ISTA 2012
Script
for sites specified on Map
1. On 9 November 1938
it was the “Capital of the Movement” that gave the signal for the brutal and
centrally directed campaign of aggression against the Jews. What became known
as the “Reichspogromnacht” (“Night of Pogroms”) began with an inflammatory
speech by Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels in the Old Town Hall.
2 Munich Opera House at Max-Joseph Platz
.
3. Nazi propaganda later reinterpreted the attempted putsch as a “March on the Feldherrnhalle”, analogous with Mussolini’s “March on Rome”. An “eternal vigil” was posted in front of the Feldherrnhalle round the clock, and passers- by were expected to give the Hitler salute. To avoid passing the Feldherrnhalle many Munich citizens took a detour through the Viscardigasse, which for this reason became popularly known as the “Drückebergergassl” (Dodgers’ Alley)
4. 
The site of Hitler's failed 1923 putsch attempt where 16
Nazis and 4 police were killed, ten years later Hitler took power and made this
the site of his annual march to commemorate the event. A Nazi eagle was placed
on it with two 24 hour ϟϟ honour guards- one had to give the Hitler salute to
pass by. The plaque, often quoted in guides to the city, read:
The site of Hitler's failed 1923 putsch attempt where 16
Nazis and 4 police were killed, ten years later Hitler took power and made this
the site of his annual march to commemorate the event. A Nazi eagle was placed
on it with two 24 hour ϟϟ honour guards- one had to give the Hitler salute to
pass by. The plaque, often quoted in guides to the city, read:
The Feldherrnhalle is
bound for all times with the names of the men who gave their lives on 9
November 1923 for the movement and the rebirth of Germany.
Two ϟϟ men stood on
constant guard in front; pedestrians were required to give the Nazi salute as
they went by. One British visitor recalled how Germans’ arms "shot up as
though in reflex to an electric beam’ when they passed."
5. In front was a commemorative plaque to the four policemen
who died during the shootings which read: To the members of the Bavarian
Police, who gave their lives opposing the National Socialist coup on 9 November
1923. For unexplained reasons, this plaque has been removed and a blank space
remains; even the Nazis had a plaque honouring them.
New recruits to the SS were sworn in here during torch-lit,
midnight ceremonies.
The paving stone motif is still in the imperial colours. It
was here on the steps of the Feldherrnhalle, that Reinhold Elstner, a German
Wehrmacht veteran and chemist born in 1920 in the predominantly German
inhabited Sudetenland (now in the Czech Republic), poured petrol over himself
and committed suicide at about 20.00 on April 25, 1995, in protest against what
he called "the ongoing official slander and daemonisation of the German
people and German soldiers 50 years after the end of World War II".
6. An eternal flame burns in memory of victims of the Nazis
(the victims being left intentionally vague). When it was first erected, it was
shut off each night until enough of a protest had been made. By October 2012 it
was missing altogether.
7. In 1933 the Wittelsbach became the headquarters of the
Bavarian Political Police, which later became part of the Gestapo (Geheime
Staatspolizei or secret state police). This regional headquarters of terror
spread fear and dread among the population. Anyone resisting the regime in
Munich fell into the clutches of the Gestapo. Gestapo officials here were also
responsible for issuing orders to compile death lists and for dispatching the
deportation orders that led to the annihilation of Munich’s Jewish community. The original building
was destroyed in bombing in 1944; this plaque on its façade on the corner of
Brienner and Türkenstrasse marks the former site. Although the site is infamous
as a place of torture and imprisonment of the enemies of the regime, the plaque
seems more concerned about ignoring this inconvenient fact to advertise the
bombing by the British and Americans. Hitler’s
planned mausoleum was to be built behind.
8. House of German Physicians, inaugurated in 1935, played a key role in banning Jewish doctors. Its members included not only the ideologues of racially based medicine but also the advocates of medical experiments on humans, forced sterilisation and “euthanasia”.
9. Hitler referred to
this obelisk in the Karolinenplatz erected to the memory of 30,000 Bavarian
soldiers who were sent to fight for Napoleon and died in Russia in his final
speech before the court on March 27, 1924 during his putsch trial when he
declared: "It will be said one day, I can assure you, of the young men who
died in the uprising what the words on the Obelisk say: 'They too died for the
Fatherland!' All around the square are
buildings and houses of importance to the history of the Nazis.
10. Palais Barlow was bought by the Nazis in 1930 and converted
into the party headquarters, known as the “Brown House”. It housed the offices
of various party organisations and high- ranking Nazi personnel, including
Hitler’s deputy Rudolf Heß and the head of the party’s legal office, Hans
Frank. A documentation centre where visitors could learn about political
history is now located at the site of the former “Brown House” (destroyed
during the war) .
11. Temples of Honour- It was in 1935 that the remains of
the sixteen putschists were brought here on the anniversary. This had followed
the purge of the SA during the Night of the Long Knives the year before. The
bodies were exhumed from their graves and taken to the Feldherrnhalle where
they were interred in a sarcophagus bearing their name. It was one of the sites
most sacred to the Nazis.
In 1947 the upper parts of the structures were blown up. The
central portion was subsequently partially filled in but often filled with rain
water which created a natural memorial. When Germany was finally reunited plans
were made for a biergarten, restaurant or café on the site of the Ehrentempel
but these were derailed by the growth of rare biotope vegetation on the site.
As a result the foundation bases of the monuments remain; a small plaque added in 2007 explains their
function.
12 Site of the
Führerbau where meetings with high-ranking guests from foreign states were
held. Here the ground was prepared for important foreign policy moves – for
example, in talks between Hitler and the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini.
12 Site of the
Führerbau where meetings with high-ranking guests from foreign states were
held. Here the ground was prepared for important foreign policy moves – for
example, in talks between Hitler and the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini.
At the height of the Sudeten crisis in Czechoslovakia a
meeting was held in September 1938 attended by Hitler, Mussolini, French Prime
Minister Daladier and British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain which ended
here with the Munich Agreement, which was to have grave consequences: in a bid
to achieve “peace in our time” Chamberlain allowed a policy of appeasement which
represented a major foreign policy victory for Hitler.
13. Königsplatz was the centre of the Nazi-government. The
whole area was occupied by various NS-organisations. In 1933 Königsplatz was
the venue for one of the first major public demonstrations of power. During the
nationally organised book-burning on 10 May 1933, "un-Germanic" books
were burned here. In 1935 twenty thousand
granite paving slabs were laid on the square like Tiananmen Square after the
1989 massacre to better run over people with tanks, and had 18 street lamps and
two flag poles and it was equipped with a modern electrical system capable of
providing theatrical lighting for public events. With the two Temples of Honour
and two monumental party buildings, the square was turned into the central
parade ground for mass rallies in Munich. The granite was removed in 1988 and
grassed over. Every year since 1995 the
artist Wolfram P. Kastner has singed a patch of grass in front of the
Antikensammlung as a token of remembrance of the public book-burning accompanied
each year by public readings from the “burnt books”. The first reading took place in 1995 and is now a regular fixture
in the city’s culture of remembrance.
14 The home of Georg
Elser, who attempted to assassinate Hitler by planting a bomb in Munich’s
Bürgerbräukeller on 8 November 1939 and was shot in Dachau concentration camp.
For a long time he went unacknowledged. Starting in the late 1960s several
attempts were made to have a street named after Elser. It was not until 1997
that a small square off Türkenstraße that Elser had passed every day on his way
to the Bürgerbräukeller was named Georg-Elser-Platz.
15. After the Great War Hitler received here some form of political
training; he realised for the first time that he could make an impact on those
around him. Here he heard lectures from prominent figures in Munich.
This was also the site of the apprehension of Hans and Sophie Scholl of the
White Rose (Weiße Rose), a non-violent resistance consisting of a number of
students from the University of Munich and their philosophy professor. The
group became known for an anonymous leaflet campaign, lasting from June 1942
until February 1943, that called for active opposition to Hitler's regime. They
were found guilty of treason and Roland Freisler, head judge of the court,
sentenced them to death. The three were beheaded. All three were noted for the
courage with which they faced their deaths, particularly Sophie, who remained
firm despite intense interrogation, and said to Freisler during the trial,
"You know as well as we do that the war is lost. Why are you so cowardly
that you won't admit it?" A memorial to them is in front of the entrance.
16. Constructed by
Oswald Eduard Bieber and inaugurated in 1939, this served as Hans Frank's
headquarters as Bavarian Minister of Justice and Reich Commissioner for the
Gleichschaltung of jurisdiction in the Federal States before being made
Governor-General of occupied Poland. To him the Haus des Deutschen Rechts was
an "NSDAP ideal set in stone."
17. This gate, modelled on Constantine’s arch in Rome and
looking like a miniature version of Paris’s Arc de Triomphe, was commissioned
by King Ludwig I of Bavaria in 1840 and completed in 1852, in honour of
Bavarian troops who had triumphed against Napoleon. Crowned by a triumphant
Bavaria piloting a lion-drawn chariot, like the Brandenburg Gate it is supposed
to now represent a reminder to peace; severely damaged in WWII, the arch was
turned into a peace memorial whose inscription at the rear reads Dem Sieg
geweiht, vom Krieg zerstört, zum Frieden mahnend: "Dedicated to victory,
destroyed by war, reminding of peace".1. Refugees arriving 1945 to rebuild, Pegida today, route of the 1923 putsch
On November 9, 1938 Joseph Goebbels gave his hate-filled speech here that launched the nationwide Kristallnacht pogroms. A plaque at the entrance condemns National Socialism and states that Munich in 1945 became home for more than 143,000 refugees "who contributed considerably to the reconstruction and life of our city."
Around the square are numerous memorials commemorating the human cost of war- one plaque within the town hall expresses the “sorrow and shame of Munich’ s population as well as their horror at the silence that prevailed at the time;” a reference to the deportation of one thousand men, women and children from Munich to Kaunas who, five days later, murdered by firing squad. On another floor is the 'Memorial Room' to those members of the city administration who had fallen victim to the Third Reich or died in the two world wars, thus putting all on a par with the victims of the Nazi regime without questioning the circumstances in which they died or of any consideration of political and moral responsibility.
2. Protests, the 1923 putsch and 1995 self immolation
The Feldherrnhalle on Munich’s Odeonsplatz, the nineteenth- century memorial to the Bavarian Army, took on new significance after the Nazis came to power. The site of Hitler's failed 1923 putsch attempt where 16 Nazis and 4 police were killed, ten years later Hitler took power and made this the site of his annual march to commemorate the event. A Nazi eagle was placed on it with two 24 hour SS honour guards- one had to give the Hitler salute to pass by. The plaque, often quoted in guides to the city, read:
The Feldherrnhalle is bound for all times with the names of the men who gave their lives on 9 November 1923 for the movement and the rebirth of Germany.Two ϟϟ men stood on constant guard in front; pedestrians were required to give the Nazi salute as they went by. One British visitor recalled how Germans’ arms "shot up as though in reflex to an electric beam’ when they passed."
To avoid having to do perform the salute, people would walk down a path behind the monument on Viscardigasse, an alley that people used to avoid having to salute the monuments, hence the nickname 'Shirker's Alley.' In 1998 bronze stones were placed to commemorate this 18 metres in length and 30 cm in width, designed by Bruno Wank. As with most memorials in Munich, there is no public notice explaining the significance of the bronze trail and the role of the Viscardigasse during the Nazi era.
f
"Dachau - Velden - Buchenwald
(Ich schäm)e mich, dass ich ein Deutscher bin - I am ashamed to be a German
Later
on the corner of the monument facing the Residence was written“Keine
Scham, nur Vergeltung! – Hakenkreuz – Schandkreuz" (No shame, only
resistance - Swastika = Cross of Shame) and again days later under it:
“Goethe, Diesel, Haydn, Rob. Koch. Ich bin stolz, eine Deutscher zu
sein!" (I am proud to be a German!)(Ich schäm)e mich, dass ich ein Deutscher bin - I am ashamed to be a German
Protests organised by anti-Islamic group PEGIDA at the historically-charged site
3. Forgetting: Gestapo HQ, Eternal Flame, Medical HQ, Israeli Consulate, Obelisk, Temples of Honour, Nazi Museum.\
Artists and intellectuals have critically observed how West Germany had dealt with its Nazi past and legacy where theatrical plays, exhibits, films, literature and journalism have sought to keep memories alive. Controversies have arisen in Munich over the stance of the Catholic church during the Third Reich and the role of the Wehrmacht in Nazi wars of annihilation. In the immediate postwar years, those who had been persecuted were primarily the ones to keep alive the memory of Nazi crimes. They demanded that perpetrators be brought to justice and fought for victims to be compensated and honoured. Starting in the 1980s, with the passing of generations and changes in social values, this movement found broader resonance and support. More and more Munich residents actively spoke out against anti-Semitism and right-wing radicalism. the 'Chain of Lights' demonstration, staged for the first time December 6, 1992, became the largest statement against extreme right-wing ideas and violence ever conducted in Germany. Nearly 400,000 people took to the streets in response to the fire-bombing in the northern city of Mölln that killed two Turkish girls and their grandmother. Five years later nearly 15,000 people turned out to resist 4,000 neo-Nazis protesting the exhibit 'War of Annihilation: Crimes of the Wehrmacht 1941-1944' held in the rathaus.
When it was first erected, it was shut off each night until enough of a protest had been made.
In 1944 the building was destroyed by Allied bombing. On the right is a short introduction related to the establishment of the Gestapo. Today the site is occupied by the Bayerischen Landesbank. The original building was destroyed in bombing in 1944; this plaque on its façade on the corner of Brienner and Türkenstrasse marks the former site. Although the site is infamous as a place of torture and imprisonment of the enemies of the regime, the plaque seems more concerned about ignoring this inconvenient fact to advertise the bombing by the British and Americans.
The House of German Physicians, inaugurated in 1935, played a key role in banning Jewish doctors. Its members included not only the ideologues of racially based medicine but also the advocates of medical experiments on humans, forced sterilisation and “euthanasia”. The medical snakes and faint remains of the lettering on the façade preserve its original role. Ironically it is sited next to the Israeli consulate across the street from the former Gestapo HQ on what was Adolf-Hitler-Straße.
If the Feldherrnhalle honours those who fought against Napoleon, this obelisk in the Karolinenplatz commemorates the 30,000 Bavarian soldiers who were sent to fight for
Napoleon and died in Russia. In his final speech before the court on
March 27, 1924 during his putsch trial, Hitler declared: "It will be
said one day, I can assure you, of the young men who died in the
uprising what the words on the Obelisk say: 'They too died for the
Fatherland!' That is the visual proof of the success of November eight,
that in its wake youth rises like a raging flood and is united. That is
the great success of the eighth of November: it has not led to
depressed spirits but has brought the people to the highest pitch of
enthusiasm. I believe that the hour will come when the masses who today
bear our crusading flags on the streets will join with those on
November eight shot at them." In fact, when Hitler often maintained in
party circles that the victims of June 30 had died “for the liberation
of the Vaterland,” he was alluding to the same inscription and had
actually granted substantial pensions to the survivors of those slain
on June 30, 1934.
4. Konigsplatz: Brecht and book burning and memorial.
5. Art as Protest: Degenerate Art, and contrasting memorials, Landtag (use of glass/transparency)
The Bavarian State Chancellery after the war and reconstructed with glass wings
The 1938 law that allowed the Nazis to seize thousands of other Modernist artworks deemed “degenerate” because Hitler viewed them as un-German or Jewish in nature remains on the books to this day.
6. University: Sophie Scholl, Janitor, Georg Elser
It was at the University where Hitler had been assigned by the army to the first of the anti-Bolshevik ‘instruction courses’ in 1919 where he received some form of directed political ‘education’. This, as he acknowledged, was important to him; as was the fact that he realized for the first time that he could make an impact on those around him.
This was also the site of the apprehension of Hans and Sophie Scholl of the White Rose (Weiße Rose), a non-violent resistance group in Nazi Germany, consisting of a number of students from the University of Munich and their philosophy professor. The group became known for an anonymous leaflet campaign, lasting from June 1942 until February 1943, that called for active opposition to Hitler's regime. The core of the group comprised of students from this university, most in their early twenties, with support from their professor of philosophy and musicology, Kurt Huber.
At her trial Sophie Scholl declared to the notorious judge "You know as well as we do that the war is lost. Why are you so cowardly that you won't admit it?" When her brother Hans put his head on the block, he shouted: “Long live freedom!”
Despite their iconic status today, the subject of numerous memorials, books and a recent film, at the time they were seen as traitors. The janitor who had apprehended them had been honoured during a demonstration of 3,000 students eager to express their loyalty to the regime after the executions had taken place.
Whilst Stauffenberg and other members of the military resistance were honoured as patriots for their July 20, 1944 attempt on Hitler's life, others, such as Municher Georg Elser who had been minutes away from blowing up Hitler in November 1939 have been ignored given that their political sympathies lay on the left.
