Nazi Sites around Munich (4)

Lwenbrukeller

Standing in front of the Lwenbrukeller. Located at Nymphenburgerstrae 4 on Stiglmaier Platz, it was used as a substitute site for the anniversaries of the 1923 Beer Hall Putsch, after a 1939 assassination attempt on Hitler by Georg Elser rendered the original site, the nearby Brgerbrukeller unusable.
 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 Rhm and some 2,000 SA, Bund Oberland, and Reichskriegflagge men assembled here at the Lowenbrukeller where they received the code word from the Burgerbru 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, 

the annual commemorative festivities began in the Lwenbrukeller in Munich. The usual site for the celebrations, the Brgerbrukeller, 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. 

Doramus (2113) The Complete Hitler

In a footnote on page 830 of Rise And Fall Of The Third Reich, Shirer writes:

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.

Hitler and other Nazi officials celebrate Christmas at a party for ϟϟ officer cadets at the Lowenbraukeller on December 18, 1941. 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.

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

when Hitler travelled to Munich to give his traditional address in the Lwenbrukeller 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 Lwenbrukeller. 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 Fhrer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:

With colleagues on the anniversary

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.

On November 9, 1943, the Fhrer 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,

When (for the last time, as it turned out) Hitler addressed the partys Old Guard in Munichs Lwenbrukeller 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.

Hitler's Christmas party: Rare photos capture leading Nazis celebrating...

On December 17, 1944 the main hall was completely destroyed, only rebuilt in 1950. By 1955 the entire faade 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

People at the Nazi party headquarters at Corneliusstrae 12 during the Beer Hall putsch attempt trying to gain information and possibly join in. 

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.

As related by Philipp Bouhler in his 1938 textbook on the history of the Nazi Party (Kampf um Deutschland. Ein Lesebuch fr die deutsche Jugen):

[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 Corneliusstrae 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 Brckner, leader of the Munich S.A. Gring, the S.A.s national leader, had his office in 1923 in the editorial building of the [Vlkischer Beobachter] Schellingstrae 39/41.

Memorial to the Freikorps

Ferdinand Liebermann's 'Mnchen Freikorpsdenkmal' a Nazi memorial to the Freikorps victory over the communists in Munich in May 1919, named 'Das Denkmal fr die Befreier Mnchens von den kommunistischen Horden ('Memorial for the liberators of Munich from the communist hordes) inaugurated May 3, 1942. The ceremony began at 14.00 and lasted 65 minutes. The monument stood 10.2 metres tall, constructed from limestone, and featured a relief of a nude male figure strangling a serpent, symbolising the Freikorps' suppression of Judeo-Bolshevik degeneration and decline. The event was officiated by Munich mayor Karl Fiehler and Reichsstatthalter Franz Xaver Ritter von Epp. Fiehler spoke for twelve minutes, stating, "This monument eternalises the Freikorps' triumph over Bolshevik chaos in our city." Ritter von Epp, a Freikorps veteran, spoke for eighteen minutes, saying, "The men honoured here ensured Bavarias salvation on May 1, 1919, against red terror."
Around 2,100 people attended, including 520 Freikorps veterans, 280 Nazi Party members, 180 ϟϟ personnel for security, and 1,120 local citizens. The event featured a 12-minute parade of 300 Freikorps veterans marching in formation past the monument, saluting the relief. A 25-member military band from the ϟϟ-Leibstandarte played the Horst-Wessel-Lied and Deutschlandlied. Spectators stood in designated areas behind wooden barriers, with 60 journalists from Munich newspapers, including Vlkischer Beobachter, present. The monuments design originated from Liebermanns 1940 plaster relief Wille, exhibited at the Haus der Deutschen Kunst, room 7, on July 18, 1940. Construction began on September 10, 1941, after approval by the Munich city council on February 5, 1940, with a budget of 120,000 Reichsmarks. The ceremony ended at 15.05 with a silent tribute lasting 90 seconds. 

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 Ichostrae. 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.
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 demoralising 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.

Hitler's Stormtroopers and the Attack on the German Republic, 1919-1933 (43-4)

The original Nazi relief was demolished under US military orders on June 15, 1945, with the wall fully cleared of debris by March 4, 1947. Apparently the non-figurative installation one sees now symbolises societal ascent from dictatorship to democracy. The 1994 replacement sparked controversy, with a petition by 162 locals demanding at least contextual plaques, resulting in the addition of an informational panel on April 12, 1996, detailing the site's 1919 Freikorps executions of 606 individuals and Nazi-era function.

Hofbrukeller

Here on Innere Wiener Strae 19 was where Hitler publicly spoke for the first time:

On 16 October he was one of 111 people to attend a meeting at the Hofbrauhauskeller, at which Dr Erich Khn, 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?

In Mein Kampf, Hitler described this speech retrospectively as a transformative experience, claiming, "Nach dreiig Minuten waren die Menschen in dem kleinen Raum elektrisiert," referring to the audience's enthusiastic response after he spoke for half an hour on anti-Semitic and nationalist themes. This event at the Hofbrukeller, occurring before the party's renaming to Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei on February 24, 1920, established the venue as a cradle for Hitler's oratorical development, with attendance figures at subsequent gatherings growing to larger crowds as his rhetoric gained traction. The Hofbrukeller continued as a preferred location for Nazi meetings throughout the 1920s, hosting at least a dozen documented assemblies between 1919 and 1923, including discussions on party strategy and recruitment drives that expanded membership from 55 in January 1919 to over 2,000 by early 1920. Unlike the Hofbruhaus, where Hitler proclaimed the 25-point programme to 2,000 people on February 24, 1920, the Hofbrukeller's significance lies in its association with the nascent phase of National Socialism, exemplified by a January 13, 1920, event where Hitler spoke on "Der Jude als Rasse und Kulturverderber," attracting 130 participants and setting a pattern for inflammatory propaganda sessions.

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

On May 5, 1919, during the suppression of the Munich Soviet Republic, members of the Freikorps Ltzow executed twelve innocent workers and craftsmen from the Perlach district in the Hofbrukeller's beer garden, erroneously identifying them as revolutionaries; the victims included individuals such as Josef Auer, a 44-year-old mason, and Karl Seiser, a 35-year-old locksmith. This commemorative plaque was installed at the beer garden entrance on June 28, 1997, listing the names of these twelve men and states, "Ermordet von Soldaten des Freikorps Ltzow," highlighting the site's role in the violent counter-revolutionary actions that preceded the rise of the Nazis. 

IN MEMORY OF THE CITIZENS from Perlach: 

JOSEPH LUDWIG     ARTUR KOCH JOHANN KEIL     SEBASTIAN HUFNAGEL ALBERT DENGLER     ALBERT CANCER GEORG JAKOB     JOSEPH JAKOB GEORG EICHNER     KONRAD ZELLER AUGUST STBER     JOHANN SPRUCE  

Following the military defeat of the Munich Soviet Republic, these workers and craftsmen were denounced and without legal judicial proceedings were taken by the Freikorps Ltzow on 5 May 1919 to the garden of the Hofbruhaus Keller and murdered.

The Hofbrukeller's role diminished after the November 9, 1923, putsch failure at the Brgerbrukeller, but in June 23, 1929, Hitler gave a speech here celebrating electoral gains, where he addressed 1,500 supporters on the movement's ideological consolidation.

Maximilianeum

The palatial Maximilianeum was initiated by King Maximilian II of Bavaria, who started the project in 1857 and is honoured in front by the Maxmonument  sculpted by Kaspar von Zumbusch and nveiled on October 12, 1875. It features a 5-metre bronze statue of Maximilian II holding the 1818 constitution document, shown here as it appeared during the Third Reich and today. It's located just down the road from Hitler's residence at Thierschstrasse 41 and the Nazis' publishing headquarters at Thierschstrasse 11. Ascending the throne during the German Revolution of 1848, Maximilian managed to restore stability to his kingdom with his reign characterised by attempts to maintain Bavarian independence during the wars of German Unification and to transform his capital city of Munich into a cultural and educational city.
The Nazis incorporated elements of Bavarian monarchical history to bolster regional nationalism within the Volksgemeinschaft framework, but Maximilian II's liberal reforms and patronage of sciences were selectively ignored or reframed to avoid conflicting with anti-monarchical aspects of early Nazi ideology. The Bayernhymne, commissioned by Maximilian II in 1852 with music composed by Konrad Max Kunz between and lyrics by Michael chsner, served as a key example; during the Nazi era, the hymn wasn't prohibited but excluded from official ceremonies after April 1933 and removed from school textbooks by 1935, as its monarchical lyrics, including the third stanza "Gott mit ihm, dem Bayerknig," clashed with the regime's emphasis on the Horst-Wessel-Lied. 
The Maximilianeum itself was built as the home of a gifted students' foundation and has also housed the Bavarian Landtag since 1949. Built by leading architect Friedrich Brklein, 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 various problems the construction was only completed in 1874 and the faade 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 faade was decorated with arches, columns, mosaics and niches filled with busts whilst 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's not known how Frieda Thiersch personally felt about the Nazis but what's certain 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 Thiersch didn't distance herself from Nazi 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-Universitt.

Looking out towards the town centre from inside during MUNOM 2010

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 Grtner, German Minister of Justice between 1932 and 1941.

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 with my bike in front. 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 Fhrer was laid for the commander of the guard on duty at the Eternal Guard at the northern pantheon at the Kniglicher 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 Fhrerbau on the Kniglicher 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 Prannerstrae 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.

The German Research institute for Psychiatry during the war and today.  Opened in 1917, the Deutsche Forschungsanstalt fr Psychiatrie on Kraepelinstrae 2 served during the Nazi era 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 Verhtung 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 Prannerstrae adorned with Hitler's visage and swastika during the morning roll for the April 10, 1938 elections and today, extensively remodelled. In 1933, the bank underwent an internal audit at Prannerstrae, conducted in the main office over three days starting March 10, to align with Nazi economic policies. This involved reviewing client accounts for compliance with racial and political regulations, affecting an estimated 1520% of accounts, particularly those held by Jewish clients. By 1938, under the Aryanisation policy, the bank was required to transfer Jewish-owned assets, with a dozen specific cases handled between June and August 1938, involving property and securities valued at approximately 1.2 million Reichsmarks. The bank facilitated loans to Bavarian industries supporting the war effort, including a documented 3 million Reichsmark loan to BMW on July 15, 1940, signed in the Prannerstrae boardroom, for aircraft engine production. In 1941, the bank processed 5,000 transactions monthly at the headquarters, a 20% increase from 1932, driven by wartime economic demands. Annual shareholder meetings, held in late April, saw 120150 attendees discussing financial strategies, with a notable meeting on 22 April 1942 focusing on war bond underwriting, raising 10 million Reichsmarks.The building remained undamaged during Allied bombings, unlike nearby structures, allowing uninterrupted operations.

 

Deutsches Museum

At the Deutsches Museum where the Nazi-era eagle and arms of Munich remain on the faade below the astronomical clock. The museum underwent significant structural, administrative, and ideological transformations under the Nazis. Before, the institution had operated under its founder Oskar von Miller, who maintained an apolitical stance focused on scientific and technological education, a position which became untenable after January 30, 1933. The Munich Nazi Party leadership, particularly Gauleiter Adolf Wagner, had opposed Miller since late 1928, their primary grievance centring on Millers refusal to permit the erection of the statue of Otto von Bismarck within the museum grounds. Following the Nazi takeover of Munichs city administration, the annual board meeting, historically funded by the city, ceased to receive municipal support. Hitler declined the honorary presidency of the museum, a role accepted by every German chancellor since the museums inauguration in 1925. Consequently, Miller resigned on May 7, 1933, his seventy-eighth birthday, stating he could no longer serve the institution effectively under the new political conditions.
Jonathan Zenneck succeeded Miller on May 8, 1933. Zenneck, a member of the German National Peoples Party (DNVP), openly sympathised with the regime and enforced the Gesetz zur Wiederherstellung des Berufsbeamtentums (Civil Service Restoration Act) of April 7, 1933, within the museum staff which resulted in the immediate dismissal of two employees: Karl Schlier, a technical draughtsman, for membership in the Social Democratic Party (SPD); and Dr. Ernst Cohen, head of the chemistry department, on racial grounds under Paragraph 3 of the Act. Zennecks administration also initiated the removal of exhibits deemed degenerate or incompatible with Nazi racial doctrine, including several displays on Jewish inventors and international scientific collaboration.
Hugo Bruckmann, a Munich-based publisher and early financial backer of the Nazi Party, was installed by Miller as chairman of the museums governing body in October 1933. Bruckmann possessed no scientific qualifications but held personal ties to Miller through marriage and had known Hitler since 1923. His appointment signalled the museums alignment with Party interests. After his death on April 9, 1934, the museums leadership actively sought high-ranking Nazi figures to bolster its political credibility. Fritz Todt, Inspector General for German Roadways and head of the Organisation Todt, became a key contact. Todt had organised the propaganda exhibition Die Strasse in Munich during October 1934, showcasing the construction of the Reichsautobahnen. Museum directors proposed integrating Todts autobahn projects into the museums road transport hall, arguing it exemplified "German engineering genius under National Socialist leadership." Todt agreed to supply authentic construction models, blueprints, and photographs. He further criticised the museums traditional layout, describing it in a November 1934 memorandum as an attic stuffed with historical artefacts possessing no connection to the present struggles of the German Volk.

Hitlers first official visit to the Deutsches Museum occurred on January 4, 1935, accompanied solely by Hugo Bruckmann. Records indicate Hitler spent approximately three hours examining specific departments. He displayed particular interest in the congress hall, where he inspected acoustic engineering models; the airship hall, where he studied the LZ 129 Hindenburg replica; the road construction section, focusing on autobahn models; the automotive department; and the shipbuilding hall. Contemporary museum logs note Hitler was "especially captivated: by the scale model of the battleship Deutschland, donated by the Reichsmarineamt on August 15, 1934. This vessel, commissioned in 1933, represented the revival of German naval power under the regime. Hitler remarked to Bruckmann that the model exemplified "the triumph of German engineering over Versailles restrictions." A second documented visit took place on April 1, 1935. No senior officials accompanied Hitler on this occasion; he toured privately for ninety minutes, concentrating again on transportation technology. The museums annual report for 1935 emphasised that Hitlers visits "validated the institutions contribution to National Socialist educational policy."
Of the museum itself, Hitler had remarked June 13, 1943 that

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

(318) Hitler's Table Talk

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

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

  ϟϟ-Hauptsturmfhrer 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 S (1940) and Die Rothschilds (1940), as well as the book by Hans Dieboro with the same title. Der ewige Jude raised the pogrom mood against the Jews to boiling point. These films and a number of other books were calculated to justify in advance the mass murder of the European Jews.

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

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

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

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

 

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

Deutsches Museum Kongresaal

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).

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

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

Connecting the Deutschen Museum and Kongresaal to the rest of the city on the other side of the Isar is the Ludwigsbrcke, over which the annual November 9 march would pass. It's one of the most important crossings of the Isar in Munich, directing traffic from the districts of Au, Haidhausen, Ramersdorf and Bogenhausen, across the Isar to Isartorplatz. The Ludwigsbrcke itself stands at a location of great historical significance as this is where the original Isarbrcke stood, which Henry the Lion used to divert the salt trade from the Isar bridge near Oberfhring to his territory in 1158 and thus supplanting Freising as the main capital. After the Fhringer bridge was destroyed by Henry, this bridge remained for a long time the only navigable Isar bridge between Bad Tlz and Freising. By 1892, the outer bridge was given four wider concrete arches with Carl Hocheder responsible for the four pylons erected at the outer ends of the two bridges seen here, which were intended to visually unite the structures.

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

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

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

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

Here, for the first time, the Putschists were coming into contact with a large government force with a clear mission that it was in a position to execute. However, having gained false confidence at the Ludwigsbrcke, 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 Ludwigsbrcke 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

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

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

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

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

Another view looking towards the city centre from the Gasteig. The bridge and area around it underwent extensive Nazi redesign and reconstruction between 1934 and 1939.  The original neo-Gothic bridge, built in 18481851 by the architect Friedrich von Grtner and engineer August von Voit, was demolished in sections from October 1934. The Nazi city administration, under Oberbrgermeister Karl Fiehler and Stadtbaurat Hermann Giesler, replaced it with a new reinforced-concrete structure clad entirely in light-coloured Muschelkalk limestone. The new bridge opened to traffic on September 15, 1939.  The most visible Nazi alterations were the four monumental pylons erected at each corner of the bridge. Each pylon stood 12 metres high and was crowned by a 2.8-metre-high bronze eagle clutching a swastika wreath. The eagles were cast in 1937 by the Munich firm Ferdinand von Miller and weighed 1,200 kilogrammes each. On the inner faces of the pylons, large reliefs designed by Richard Knecht depicted stylised Germanic warriors bearing shields with the Munich city coat of arms and the Nazi Party emblem. The bridge deck was widened from 19 metres to 28 metres, and the parapets received continuous friezes of oak-leaf garlands interspersed with swastikas every six metres. The original 1851 bronze statues of King Ludwig I and the allegorical figures of Bavaria and Germania were removed in November 1935 and stored in the Hofgarten depot and never returned. In their place, on the western approach, two 4.5-metre-high stone lions designed by Bernhard Bleeker were installed in September 1938; each lion held a shield bearing the Munich city arms flanked by swastikas. All four bronze eagles and the swastika reliefs were removed by American troops on May 8, 1945. The oak-leaf friezes on the parapets were chiselled off between June 1945 and March 1946. The limestone cladding and the widened deck remain in place today; the bridge has been structurally unchanged since 1939. The only surviving Nazi-era decorative element is the pair of Bleeker lions on the western side, which lost their swastika shields in 1945 but still stand at the entrance to the Lehel. The original 1851 statues of Ludwig I and the allegorical figures were reinstalled on the rebuilt parapets in 1952, though in slightly different positions from their pre-1934 locations.

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

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

Clay Large (185-186) Where Ghosts Walked

Hitler leading the procession over the Ludwigsbrcke with the Mllersche 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 Boschbrcke. 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.

Drake Winston at the entrance to the Deutsches Museum: Verkehrszentrum. The administration of the Deutsches Museum transport collections underwent significant structural and ideological changes following the appointment of the new museum leadership in 1933 when its focus shifted to align with the motorisation policy of the Nazis. German Bestelmeyer designed the new hall, which connected the existing museum buildings with the Zenneck Bridge. The foundation stone was laid on November 10, 1935 and on May 7, 1937, the Deutsches Museum opened the Motor Vehicle Hall to the public, coinciding with the annual meeting of the museum board. Hitler and Bavarian Minister President Ludwig Siebert attended the opening ceremony. Fritz Todt, Inspector General for German Roadways, exercised substantial control over the curatorial content. Todt mandated that the exhibition highlight the construction of the Reich Motorway. The central display included a large-scale diorama of a motorway junction, intended to demonstrate the integration of road infrastructure with the German landscape. The collection emphasised German technological supremacy. Key exhibits included the Benz Patent-Motorwagen and the Daimler Motorised Carriage, which curators displayed to assert German priority in automotive invention. The museum acquired contemporary racing vehicles to demonstrate engineering prowess, the Auto Union Type C and the Mercedes-Benz W 25 being prominent fixtures in the hall.
During the war, the museum hosted special exhibitions such as The Front and the Homeland in 1941. As the air war intensified, the transport halls sustained severe damage. On April 24, 1944, an Allied air raid caused the partial collapse of the Motor Vehicle Hall roof. Subsequent bombing runs on July 12, 1944, and July 13, 1944, resulted in the destruction of the glazing and further structural failure. By January 1, 1945, roughly 80% of the museum complex had suffered bomb damage.

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 Fhrer 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 didn't 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 

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 "Fhrer" 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 Gring 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 Vlkische 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

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 "Glckshafen" 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 Schlein family, had to flee to America from the Nazis. Hermann Schlein had brought Lwenbru through the difficult twenties. His father Josef, who was also called "King of Haidhausen" because of his charity and employee-friendliness, had once merged Unionbru, which he had founded, with Lwenbru. In 1933 the Nazis banned Jews from working at the Oktoberfest.

 Souvenirs added swastikas to their depictions of the Mnchner 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. 

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 "Grodeutsches 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 (Bavarian Hall of Fame) 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 Khler 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 Khler 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 Khler speaking to two individuals wearing olive parkas immediately prior to the explosion as well as statements that a second individual was seen with Khler 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 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 Nazis 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. Portrt eines Attentters, 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

Thierschstrae 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 Vlkischer 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.

Shirer (42) Rise And Fall Of The Third Reich

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  vlkisch  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 Kthe 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 Vlkischer 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. 
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 Vlkischer 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.

1933 edition of Mein Kampf lent me by a student's mother. Her own grandfather had actually read the first book and I'd love to know what the exclamation marks and underlined passages refer to. He had been denied a promotion in a letter I saw due to his un-national socialist beliefs.

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, established on November 16, 1920, in Munich by Rudolf Rother senior, a Leipzig-born bookseller and mountaineer who specialised in alpinism literature, journals and ski courses. During the Nazi era he adapted to regime policies whilst maintaining operations, as mountaineering aligned with Nazi glorification of physical prowess and nature, evidenced by state promotion of outdoor activities to foster Volksgemeinschaft ideals. Neither an active Nazi supporter nor opponent, he negotiated with the authorities to sustain publishing amid ideological pressures. In 1933, the firm employed Fritz Schmitt, a socialist previously persecuted by Nazis, as editor of Deutsche Alpenzeitung, a key journal acquired earlier, indicating selective hiring despite political risks. That said, they did publish works by avowed Nazis, such as Julius Gallian's Ostalpen-Skifhrer in 1935, which promoted ski touring with nationalist undertones, praising Aryan resilience in alpine settings. Gallian had been an SA member since 1932 and infused texts with propaganda, including references to Blut und Boden themes. The publisher retained such authors post-1945 without public disavowal, as Gallian's books remained in catalogues until 1952.  During the war, publishing activities were stopped and the publishing house was destroyed in a bombing in 1945 and rebuilt in 1948. Since 1950 the company has published the Alpine Club Guides in cooperation with the German Alpine Club (DAV), the Austrian Alpine Club (AV) 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 Orthopdischen Klinik at Harlachinger Strae 12, on July 4, 1937. Another photo taken from the other side can be found here. Today the Munich Clinic Harlaching (formerly Klinikum Harlaching ) is a maximum care hospital and an academic teaching hospital of the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich . The clinic was opened on November 18, 1899 as the Sanatorium Harlaching. During the First World War, patients were transferred from the city hospitals to Harlaching to relieve the pressure so that beds there could be kept available for wounded soldiers. During the Third Reich in 1936 it was converted into a tuberculosis hospital with operating rooms. With 187 beds, the smallest of the existing city hospitals at the time was renamed Munich-Harlaching Hospital at the end of January 1938 after the patient rooms were converted into single, double and four-bed rooms and the operating room was enlarged. In 1944, the beds that became available when patients were transferred to the Munich area were kept free to accommodate the wounded expected in air raids. This would be the only hospital in Munich to survive the war without major destruction.

 Atelier Josef Thorak
In 1937, Hitler commissioned the leading Nazi architect Albert Speer to plan the construction of a studio for the sculptor Josef Thorak, who was considered one of the most important sculptors of National Socialism. The construction costs were borne by the Bavarian financial administration. The building was built in Baldham between 1938 and 1941 and its executive architect was Josef Schatz. The building always remained the property of the state, which is why it was also called the state studio. Here, Thorak worked on monumental, often larger-than-life sculptures which included, among other things, work for the Nuremberg Nazi Party Rally Grounds, the Monument to Work (a stone-turning group dedicated to the Reichsautobahn), a larger-than-life bust of Hitler, as well as statues of Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach, Matthias Grnewald, Nicholas Copernicus and Frederick the Great. Horses were kept as models for his horse sculptures in an outbuilding. In March 1942, Goebbels and the Italian Minister of Popular Culture Alessandro Pavolini visited the sculptor here in his studio. In 1943, Leni Riefenstahl produced the short documentary Josef Thorak, Workshop and Work , directed by Arnold Fanck and Hans Crlis, which shows Thorak's studio and some of his works.  There are various sources that discuss the use of forced labor in and at the Thorak studio. The Dutch journalist Nico Rost reported in his diary Goethe in Dachau from the Dachau concentration camp in October 1944 about two fellow prisoners whom Thorak had requested as forced labourers for "his studio near Garmisch-Partenkirchen " ("They'll send me immediately, at the cheapest price , two skilled sculptors!). However, the two prisoners were ultimately not sent to Thorak, but were transferred to other concentration camps. According to the historian Johannes Hofinger, Thorak's request meant the studio in Baldham. In response to Thorak's acquittal before the Munich tribunal in 1949, the tribunal received a submission from Max R., according to whose statement he "had to work as a political prisoner with others from the Dachau concentration camp in Thorak's Park in front of the studio." There was also a railway siding on the site for transporting sculptures, which was built by forced labourers. The building, which allowed for sculptures up to 17 metres in height to be produced from one piece, was was created by Albert Speer and now serves as a branch of the Bavarian State Archaeological Collection. Speer would later write how Thorak was "more or less my sculptor, who frequently designed statues and reliefs for my buildings" and "who created the group of figures for the German pavilion at the Paris World's Fair." In fact, Breker only used the atelier sporadically or for a short period of time as increasing bombings and associated damage to the building made its use impossible. Instead, Brekers main workplace was Schloss Jckelsbruch, a manor Hitler personally presented to him on the occasion of his fortieth birthday in 1940.

Thorak had already moved out of his studio before the end of the war. The building then served as a storage facility for some exhibits from Munich museums to protect them from the bombs. On May 5, 1945, German General Hermann Foertsch and American General Jacob L. Devers negotiated the surrender of Army Group G in the Thorak studio. That same day, Foertsch signed the unconditional surrender at the Hitler Youth home in the neighbouring town of Haar, although the exact location of the signing is disputed. The American flag was raised on the Thorak Building. In the following years the building served as an officers' mess for the American Armed Forces and was also called the White Horse Inn because of Thorak's horse sculptures . In 1947 the military withdrew, but destroyed the horse sculptures in the park and a bronze sculpture of Mussolini. From 1947 to 1949 the building was used as refugee accommodation, later as a school (the so-called Waldschule) and even as a church. 

In 1954, Ilse Kubaschewski had the building converted into a film studio. Her production company KG DIVINA-FILM GmbH & Co. (originally Diana-Film) produced numerous films in the Divina Studio Baldham until 1962, including the films Verrat an Deutschland (1955), Kirschen in Nachbars Garten (1956), Wo die alten Wlder rauschen (1956), Das alte Frsterhaus (1956), Weier Holunder (1957), Nachts, wenn der Teufel kam (1957), Heute blau und morgen blau (1957), Die Landrztin (1958), Heimatlos (1958), Der Haustyrann (1959), Heimat  Deine Lieder (1959), Der Gauner und der liebe Gott (1960) und Freddy und der Millionr (1961). The well-known actors and directors who worked in Baldham during this time included Mario Adorf, Karlheinz Bhm, Hans Clarin, Hans Jrgen Dietrich, Erich Engels, Heinz Erhardt, Gert Frbe, Joachim Fuchsberger, Barbara Gallauner  Marianne Koch, Paul May, Willy Millowitsch Freddy Quinn, Robert Siodmak, Grethe Weiser and child actors Elmar and Fritz Wepper. 

 Standing at the site today, located just behind a children's playground, and as it appeared when the Americans occupied the site. The area is now completely fenced in and generally not freely accessible. Whilst today the entrance is from Fichtenstrae to the south, in Thorak's time it was from the Waldstrae to the north. Massive stone pillars on the forest road, which delimit a gate entrance, are still a reminder of this. The building is not open to the public, but the opening of a museum or permanent exhibition has been discussed several times.

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 Blutenburgstrae and Pappenheimstrae 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 Phner, Wilhelm Frick, Ernst Rhm, Hermann Kriebel, Friedrich Weber, Wilhelm Friedrich Karl Brckner 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 Blutenburgstrae. 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 Grtner. 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 Phner. Brckner, Rhm, 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, Phner, 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 Brckner, Rhm, 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 SA.

Was frustrated after finally locating the site of these famous photos of the members of the White Rose resistance group outside Ostbahnhof only to find the spot where the photo was taken closed off, made all the more complicated given that at the time, the photographer was standing on a platform that no longer exists. 

Both photographs show Sophie and Hans Scholl, Hubert Furtwngler, Willi Graf and Alexander Schmorell. Sophie Scholl is seen holding a white rose in her hand as the young men are about to embark to the Eastern Front. During their three-months serving in Poland and Russia, Hans Scholl and Alexander Schmorell became even more decisive in their attitude against the Nazi regime having seen the suffering in the Warsaw ghetto and the causelessness of the war on the Eastern Front. In an encrypted letter from the August 17, 1942 Hans Scholl wrote that this misery "made a very decisive impression on everyone." The medical student Jrgen Wittenstein took these photos in July 23, 1942. Although the White Rose is already remembered in several places in Munich, especially throughout the Ludwig Maximilian University, this inconspicuous, forgotten place at the Ostbahnhof for decades is an original show place of historical significance. 

Only months later, most of the depicted were no longer alive. But the rusted iron fence has survived although it's now threatened with demolition due to construction work. At the moment, there is now a used car yard but not for much longer as the Munich-based real estate company GVG is set to construct a total of five building complexes with apartments, shops and offices. The fence therefore probably has to give way.

This was the site of the Antonienheim of the Israelitische Jugendhilfe, a children's home originally established for orphans and children living in poverty from the Jewish community in Munich and beyond. In 1925, the Israeli Youth Welfare Association acquired the house that was here at Antonienstrae 7 in Schwabing. As seen here from around the time, it enjoyed a garden and consisted of 20 rooms. The first children arrived on March 29, 1926. From 1933 onwards, the Antonienheim increasingly admitted children and young people whose parents were trying to find a way to survive for themselves and their children. As early as 1938, the Gauleiter had ordered the closure of the home. England had still been able to save the lives of several of the children through Kindertransports.

In November 1941, 20 children and four caregivers were deported and all murdered. By April 1942, the home was forced to close permanently. The remaining children, their teachers, and the home's director, Alice Bendix , were first taken to the assembly camp in Berg am Laim from where, on March 13, 1943, they were deported in a cattle car to various death camps, including the Kaunas concentration camp in Lithuania, and then to Auschwitz where they were murdered. The ϟϟ subsequently established a Lebensborn house to establish a "mother's residence" in the Antonienheim; the purchase price was never paid. During one of the nights of bombing Munich, the building was destroyed. Now the street consists of residential buildings. Since 2002, this memorial has been located on the sidewalk in front of the former Antonienheim site. Apparently the property owner had refused to allow the installation of a commemorative plaque directly on the building that stands there today. The memorial is a text column created by Hermann Kleinknecht and includes a transparent panel with a photo showing two former residents looking out the window. The school opposite has been called the Alice Bendix Vocational School Centre, named after the director of the children's home.

This building served as the headquarters for the infamous Organisation Consul, a right-wing paramilitary group active in the early 1920s in Germany with approximately 5,000 members. Trautenwolfstrae 8 was a focal point for the group's operations between 1921 and 1922. Organisation Consul, founded by members of the disbanded Freikorps, particularly from the Ehrhardt Brigade, aimed to undermine the Weimar Republic through assassinations, sabotage, and political agitation. The groups activities at Trautenwolfstrae 8 were clandestine, and the site functioned as a hub for planning and coordinating their operations.
On August 26, 1921, Matthias Erzberger, former Reich Finance Minister, was assassinated in Bad Griesbach in the Black Forest, during a walk at approximately 10.30. The planning for this attack occurred at Trautenwolfstrae 8 in June and July 1921, focusing on targeting Erzberger for his role in signing the 1918 armistice, seen as a betrayal of German nationalist interests. A police report from the Bayerisches Hauptstaatsarchiv notes Killinger stating, Erzbergers reforms and capitulation must be answered with blood. The operation was planned to last ten minutes, with Tillessen and Schulz using revolvers to fire five shots, hitting Erzberger in the head, chest, and leg. Weapons, including four pistols and 100 rounds of ammunition, were stored in the headquarters basement and retrieved on July 20, 1921, at 6.00. The groups cover was the Bavarian Wood Processing Company, a front registered at Trautenwolfstrae 8. A memorial stone in a bend on the federal highway 28 between Bad Griesbach and Freudenstadt commemorates this massacre which I came across as I lumbered through the Black Forest seen here on the left.
On June 24, 1922, at approximately 7.45, Organisation Consul members executed one of their most notorious acts, the assassination of Foreign Minister Walther Rathenau. The planning for this attack took place at Trautenwolfstrae 8 over several weeks, with meetings held in the late evenings involving key figures such as Hermann Fischer, Ernst Werner Techow, and Hans Gerd Techow. The group used a back room on the second floor, furnished with basic wooden tables and chairs, to strategise. Maps of Berlin, photographs of Rathenau, and detailed schedules of his movements were reviewed during these sessions. The focus of the meetings was to destabilise the Weimar government by targeting prominent figures associated with its policies. Rathenau, a Jewish politician and advocate for the Treaty of Rapallo, was selected due to his role in fostering diplomatic ties with the Soviet Union, which Organisation Consul viewed as a betrayal of German interests. Discussions at Trautenwolfstrae 8 included debates over the use of a bomb versus firearms, with the latter chosen for precision.  Ernst von Salomon shredded papers, hours before a routine police patrol passed the building the night before the attack. Beyond the Rathenau assassination, Trautenwolfstrae 8 was used for planning other attacks, including the attempted murder of Maximilian Harden, a journalist critical of nationalist movements. On July 3, 1922, at around 18.00, members met at the headquarters to finalise details of this operation, which lasted approximately two hours and involved seven attendees. The group also stored weapons, including pistols and grenades, in a locked basement room at a safehouse on Sendlinger Strae after receiving a tip about a potential raid , with an inventory list from a 1922 police raid noting fifteen handguns and 200 rounds of ammunition.
The murder of Karl Gareis, a Bavarian USPD deputy, on June 9, 1921, at around 20.00 in Munich, is less conclusively linked to Organisation Consul, but there's no doubt that on June 4, 1922, at approximately 15.00, Organisation Consul members attempted to assassinate Philipp Scheidemann, former Reich Chancellor and Kassels mayor, in a Kassel park using prussic acid. Planning occurred here the month before with three meetings held by six to eight members, including Hans Hustert and Karl Oehlschlger, discussing Scheidemanns proclamation of the Weimar Republic in 1918 as their rationale.  The attack failed due to wind dispersing the acid, lasting less than a minute. The prussic acid was stored in a locked cabinet at here and retrieved at 9.00. The operation was planned to provoke leftist unrest, aligning with the groups strategy to destabilise the Republic.
Organisation Consuls activities at Trautenwolfstrae 8 ceased after a crackdown by Bavarian authorities in late 1922, following the groups ban in June of that year. The building was raided on November 12, 1922, at 5.30, with police confiscating documents and arresting three individuals present. Today there is a plaque on the building, not with any reference to any of this, but to a writer, Peter Paul Althau, who ended up living here after the war.

Here at Hohenzollernstrasse 25 is one of six locations where artist Wolfram Kastner installed his Hier wohnte... memorial, consisting of white suitcases to commemorate Jewish residents deported and murdered during the Nazi regime. Launched to mark 80 years since the defeat of Germany, the project runs from June 1, 2025, to November 30, 2025, aiming to highlight the erased histories of Jewish individuals tied to specific buildings in Schwabing. Those commemorated at this specific address include Emma Grnebaum, a widow who lived alone at the address, having lost her husband before the war and who was deported on July 23, 1943, to the Theresienstadt ghetto, where she died. Charlotte and Betty Harburger were both deported on November 20, 1941, to Kaunas, Lithuania, and murdered on November 25, 1941, in the mass executions at Fort IX. Charlotte's suitcase contains a sample of her sewing work whilst Betty's highlights her work as a typist and her engagement in Jewish cultural activities, including organising community events. Her suitcase includes a typed letter she wrote in 1940, preserved in the Stadtarchiv Mnchen, reflecting her hope for emigration that never materialised. Mary Maria Hausner too was deported on November 20, 1941, to Kaunas and murdered on November 25, 1941, at Fort IX. She'd been a single woman who worked as a nurse in Munichs Jewish hospital before its closure by the Nazis. Her suitcase display includes a nurses pin and a photograph from her hospital days. Frieda Katzenstein, was deported on an unspecified date, likely in 1942 or 1943, to Theresienstadt, where she perished. She was a schoolteacher who taught at a Jewish school in Munich until it was shut down in 1941. Her suitcase contains a childrens book she used in her classes, symbolising her dedication to education. Alfred Model was deported on January 25, 1943, to Theresienstadt as well. A lawyer who faced increasing restrictions under Nazi anti-Jewish laws until he was stripped of his practice by 1938, his suitcase includes a legal document he drafted.

These suitcases at Franz-Josef-Strae 15 were placed to honour Emma and Jakob Springer, a Jewish couple who lived at this address before their deportation to Theresienstadt on July 20, 1942, where they later died, Emma in 1942 and Jakob in 1943. The white suitcases symbolise the forced displacement of Jewish residents, representing the minimal belongings they could take when deported to concentration camps.

On November 20, 1941, 996 Munich Jews were deported to Kaunas, Lithuania, and murdered five days later. Before their deportation to their deaths, their lives were limited to the contents of a suitcase. For many, only an entry in the population register, a passport photo, and the cynical official comment "emigrated to an unknown location" remained. The building itself survived wartime bombings with minimal damage and remains a residential address today. The memorial installation was unveiled on June 1, 2025 as part of a series of ceremonies across Schwabing. Over the six-month duration the suitcases will remain on the pavement, accessible 24 hours a day, enduring weather and public interaction to symbolise resilience and loss.
Kastner, responsible for Die Spur der Bcher, one of his most famous actions which commemorates the book burnings of 1933 in Germany by using a blowtorch to ceremoniously burn the grass at Knigsplatz, spoke at the opening ceremony, saying that these suitcases stand where people were torn from their homes and that we must remember their names and stories. He also said that he hoped schools in Schwabing participated in the campaign; if National Socialism is being taught in class, a project would be a good idea that focused on children who once attended the school before they were deported. "Then the memory becomes closer and is no longer as distant as in Dachau or Auschwitz." Kastner says. The memorial links the Springers names and fates to Franz-Josef-Strae 15, highlighting individual experiences within the Holocaust. The suitcases, bearing plaques with the Springers names and deportation details, were arranged in a cluster on the pavement.

Next door at Franz-Joseph-Strasse 13 is where Hans and Sophie Scholl lived from summer 1942 until their arrest on February 18, 1943. The two-room apartment in the rear building served as a key operational base for the White Rose resistance group. The Scholls rented the apartment to plan and produce anti-Nazi leaflets, with activities occurring primarily in the evenings and nights to avoid detection. On June 27, 1942, Hans Scholl, Alexander Schmorell, and Willi Graf met there to draft the first four White Rose leaflets, which were printed using a hand-operated duplicating machine. Sophie Scholl joined these efforts after moving to Munich in May 1942 to study biology and philosophy. The apartment saw frequent gatherings of the core group, including Christoph Probst and Kurt Huber, with meetings typically lasting three to four hours as members balanced university studies and resistance work.

On February 15, 1943, at approximately 23.00, Hans Scholl, Schmorell, and Graf left the apartment carrying roughly 1,000 leaflets to distribute in Munichs city centre, returning around two in the morning. The group produced approximately 6,000 to 9,000 copies of the fifth leaflet in January 1943, with printing sessions in the apartment lasting up to six hours per night over several days. Anti-Nazi slogans, such as Nieder mit Hitler and Hitler Massenmrder, were planned there before being painted on public buildings like the Bavarian State Chancellery on February 3 and 4, 1943, between midnight and 3.00.
On February 18, 1943, at 8.00, Hans and Sophie left the apartment with a suitcase containing 1,700 copies of the sixth leaflet, heading to the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitt, where they were caught distributing them by 11.00. The Gestapo searched the apartment later that day, seizing printing equipment and draft leaflets. A commemorative plaque, installed in 1968, marks the building, though the rear structure was renovated in the 1980s, altering its original layout.

A few doors down at Franz-Josef-Strae 12 was where Fritz Todt lived. Todt was a German civil engineer who had served in the Luftstreitkrfte during World War I and was a recipient of the Iron Cross. He became an SA Obergruppenfhrer who, under the Nazis, initially served as Inspector General for Roads and from 1940 onward, he became Reich Minister for Armaments and Munitions. Among other things, he oversaw the construction of the Reichsautobahnen. In that capacity, he was responsible for the construction of the German autobahns. The Organisation Todt, a military-organised construction force founded in 1938, was named after him through which he directed large-scale engineering projects such as the Westwall (Siegfried Line) and the Atlantic Wall. In 1940, he was appointed Reich Minister of Armaments and War Production. During the war Todt made extensive use of forced labour, with as many as 800,000 labourers from German-occupied territories in the service of his organisation. Todt was killed in a plane crash near Hitler's headquarters at the Wolf's Lair near Rastenburg on February 8, 1942 when his aircraft crashed shortly after take-off and was succeeded as Reichsminister and head of the OT by Albert Speer. At the time when he lived at this address, Todt was serving as technical director at Sager & Woerner, a Munich-based road construction firm, from 1921 to 1933. He joined the Nazi Party on January 5, 1922, and later became Generalinspektor fr das deutsche Straenwesen on July 5, 1933, overseeing the Reichsautobahn project. His residence here was significant as his primary base during his early career with Sager & Woerner which marked his development of expertise in road construction, notably his 1931 doctoral dissertation on asphalt and tar applications, registered from this address. 

 Gabelsberger Strasse 41 was the site of the Hauptamt fr Kommunalpolitik der NSDAP, established on November 16, 1934, by order number 39/34 from the Reichsorganisationsleiter. Led by Karl Fiehler, also Munichs mayor, it oversaw municipal policy to align local governance with Nazi ideology until May 1945. The office issued 14 circulars, directives, and bulletins between 1932 and 1945. A key directive on March 15, 1935, authorised the Hauptamt to advise on appointing and dismissing municipal officials under the Deutsche Gemeindeordnung of January 30, 1935. The Hauptamt coordinated with the Deutscher Gemeindetag, exchanging eight letters between 1934 and 1943, and produced 59 issues of Die nationalsozialistische Gemeinde from 1933 to 1940 to propagate party guidelines. It managed departments like the Amt Verfassungs- und Ordnungspolitik and the Amt Gemeindliche Wirtschaftspolitik, focusing on constitutional and economic policies. The office sent 220 letters to regional Gaumter from 1933 to 1940 and 38 to the Parteikanzlei from 1935 to 1939, including one dated September 7, 1936 from Fiehler requesting funds for municipal training to ensure ideological conformity.
The Hauptamt influenced personnel decisions, such as recommending a party loyalist replace a non-aligned mayor in a Bavarian town on November 20, 1935. Employing about fifty staff, the office operated daily, drafting policies and reviewing municipal reports. Operations ceased on April 30, 1945, when Munich fell to Allied forces, with records later transferred to the Bundesarchiv in December 1962.

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