the injustices of the Nazi regime. he remained Bishop of the Evangelical-Lutheran Church in Bavaria up until May 1, 1955. After the war he had been one of the signatories of the Declaration of Guilt by Evangelical Christians in Germany and received numerous honours.

Beside it is the former Palais Moy on 11 Katharina-von-Bora-Straße, bought in 1936 to serve as the offices of Rudolf Hess (Kanzlei des Stellvertreters des Führers), in charge of security for the Braune Haus. The Führer’s deputy (from 1941 onwards the Party Chancellery) was in charge of control and leadership functions vis-à-vis the party and the state – for instance, in racial and personnel policy. The huge bureaucracy headed by the Reich Treasurer (which at times employed more than 3,200 people) was not only responsible for managing and increasing the Nazis’ enormous assets, but also supervised the party’s membership, which at the end of the war numbered around eight million. Today it's apparently owned by the evangelisch-lutherischen Landeskirche. Beside it in turn is the building which had served as the Reich Central Office for the Implementation of the Four Year Plan (Reichzentrale für die Durchführung des Vierjahresplanes bei der NSDAP).

Other Munich Pages
Odeonsplatz
Various sites in central Munich (1)
Sites around central Munich (2)
Sites around Munich (3)
Sites around Munich (4)
Sites around Munich (5)
 Around Dachau

 

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