Nazi Sites Around Munich's Stachus

Karlsplatz in 1919 with troops returning home after the Great War as seen in the BBC documentary Nazis: A Warning from History just before the six minute mark. As shown here, the two corner towers at the Karlstor originally had two dome tops that were destroyed in the Second World War and have not been reconstructed to this day.

[A]t the end of World War I, conditions existed here which would create a revolution. After the war, the Allies continued to blockade Germany and the returning troops were shocked to discover how much their families were still suffering. Millions of Germans were hungry and thousands more were dying of tuberculosis and influenza. Politics were polarised. Conservatives and Socialists became radical in the face of crisis. With the whole of Germany in turmoil in the spring of 1919, the unrest in Munich resulted in a left-wing takeover of the city, the Raterepublik. This culminated, in April 1919, in the Munich Soviet Republic, an attempt to create a soviet-style government of the city, only eighteen months after the victory of the Bolsheviks in the Soviet Union. Government troops were sent to quash the rebellion and there was fighting on the streets of Munich.  

Also shown in the original footage here is the kiosk which was referred to in Marchand's Die Knabenliebe in München!, published in 1904

When dusk falls, a number of young boys, often in scanty clothing, gather around the large kiosk at 'Karlsplatz', who ... have nothing else to do than ... stare at all the men next to the public toilet. If they think they have recognised one of their men, they follow him into the interior of the institution.

During the 1920s and 1930s, up to four detectives in the city were deployed to persecute homosexuals and arrests were correspondingly high with the toilet at Stachus the most visited. There was a thriving prostitution scene around this urinal at what was later called “Kerlsplatz” (guys' square) because of its hustler scene.

Karlstor, part of a large 14th century city wall that was removed in around 1800. Since then, the gate has served as the centrepiece of a new square, Karlsplatz (or Stachus), located between the central rail station and Marienplatz, representing the very centre of the city. Badly damaged during the war, the Karlstor was rebuilt in a somewhat simplified manner as seen in the GIF on the left with me in front and when Hitler was driven through in 1939 after the conquest of Memel. Germany's first department store established after the war, Kaufhof, is located on the west side of the square. It during Mussolini's visit in 1937 when,

[a]lthough he was only there for nine hours the city had never been more "elaborately adorned", the pièce de resistance being a large triumphal arch in front of the Karlsplatz, draped with a fascist black, wreathed with laurel and crowned with a massive golden "M".

Brendan (482) Dark Valley

  

 The now-gone Cafe Karlsthor which Hitler would once frequent. It was there after Franz Joseph I broke off diplomatic relations with Peter I on Saturday, July 25, 1914 that the so-called 'Schlacht im Café Karlstor' took place when some Serbs ordered their national anthem from the coffee orchestra and the German guests then demolished the café right at the start of the revolution of November 1918. On the right Hitler is driven through Karlstor after return of Memel, March 26, 1939. Joachim Ringelnatz wrote how "the guests suddenly got up and smashed the window panes because a Serbian band was playing." Ödön von Horváth meanwhile wrote that the cafe had been smashed to pieces because of a homeless unshaven man was sitting at a table who was taken for a Serb. 

In his 1932 biography of Hitler the Hungarian writer Emil Lengyel, whom in the spring of 1940 the Reich Security Main Office placed him on the special wanted list of persons who, in the event of a successful invasion and occupation of the British Isles by the Wehrmacht, were to be tracked down and arrested with particular priority by the SS special commandos following the occupying forces, would write in 1932 of Hitler after the Great War taking "long walks between the Karlstor and the Marienplatz. There all the political theories of the day were on public display, passions and perversities were exhibited."

On the right Hitler is driven through Karlstor after return of Memel, March 26, 1939 in another Hugo Jaeger colour photograph. Hitler had earlier passed through the Karlstor during his triumphal return to Munich after the annexation of Austria in 1938, a moment captured in numerous photographs that were disseminated as propaganda making the gate a focal point for Nazi rallies and marches, its historical significance reinterpreted through the lens of Nazi ideology. That said, the appropriation of the Karlstor wasn't without its controversies. Evans notes that whilst the Nazi regime was successful in transforming the gate into a symbol of their ideological might, this act also led to public debates about the erasure of history. Critics argued that the Nazis' ideological imprint on the Karlstor was a form of historical revisionism, aimed at erasing or altering the gate's original significance. These debates, however, were largely suppressed as dissenting voices were either silenced or co-opted by the regime. Such appropriation by the Nazis also had international implications. Mazower argues that the gate's transformation was not merely a domestic affair but was keenly observed by foreign powers as a barometer of Nazi intentions. The gate's prominence in Nazi propaganda was also noted by foreign journalists, who often used it as a backdrop for reporting on Germany's political climate.

Here for example is the Gate during the Tag der Deutschen Kunst of June 10, 1938 which that year featured three new elements depicting the annexation of Austria and a personification of the Danube. There were also new models of buildings planned in Nuremberg, Hamburg and Berlin. At least two contemporary accounts of the 1938 parade claimed that it involved 5,000 costumed participants, a significant increase since 1937.

While claims that hundreds of thousands lined Munich's streets for the parade are difficult to verify, the festivities drew large crowds and on this festival weekend, nearly 73,000 more travellers than usual passed through Munich's train station, while an additional 100,000 were estimated to have arrived by motor vehicle. It is clear that the parades of the late 1930s far surpassed their 1933 predecessor. 

Hagen (360) Parades, Public Space, and Propaganda: The Nazi Culture Parades in Munich

Germans in long columns being marched through the Karlstor in early May 1945 into captivity after the war, offering a remarkable contrast. They had surrendered without a fight; the Battle of Munich did not take place. The Americans interned the soldiers of the defeated Wehrmacht in camps outside Munich. By the summer those not suspected of having participated in German war crimes were released. They were to report to various police stations. The Americans used many of them to help clean up the destroyed city with the former Wehrmacht soldiers have to clear away rubble. When camps in which foreign forced labourers were imprisoned became empty they were used as transit camps for soldiers returning from captivity. 

 In the years 1945 to 1946 Germany was a collection of denouncers, black-marketeers, prisoners, refugees from justice and tireless whingers. The Allies announced that the Germans needed to be handled with a rod of iron. It was pure nonsense.

Franz Prinz zu Sayn-Wittgenstein (166), Streifzüge durch die Landschaften meines Lebens, privately printed, Munich 2000

Historians estimate that around one million Bavarians were taken prisoner of war with roughly half of them returned home by the end of 1945. Those held captive the longest were those interned by the Red Army in camps in the Soviet Union. Many didn't survive captivity with the last of them not returning until 1956 after West Germany established diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union. It's often mentioned how Chancellor Konrad Adenauer had supposedly fought to free these last German prisoners of war during his visit to Moscow in September 1955 whereas in fact this was a consideration from the Soviet Union for the establishment of diplomatic relations between the two states, which it had already been prepared to provide before Adenauer's arrival.   

   

Another historical comparison- Hitler's supposed painting of the monument with what was left of it after the war.  

A brownshirt preventing anyone from entering the offices of Jewish lawyers Dr. Th. Erlanger, Ludwiger Erlanger, and Dr. Adolf Mayer with stickers reading "Jude!" over each man's sign at Karlsplatz 8 on April 1, 1933 and the site today during yet another terror attack in Germany on Friday July 22, 2016 outside the Olympia shopping mall when 18-year-old Iranian-German David Sonboly opened fire on fellow teenagers at the McDonald's restaurant across the street before shooting at bystanders in the street outside and then in the mall itself. Nine people were killed, and 36 others were injured, four of them by gunfire; it was only a last-minute phone call from the wife asking me to look after Drake Winston that prevented me from being there at the time to pick up my bike. According to Kershaw, 

 [t]he boycott itself was less than the success that Nazi propaganda claimed. Many Jewish shops had closed for the day anyway. In some places, the SA men posted outside ‘Jewish’ department stores holding placards warning against buying in Jewish shops were largely ignored by customers. People behaved in a variety of fashions. There was almost a holiday mood in some busy shopping streets, as crowds gathered to see what was happening. Groups of people discussed busy shopping streets, as crowds gathered to see what was happening. Groups of people discussed the pros and cons of the boycott. Not a few were opposed to it, saying they would again patronise their favourite stores. Others shrugged their shoulders. ‘I think the entire thing is mad, but I’m not bothering myself about it,’ was one, perhaps not untypical, view heard from a non-Jew on the day. Even the SA men seemed at times rather half-hearted about it in some places. In others, however, the boycott was simply a cover for plundering and violence. For the Jewish victims, the day was traumatic – the clearest indication that this was a Germany in which they could no longer feel ‘at home’, in which routine discrimination had been replaced by state-sponsored persecution.  

Looking across from Karlsplatz  with Hitler and Mussolini being driven towards Karlstor during the latter's state visit to Germany in September 1937 after having signed a military alliance the year before powers. A special decree had earlier been promulgated, declaring September 25 in Munich and September 28 in Berlin to be a state holiday in honour of the “Royal Italian Head of Government, Benito Mussolini.”  Mussolini's special train arrived at Munich's main station at 10:00 with Mussolini being personally greeted at the gate by the Hitler himself as a military band played Puccini's 'Hymn to Rome.' As the dictators drove through the streets of Munich in a Mercedes through a triumphal arch, adorned with an 'M' specifically built for Mussolini's visit, the route was adorned with pylons, wooden lictor rods, and flags. Despite the lengthy preparations, 

the Munich welcoming ceremony failed to create the impression that the German people unanimously supported the Axis alliance. The SS had cordoned off the streets so tightly that the crowds could not get anywhere near the leaders' cars. If Mussolini and Hitler were really as popular as Nazi propaganda suggested, then why was such tight and wide-ranging security necessary? For the SS news paper Das Schwarze Korps, the answer was clear: many thousand SS men were necessary to protect the two dictators, not from potential assassins, but from the over-excited masses. The SS paper could not hold back from condescension towards Italy. According to the SS units who guarded the Duce in Germany, Italian officers in Mussolini's retinue admired the strict discipline of the SS and the German Army. Implicitly, the report reinforced the view, widespread in Germany since the war, that the Germans were far better soldiers than the Italians. This view of the decadent Italians as effeminate, cowardly, and opportunistic was widespread across Europe and a thorn in the side for Mussolini and the Fascists. Even after fifteen years of Fascist rule, Mussolini's aim to transform Italians through extended warfare into a great nation of fighters that would be taken seriously abroad as a great power had failed to change German views of the Italians which is one of the reasons why Mussolini pressed for an alliance with the Third Reich in order to toughen up the Italians.

Goeschel (161) The Historical Journal, Vol. 60, No. 1

The exact same spot immediately after the war showing the American occupation forces. The Hotel Königshof and the Pini-Haus are located in direct line of sight on Sonnenstrasse opposite the Karlstor. On the northwest side, the square was initially bordered by the Old Botanical Garden where the Palace of Justice was eventually built in 1891. On the southwest side, where the Stachus Garden used to be, stands the Kaufhof building designed by the architect Theo Pabst which closed in 2022. 

During the so-called During the so-called Wirtschaftswunders, Stachus became the square with the highest car traffic in Europe until its eastern part, Neuhauser Straße, which begins at Karlstor and ends at Färbergraben, was converted into a pedestrian zone. This has led to the local reference to something being "like Stachus" for whenever the situation threatens to get out of control. The conversion into a pedestrian zone took place in the run-up to the XX Olympic Games in Munich but it's still considered the busiest intersection in Europe. On the right an American GI directing traffic on from the same site. in front of the building. Named Pini House, also known as the Imperial House, it is a seven-story building on the triangular plot of Schützenstrasse 1 at Stachus. The building stands at the fork in the road between Schützenstrasse and Bayerstrasse and is rounded at the sharp corner. The building had been designed by architect Joseph von Schmaedel as a solid masonry structure with wooden beam ceilings and was completed in 1877. It was renovated for the first time in 1907 and the wooden beam ceilings were replaced by reinforced concrete ceilings, steel columns were covered with concrete and a flat roof was replaced in place of the previous gable roof. Further conversions took place in 1933 and later from 2000 to 2002. The building received its original name Imperial House after the Café Imperial, which was managed there. It was later renamed Pini House after the Pini Optik optician moved there. There has been a cinema in the building since the beginning of the 20th century called the Imperial Cinema. During the war it was Munich's largest military cinema and was open 24 hours a day. Due to the many neon signs, it was said that the Times Square feeling brought to Munich. After the war, the Associated Press news agency temporarily used the rooms on the sixth floor. After a fire, the building was extensively restored around the turn of the millennium. Since then, the Anna Hotel has been housed in the building and is operated by the Geisel family, who also owns the nearby Hotel Königshof.

Panzerkampfwagen V Panther tank outside the Imperial Lichtspiele cinema across the street from Karlstor,  now the Anna Hotel with Drake Winstn in front today. the role of the Lichtspiele is a noteworthy aspect of the city's post-war intelligence landscape. Lichtspiele, a cinema turned into an intelligence operations centre, served as a crucial venue for information gathering and dissemination during the early years of the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND). The conversion of a public entertainment space into an intelligence hub is emblematic of the broader transformation Munich underwent in the post-war period, shifting from a city known for its cultural heritage to a focal point of Cold War espionage activities. The choice of Lichtspiele on Karlsplatz as an operations centre was strategic. Located in the heart of Munich, it offered easy access to various parts of the city and was less conspicuous than a dedicated government building, thereby providing a level of anonymity essential for covert operations. According to Eichner, the central location of Lichtspiele made it an ideal place for agents to receive assignments and report back on completed missions. Eichner further notes that the cinema's layout, with its multiple exits and entrances, provided an added layer of security, allowing agents to enter and exit without drawing attention. The use of Lichtspiele as an intelligence centre has been the subject of scholarly debate. While Eichner views it as a pragmatic choice, driven by logistical considerations, others like Müller argue that the selection of a cinema, a symbol of public life and entertainment, for intelligence operations had symbolic undertones. Müller contends that the transformation of Lichtspiele into an intelligence hub reflects the extent to which the Cold War had permeated everyday life, turning even spaces of leisure into arenas of geopolitical contestation. The role of Lichtspiele also raises questions about the ethical dimensions of intelligence operations in post-war Munich. The cinema, once a place for public gathering, had been transformed into a space where activities were conducted that had significant political and ethical implications. Scholars like Wolf have questioned the morality of using a public space for activities that were shrouded in secrecy and had far-reaching consequences. Wolf argues that the use of Lichtspiele exemplifies the ethical ambiguities that characterised the early years of the BND, as it navigated the complex terrain of Cold War politics.

The same tank parked at the Stachus with the Karlstor in the background and Drake Winston at the same spot today. This, the Fgst.Nr. 121455, was the last Panther to be manufactured and had been considered one of the best tanks of the Second World War for its excellent firepower and protection. The Panther was intended to counter the Soviet T-34 and to replace the Panzer III and Panzer IV although, it served alongside both the Panzer IV and the heavier Tiger I until the end of the war. Its reliability however was less impressive. According to Albert Speer (325) Inside the Third Reich,  "[s]ince the Tiger had originally been designed to weigh fifty tonnes but as a result of Hitler's demands had gone up to fifty seven tonnes, we decided to develop a new thirty tonne tank whose very name, Panther, was to signify greater agility. Though light in weight, its motor was to be the same as the Tiger's, which meant it could develop a superior speed. But in the course of a year Hitler once again insisted on clapping so much armour on it, as well as larger guns, that it ultimately reached forty eight tonnes, the original weight of the Tiger."

The Palace of Justice (Justizpalast)  during the Nazi era flying the Nazi flag and today. This was the site of the Nazis' "People's Court." Members of the White Rose were tried here on February 22, 1943. The Justizpalast in Munich, a monumental structure embodying the ideals of justice and law, ironically became a symbol of legal perversion under the Nazi regime. The building served as the backdrop for the "People's Court," a special tribunal notorious for its role in delivering swift and often fatal judgements against those accused of crimes against the state. The court, presided over by Roland Freisler, was instrumental in consolidating Nazi power through legal means. Freisler's court was a mockery of justice, often denying defendants the right to legal representation and delivering verdicts that were predetermined. Evans argues that the People's Court was not an institution of justice but rather a tool of terror, designed to instil fear and suppress dissent. The court's decisions were not based on legal principles but were driven by ideological considerations, a point that Evans elaborates upon in his critique of the Nazi judicial system.

From the beginning of Nazi rule, the Munich Palace of Justice on Prielmayerstrasse became a place of injustice during which time numerous judges and public prosecutors supported the demands of the Nazi judiciary by abandoning the protection of the individual and excluding civil liberties.The best-known trials include the proceedings against the Jesuit priest Rupert Mayer and against the members of the “White Rose”, who wanted to use their public protest to call on the German population to resist the Nazi dictatorship. Two memorial plaques have commemorated them since 1988 and 1993 in the entrance foyer. Both bear quotes from the defendants' defence speeches and are warning calls for justice and a sense of responsibility. On July 23, 1937, Rupert Mayer was brought before the Munich Special Court in a public main hearing for alleged hate speeches against the party and the state as well as abuse of the pulpit and sentenced to six months in prison. On February 22, 1943, the first show trial against the members of the “White Rose” took place under the chairmanship of the President of the People's Court Roland Freisler, who had sentenced thousands to death by guillotine or hanging. On the same day, Hans and Sophie Scholl and Christoph Probst were executed in the Munich-Stadelheim prison. 

The building after the war and today. The interior (which requires airport-type security to enter) has been tastefully rebuilt with something of the original style

Courtroom 216 (now 253) which today serves as a permanent exhibition with portraits of Willi Graf, Prof. Kurt Huber, Alexander Schmorell, Hans Scholl, Sophie Scholl and Christoph Probst.  It was in this courtroom on February 22, 1943 at 10.00 that the trial of Hans and Sophie Scholl and Christoph Probst began. At 13.00 Roland Freisler announced the death sentences. Four hours later, Sophie and Hans Scholl and Christoph Probst were beheaded in Munich-Stadelheim Prison. The second trial began on April 19 at 9:00 against the fourteen other defendants of the White Rose. This trial, again chaired by Roland Freisler, lasted fourteen hours. At about 23.30 Freisler announced the death sentences against Professor Kurt Huber, Alexander Schmorell and Willi Graf. Ten accused, Eugen Grimminger, Dr. Heinrich Bollinger, Helmut Bauer, Hans Hirzel, Franz J. Muller, Heinrich Guter, Susanne Hirzel, Gisela Schertling, Katharina Schueddekopf and Traute Lafrenz received imprisonment for either distributing the leaflets or failing to warn the authorities. Dr. Falk Harnack was surprisingly acquitted. Pardon requests for Schmorell and Graf were rejected by Hitler on June 25, 1943. Schmorell and Huber were executed on July 13, 1943. When this room was converted into an exhibition room, during the opening ceremony Munich’s former Mayor Hans-Jochen Vogel said the most important thing about it was not that it provided yet another memorial to the White Rose – ten years after the opening of the DenkStätte Weiße Rose at Munich University – but rather “that it is being staged in this room”. The documentation of the trial also signals an increasing willingness on the part of the German judiciary to critically examine its own past, including the fact that many members of the Nazi judiciary remained in their posts even after 1945.

American troops passing the building at the end of the war

The neues Justizgebaeude seen from behind the Justizpalast during the Nazi era and today. In 1933, five judges were removed from service because of their Jewish origin due to the Law on the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service at the Higher Regional Court itself. Denny Joseph Reuß was murdered in 1944 in the concentration camp Theresienstadt , Emil Ulmann, Ernst Herrmann, Joseph Stein and August Frank went into exile. None of the survivors returned to office after 1945. Numerous judicial employees were also victims of the persecution measures at the lower courts. Court President Gerber, who in 1933 did not implement the so-called equalisation of the judiciary by the new Bavarian Minister of Justice Hans Frank with the desired emphasis, was replaced in the same year by Alfred Dürr. Judges Johann David Sauerländer and Hans Koeniger resisted such behaviour. In 1934 Sauerländer prepared in vain a plenary resolution by the Bavarian Supreme Regional Court against the Nazi law for the legalisation of the Röhm murders, which would have branded Nazi law-making a degradation of judicial activity. After the war the denazification proceedings against two of the three past 1933 OLG presidents were suspended, only the last had to suffer as a so-called "incriminated" the reduction of the pension by one level to that of a district court president. Sauerland was not reinstated. The historical reappraisal of the court was first under President Karl Huber. A headscarf ban issued to a female Muslim law clerk was found unlawful by the Augsburg Administrative Court in 2016 and repealed although Minister of Justice Winfried Bausback announced however revision.

Located east of Maximiliansplatz from where it was moved in 1966 from its original site at the Stachus, the Nornenbrunnen was completed in 1907 after a design by Hubert Netzer in the art nouveau style. Using Kirchheimer shell limestone, it shows the Nornen, the three Germanic fates: Urd (focussing on the past), Verdandi (present) and Skuld (future), who leans towards the large water bowl. Between the figures are three muzzles, from which the water pours in three flat basin at the ground. In 1920 Arno Breker, who would become Hitler's official sculptor, moved into an artists’ dormitory and matriculated at the State Art Academy in Düsseldorf, where he spent five years studying sculpture with Netzer.

  

Meanwhile, Adolf von Hildebrand's Wittelsbacher-Brunnen at Lenbachplatz can be seen in the photo on the left behind a marching band of SA and from a 1930s postcard. It was unveiled on June 12, 1895. Its main basin is flanked by two monumental sculptures made of marble; the left shows a young man riding a fish-tailed water horse rising from the water. He holds a boulder with both hands and prepares to throw it to symbolise the destructive power of water, an allusion to the unbridled natural force of the mountain streams in the headwaters of the Munich aqueduct, where they still carry debris with them. The right figure shows an Amazon warrior sitting on a fish-tailed water bull rising from the water. With her left hand she holds out a bowl of water towards the viewer representing the fruitful and healing creative power that water has for people after it has been tamed and channelled. The whole complex was badly damaged in the air raids on Munich during the war and was restored after the end of the war by the sculptor and Hildebrand student Theodor Georgii. The fountain was put back into operation on October 3, 1952.

 

Looking the other direction atop the fountain. Like that of Hitler at Odeonsplatz at the start of the Great War, this is another photograph that purports to show Hitler at the end on February 8, 1920, among the crowd listening to Dr. Alois Dallmayr holding a speech atop the Lenbachplatz fountain speaking out against the delivery of German officers to the Allies as war criminals. Dallmayr had written the anti-Semitic Die Geldherrschaft und das Haus Rothschild and had spoken at one of the first Deutschen Arbeiterpartei meetings on November 26, 1919 at the Eberlbräukeller.

The Mercedes-Benz showroom at Lenbachplatz, April 1935 as shown in Kershaw's Hitler, and now replaced by BMW.

Also at Lenbachplatz 9 was the Bernheimer home furnishings and art store, seen here on November 10, 1938 after being targeted during Reichskristallnacht and today. The building itself was built in 1888 by architect Friedrich von Thiersch with a neo-baroque style façade designed by his apprentice Martin Dülfer, making the building one of the first of its kind and later the most influential for all other buildings of its type in Munich and as such is protected as an example of cultural heritage. Starting in 1900, Lehmann Bernheimer sold antiques, tapestry, and valuable carpets and as his business grew, he found that the existing premises were insufficient and so Bernheimer-Haus was completed with the construction of a rearward building. In 1918 Lehmann Bernheimer's son Otto took over the business. During the Nazi dictatorship, the company was initially protected because Otto Bernheimer was a Honorary Consul of Mexico.

In 1938 and 1939 after destruction and threats, the company was aryanised and the Bernheimer family was initially detained in Dachau before being forced into exile. During the war the building was damaged, including the roof with the spire caving in. After the war, Otto Bernheimer, who had returned from Venezuela in 1946, received Bernheimer-Haus again as Wiedergutmachung- reparations Germany had to give to Jewish victims. He restored the roof by building it in a simplified form.

One of the first addresses for the Munich art market. Goering was a frequent client, despite the ban on aryans frequenting Jewish businesses. After its 'aryanisation', the Bernheimer Gallery became the Münchener Kunsthandelsgesellschaft. According to Irving, as ever doubtful a source, during the Reichskristallnacht

Hitler had spent the night in Munich issuing orders to stop the outrages and sending out his adjutants to protect Jewish businesses like Bernheimer’s, the antique dealers. 

(341) Goering: A Biography

Bernheimer Haus after the war during which time it was damaged through the bombing, in particular the roof truss with the top of the tower having collapsed. After the war Otto Bernheimer, who had returned from Venezuela for the first time in 1946, received the building back as part of the restitution agreement. He had the roof restored in a simplified form and rented out large parts of the building whilst rebuilding his business from October 1948. A cinema ended up being installed on the ground floor, which later became a dance hall. Bernheimer increasingly developed an antiques and art trade from the furniture store until 1987 when he sold the site to building contractor Jürgen Schneider in order to be able to pay off his co-heirs and supplement his art trade. When the latter's real estate empire collapsed in 1993 due to massive fraud, Deutsche Bank took over the Bernheimer Palais as the main creditor and had it refurbished at a cost estimated to have been well over 100 million Deutschmarks, the most expensive part being the true-to-original reconstruction of the roof with the tower dome.

Seen from across the Justizpalast the Künstlerhaus remains little changed but the main synagogue to its left is conspicuously missing. Built in 1883-87 within sight of Munich’s Frauenkirche, the main synagogue for four decades symbolised the importance and esteem enjoyed by the Jewish community as part of Munich’s social and political life. The spacious Neo-Romanesque building contained more than 1,800 prayer stools and was one of the largest Jewish places of worship in Europe. The demolition of the synagogue ordered by Hitler personally “for traffic reasons” was a portent of the events to come. Degraded to a car park under the Nazi dictatorship, the site was returned to the Jewish Community in 1945. The synagogue was destroyed in June 1938, months before the Kristallnacht, and was the first synagogue to be destroyed in Germany during the Nazi period. According to this site, "Hitler actually hated having the Jewish house of worship so close to his favourite night club, which was located in the adjacent Kunstlerhaus."  

Standing in front looking towards the entrance to the Botanical Garden.

In the wake of the pogrom about 30,000 Jewish men were interned in concentration camps with their release made conditional on proof of arrangements to emigrate. Emboldened by their successes in foreign policy and by Germany’s growing military and economic strength, Nazi leaders apparently no longer felt they needed to take world opinion or foreign reactions into account (although foreign Jews were excluded from harassment by Heydrich’s directive). Hitler’s commitment to eastern expansion increased the likelihood of war in the near future and gave added urgency to the expulsion of the Jews, whose influence could be expected to weaken popular support for the war effort. While the official goal of the regime remained to force Jews to leave Germany, the turn to open, officially-sponsored violence in 1938 marked an important stage in the evolution of anti-Jewish policy toward systematic genocide in 1941.

Stackelberg & Winkle (222) The Nazi Germany Sourcebook

 On its site where even its memorial has suffered anti-Semitic attacks in our time. The Memorial Stone for the Destroyed Main Synagogue located on Herzog-Max-Straße near Karlsplatz was inaugurated in 1969, the first put up by the city to commemorate in public the violent destruction of Jewish life. The Community then sold the property to the City of Munich on condition that part of the site would be redeveloped as a memorial. The city duly invited sculptors from Israel and Germany to submit designs and in late 1967 the first prize was awarded to the Munich sculptor Herbert Peters. The solid form of the memorial is supposed to be reminiscent of a cornerstone of the demolished synagogue in order to serve as a visual symbol of the building that once stood there. On the back of the memorial there are niches affording protection to certain key symbols of Judaism such as the seven-branched candelabra signifying eternal light and life. The German inscription reads: "Here stood the main synagogue of the Jewish Community, built in 1883 - 1887. It was demolished during the Persecution of the Jews in June 1938. On 10 November 1938, the synagogues were burned down in Germany." The Hebrew inscriptions include quotations from Psalm 74, from the lament over the desecration of the shrine, and from the Ten Commandments. 
 Since 1998 the memorial has been the scene of an impressive commemorative event that takes place every year on November 9, the anniversary of the Reichspogromnacht. Under the motto “everyone has a name”, young people, prominent cultural and social figures and ordinary citizens spend several hours reading out the names of Munich’s deported and murdered Jews together with their age, the date they died or were deported and their place of death. The memory of the thousands of women, men and children murdered by the Nazis is thus kept alive. Of the eleven thousand Jews who lived in Munich more than 4,500 didn't survive the Nazis. To mark the seventieth anniversary of the Reichspogromnacht in 2008, the readings were for the first time held at several different locations all over the city.

Park Cafe

Park Cafe and the entrance to the Botanical gardens. Described in Robert Harris's Munich as "an ugly modern building that looked like the entrance to a railway station but advertised itself as the Park Café," the rear of the building has the same fascist busts that can be found on the façade of the nearby Zentrale which housed some of the main Nazi administration offices and was built the same time in 1934. The Park Café building at Sophienstrasse 7 was built between 1935 and 1937 according to the plans of the architect Oswald Bieber on the site where the glass palace had stood until it burned down in 1931. The building on the north side of the Old Botanical Garden served as a coffee house and exhibition pavilion. In the rear at the beer garden are three heads, identical in size and form as the National Socialist head at Zentrale down the road.
In 1936-37 the Nazis separated the General Conservatory of the Academy of Sciences, including the Museum of Ethnology, the State Zoological Collection, and the Botanical Garden, from the Academy proper. The site was redeveloped from 1935-37, on the basis of a sketch by Paul Ludwig Troost (the architect of the Nazi buildings in Arcisstrasse), the architect Oswald E. Bieber which redesigned Old Botanical Garden as a park. The conservatories were replaced by Park Café with a beer garden. The Neptune Fountain in Elisenstrasse, allegedly in the "tradition of Baroque monumental fountains", but clearly far too large and ungainly, was executed by the sculptor Joseph Wackerle, as were the decorative figures on the newly created Art Pavilion. The broad paving stones around the Neptune Fountain and leading to the Art Pavilion in the Old Botanic Garden are bordered by tuffstone masonry, in front of which are seats consisting of boards on a base of bricks.

 

The site in 1932 when it held the skating rink at the Glaspalastes and the 1937 redevelopment plan put forward by Professors Oswald Bieber and Josef Wackerle on the orders of the Nazis. Soil and trees that had to give way to the Nazi parade ground on Königsplatz were reused here. In addition, a coffee house was built on the axis of Arcisstrasse at the northern end of the park, today's "Parkcafé", which, with four massive pillars facing the street, was adapted to the architectural style of the party district at the time. The art pavilion used for exhibitions was built in the north-eastern part of the park, and the Neptune fountain was built in the south-eastern part, aligned with the central axis of the Palace of Justice.

Within one can still find the Neptune fountain sculpted in 1937 by Nazi sculptor Josef Wackerle. Neptune is depicted in a victorious pose with a trident and his tunic over his shoulder, next to a hippocampus, which has brought him to the surface of the water. This powerful appearance of the hero with the muscular physique is underlined by the water-spouting Tritons surrounding him. The group of figures is additionally complemented by a fountain that erupts at intervals on the belly of the fish-tailed horse; in addition, several thin jets fall from the mouths of the Tritons and from the back of the boulder into the large basin. Originally, there were two low fountains bubbling in the basin. The fountain complex is surrounded by flowerbeds and benches. On the right is from one of my Bavarian International School tours.

In 1938 Alexander Heilmeyer waxed eloquently purple over Josef Wackerle's sculptures as Gesamthunstwerke, the "synthesis of the arts" that Wagner saw as humanity's cultural salvation. Wackerle's sculptures were praised as "an organic structure in which the architectonically conceived action serves as a rhythmical counterpoint to the melody of the sculpted figures." Organic wholeness, it was alleged, could be conveyed in the nude more than in any other genre. Whether defending integrated sculpture as an embodiment of the community (Gemeinschaft) or arguing that art was only art when it created symbols for a people, the art critics of the Third Reich carefully disparaged those who set themselves apart from society or engaged in the decadent principle of art for art's sake. These passages echoed Wagner's exhortations to build a new art that the people would understand and that would elevate both the people and society as a whole. Only symbols with meaning for the entire people were worthy of creation. Here again we see the fascist desire to assign one specific meaning to images and to forbid any other interpretations.

Pursell (132) Journal of the History of Sexuality, Vol. 17, No. 1, Masculinity and Homosexuality in Germany and the German Colonies, 1880-1945

Opening of the Botanical Garden by Gauleiter Adolf Wagner in 1937 and the same site today, accompanied by Tim Gillespie and his wife Jan. Mr. Gillespie had visited my school where he presented to Grade 10 students an astonishing account of his father's time when stationed at our schloss after the war before being in charge of American forces in the Dachau camp, guarding ϟϟ prisoners before the war crimes trials. He brought with him a priceless collection of sources ranging from wartime and pre-wartime original photos of the schloss- which he selflessly donated to his father's love letters to his mother- a truly unique perspective of the end of the war and start of the occupation.  In Mr. Gillespie's own words:   

In going through some long stored-away boxes of my parents after they passed away, I recently found some photographs of Schloss Heimhausen.  My father, Claud Schmidt Gillespie (whose mother's family were Schmidts
who emigrated from Germany to the United States in the late 1800s), was in the U.S. Army during World War II. After the war was over, he was in charge of a company of U.S. soldiers that was stationed there. In the box of photographs I found this note, hand-written by my father: "Schloss Heimhausen [sic] is in Germany--not too far from Munich--where I lived for awhile (with my rifle company) in 1945 after the war was over. Our mission was to protect hundreds of books stored in the schloss by the Germans to protect them, most from libraries in Munich. (We also kept an eye on the German civilians, especially the teenagers.)"  I should also tell you that during that time my father was also put in charge of the American army's command of the Dachau concentration camp. After its survivors were liberated and taken away by the Red Cross, the Dachau camp was used as a temporary prison for ϟϟ officers--many thousands of them--being tried in the postwar trials. My father was in charge of running the camp and guarding the ϟϟ prisoners. He came home in 1946. Needless to say, he had very powerful memories of his time in Germany during the war and after the war. 

In addition to the coffee house and the Neptunbrunnen, the Ausstellungspavillon was built as an exhibition hall in 1936 and is seen in the behind the fountain in the GIFs above. The GIFs here show the reliefs above each door as they appeared in 1941 postcards and today, representing music and sculpture. It was originally intended as the state studio for Joseph Thorak (nicknamed 'Thorax' because of his preference for muscular male sculptures) to provide a space for his monumental sculpture which earned him a series of state contracts from the Nazis 1933; after their take over of power he divorced his Jewish wife Hilda who emigrated with her son Peter. Instead, Thorak received his massive studio in Baldham near Munich in which 17 metre high sculptures could be made in one piece. The following year he designed two groups of figures in front of the German Pavilion at the Paris World Fair, which Hitler proclaimed a "masterpiece" before appointing Thorak to head a masterclass at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich. The Munich Academy of Fine Arts had been the ‘Capital of German Art’ during the Nazi era and had been the domain of Hitler’s favourite artist Adolf Ziegler, the organiser of the ‘Degenerate Art’ exhibition and the president of the Reich Chamber of Fine Arts. It was Josef Wackerle who was again responsible for the simple neoclassical building's reliefs representing music, architecture, sculpture and painting. After the war Wackerle was able to become an honorary member of the Munich Academy of Fine Arts in 1951. Students at the Academy would eventually mount protests in the 1960s against Hermann Kaspar who had designed the interior of Hitler’s Reich Chancellery and had taught there unhindered since 1938 save for a short interruption in 1946. The pavilion itself  was badly damaged during the war with its ruins serving as a popular meeting place for black market traders. From 1948 to 1950, a number of artists under the leadership of Hannes König, founder of the Association for the Protection of Visual Artists, converted the former exhibition temple of the Nazi era into an exhibition space for Munich's artists. The project was financed through lotteries and fundraising. For the reconstruction, the Association for the Protection of Visual Artists received a lease for the sole use of the building,  today covered in graffiti and drug paraphernalia, used for exhibitions of so-called contemporary visual art amidst shabby, garbage-strewn surroundings.

Ironically, inside are the only examples of stolperstein allowed in Munich, in a building commissioned by Hitler and which is closed more often than not (as when I gave a tour for members of the Israeli consulate). The laying of these small brass plates in front of the homes of those deported and/or killed during the Nazi era- Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals, mentally and physically handicapped as well as those for political and religious reasons- had been banned in June 2004 by the Munich City Council. Since then 96 German cities have removed these symbols of collective memory. Today the only stolperstein still exhibited in Munich are the three in a building designed by Hitler himself. Munich removed the only two stumbling blocks laid on public land from the pavement on Mauerkircherstraße. The two removed stumbling blocks were brought here to the  Munich Music Academy as part of an artistic installation. Claiming to be acting in the interests of fire protection, the installation was removed in 2011. In Munich there are only stumbling blocks on private land. More than 200 stumbling blocks for Munich victims have already been made and cannot be relocated and have been stored in a cellar ever since. Terry Swartzberg and the Stumbling Blocks Initiative for Munich collected more than 80,000 signatures for their project by June 2015 but nevertheless on July 29 the Munich City Council spoke out against the stumbling blocks on public streets and squares. 

Just across on Sophienstraße is the Bavarian State Tax Office (Oberfinanzpräsidium)

 

Victims of Hitlerism still have to endure this symbol when entering a government building. Located at the junction of Arcostrasse and the former Arcisstrasse is the building of the former Chief Finance Office, built on the site of a former palace of the Counts of Arco, in the typical neoclassical monumental style of the Nazi era. The Munich regional finance office at Sophienstrasse 6 on the edge of the party district was built from 1938 according to plans by Franz Stadtler. The building is currently the headquarters of the Munich office of the Bavarian State Tax Office. A large imperial eagle on the façade - the swastika has been removed - serves as a reminder of the history of the building as even with the swastika removed from the oak leaf wreath, the Nazi eagle is still unmistakable.
The building was constructed with its three inner courtyards between 1938 to 1942 and is shown here from the time and with me in front today. 
The financial administration within was instrumental in destroying the Jewish population and expropriating its assets. That this building served a key role in the unrestrained plundering of the Jews during the Nazi period, its continued existence is all the more striking. Here the authorities supervised the tax offices that implemented the gigantic theft of Jewish assets, primarily with the help of the "Reich Flight Tax" and the "Jewish Asset Levy." From the early 1940s, the authority was also responsible for expropriated Jewish property. In November 1941, the Eleventh Regulation to the Reich Citizenship Law stripped all deported and emigrated Jews of their citizenship and thus of all their property. This was managed by 'asset disposal offices' in the regional finance offices. The Munich regional finance office alone was responsible for the disposal of around 7,800 Jewish assets. During the Nazi era this building administered the expropriation of assets of political opponents and racial undesirables through public auctions of furnishings. Regarding the “Arisierung” of Jewish property, the fiscal authority located here played a key role. After 1945 it was found that 1,589 Munich properties had been confiscated by this office.

This less-offensive Eagle in the courtyard represents the Bavarian Free State. In a relief above the triple entrance door in the forecourt, his more politically neutral 'colleague' (without a swastika) takes two very tame Bavarian lions and coats of arms under his overpowering wing on behalf of the then politically insignificant state.   
After the war this building served the American Military Authorities before hosting the America Haus (until it moved to the former Führerbau in 1948). This is also where the Bavarian State Parliament met from May 1947 until January 1949 until it was finally able to move into its final seat in the Maximilianeum. Today the headquarters of the Munich Finance Directorate and the authorities assigned to it are located here (Federal Office for Real Estate, Main Customs Office Munich, Bavarian State Office for Taxes, State Building Directorate).

Poster displaying the history of the eagle as used on the coats of arms of German cities and governments from the earliest times through 1939. When confronting Germans with this offensive symbol, most respond to me that without the swastika, it is simply a typical eagle that has always been the symbol of Germany. But as this chart shows, the Nazi eagle was entirely different from its previous (and current) incarnations. During the Third Reich, a stylised eagle combined with the Nazi swastika was made the national emblem (Hoheitszeichen) by order of Adolf Hitler in 1935 based on his own personal design. Despite its mediæval origin, the term "Reichsadler" in common English understanding is mostly associated with this specific Nazi era version. The Nazi Party had used a very similar symbol for itself, called the Parteiadler. These two insignia can be distinguished as the Reichsadler looks to its right shoulder whereas the Parteiadler looks to its left shoulder.
Hitler himself

spent hours poring over old art publications and books on heraldry to find a model for the eagle. Eventually he discovered what he wanted in an anti-Semitic lexicon where the fowl was characterised as the Aryan of the animal kingdom. He then asked a jeweller to design a model, but when this proved too feeble, he invented his own- a menacing eagle which appeared about to take flight.

Spotts (52-53) Hitler and the Power of Aesthetics

The Nazis took over this building at Arcisstraße 19 on the corner of Gabelsbergerstraße in 1938 from the architecture office of Josef Heldmann. Heldmann had worked for the party since 1930 as chief of party construction and supervisor of the Treasury under Reich treasurer Franz Xaver Schwarz for all construction matters of the Nazi Party. This included direct responsibility in the construction management for the Führerbau and Verwaltungsbau from mid-1933. 

Schwarz incidentally was one of only four people to have held the rank of ϟϟ-Oberst-Gruppenführer and on June 5, 1944, he received the War Merit Cross, 1st class with Swords (Kriegsverdienstkreuz 1. Klasse mit Schwertern) by Hitler for his work during the Munich air raids of April 24-5 of that year. Approaching seventy, he even led a Volkssturm battalion in Grünwald at the end of the war before being arrested by the Americans.
The building itself served as the headquarters of the NSDAP-Bauleitung. Today there are various facilities of the Technical University in this building.

 

Munich Main Station

The main railway station during the so-called Day Of German Art held on the weekend of July 14-16, 1939; given the intensive bombing of the site, it is unrecognisable today. Hitler had been assigned to guard the site upon his return from the Great War in 1919.

Probably in late January, as Schmidt hinted, Hitler returned to Munich. Then, for just over two weeks, beginning on 20 February, he was assigned to guard duty at the Hauptbahnhof, where a unit of his company was responsible for maintaining order, particularly among the many soldiers travelling to and from Munich. 

Kershaw (69) Hitler

Hitler and Mussolini at the Munich railway station, September 1938 for the Munich conference and with my Bavarian International School students students at the start of my annual trip to Berlin. The post building in front looks unchanged apart from the loss of one floor and is today an hotel. Between June 1942 and February 1945 the Hauptbahnhof was the starting point of the deportations of Munich Jews, Roma and Sinti to the extermination camps in the east of the Reich. In 1938 Hermann Giesler set the station at a 45-degree angle to the road, planning a huge dome with a height of 136 metres and a diameter of 265 metres. In May 1942 the German Reichsbahn began on Hitler's orders with the plans of a broad-gauge railway to be built near the Friedenheimer Bridge under a 141-metre-high, aluminium-covered dome which was to link all of Europe; the broad-gauge tracks of Berlin-Munich and Paris-Vienna would have been linked. In the summer timetable of 1939, the station had 112 arrivals and departures of regularly operated trains per day. It was thus the eleventh most significant node in the long-distance network of the German Reichsbahn. A sketch by Hitler dated March 22, 1939 served as the basis for the competition for the Munich Central Station which was to be higher than the Frauenkirche, 285 metres in diameter. 

Technical draftsmen of the largest German steel and reinforced concrete companies made various designs under the file number "Mü-Hbf-Neu" and set aside the largest buildings of the world at that time for comparison shown here- the Arc de Triomphe and St. Peter's Basilica appear tiny in relation.A flat dome would rest on a ring of supporting buildings with a columnar portico emphasising the projecting entrance. A circular ribbon window and a lantern was to illuminate the giant cupola. Hitler very specifically wanted a distinction between the Munich Central Station as a “monument of our century’s technology” in contrast to the Halle des Volkes in Berlin, designed by Albert Speer as a massive dome. Two towers were supposed to flank the colossus: one for a "power-by-pleasure-hotel", the other for the Nazi Party publishing house. A so-called "Great Road" was supposed to embrace him on both sides. In the West, the eight kilometre-long and 120 metre-wide promenade from Stachus would have been completed by a "Forum der SA" and a "Burgundy Gate".  From September 1938 at Hitler's command 150 people worked from their offices at Prinzregentenstraße 2 to 4 on the most significant project in Munich's architectural history since the time of Ludwig I. It was to have gone into operation no later than January 1, 1949. Not only the long-distance traffic but also suburban trains and subways would have been serviced as indicated via red and blue lines on the plans. These plans included other major plans, such as the relocation of the nearby slaughterhouse and cattle farm to Oberwiesenfeld. 

Drake Winston at the site where chief architect Albert Speer had designed a "monument to the movement" in which a 212 metre-high obelisk was to be clad with so-called V-2-A steel and crowned with the Nazi eagle; within the pedestal Hitler wanted to intern the "blood flag" of the November Putsch. Within the station's wing halls, the German "Gaue" were to have presented themselves. Again at the personal request of Hitler, four tracks were to run in the centre of the normal mainline track. Up to 1,200 metre-long trains with 41 metre-long cars would roll after final victory between Spain, St. Petersburg and Donetsk, later extending possibly to Afghanistan and India. Within the double-decker wagons were to have had bath tubs, hairdresser, and cinema. 

The relocation of the main station four kilometres away would have yielded 800,000 square metres of building land within which, between Landsbergerstrasse and Arnulfstrasse, the Große Straße was to be built in neoclassical style. This would have been the largest boulevard of Hitler's Reich, intended to develop into a business and entertainment centre including numerous first-class hotels, a town hall, two premier cinemas, the largest opera in the world with its own hotel, an operetta theatre, a large concert hall with many smaller carnival balls, exhibitions and artist studios for twenty metre-high productions. In addition, there were also plans to include an ice skating palace, a beer palace, two exhibition halls for the auto industry, a central swimming pool and even spas. A north-south axis was to cross over the Opernplatz, with the Theresienwiese becoming the largest mustering square in Germany and the largest exhibition hall in the world. A monstrous assembly hall would have been built on Lindwurmstraße, behind the new Südbahnhof the "KdF city".

 Model of the main railway station and the former section of the Grosse Straße, 1939-40. Instead of the Friedenheimer bridge, the gigantic new main railway station was to be built according to the ideas of the Nazis. The dismantled track body was designed to be a boulevard with countless buildings in the monumental Nazi style, and the dome of the main railway station was supposed to be the highlight of this new axis. While some demolitions were made along the railway, there was no implementation of the new plans in the war. Planning conceived of the redesign of the station through architect Paul Bonatz with a 136 metre high domed structure with a width of 300 metres and the establishment of a “monument of the movement” at its old site. It was to have served as the central nodal point for the planned Adolf-Hitlerstraße and would accommodate wide-gauge double-decker trains that would travel at speeds of 250 km/h across the Gross Deutsches Reich from Brest to Baku.

Advertising banner for the opening of the anti-Semitic exhibition Der ewige Jude being held at the Deutschen Museum at the entrance in November, 1937 and the site today.  

 All of the Nazi plans for its development were discarded by the war. During the air raids on Munich the station was heavily hit, but it was not until February 25, 1945 that train traffic had to be redirected after 112 bomb attacks destroyed nearly two million cubic metres of enclosed space containing 15,000 inhabitants. Apart from service to Pasing, all long-haul trains had to either bypass the city or move to the Nordring in Munich. In total, the damage amounted to 7.1 million reichsmarks, as well as numerous deaths and injuries. On April 30, 1945 American troops entered Munich, and at first troops of the Wehrmacht continued to defend the station but, given that a counter-attack would have been pointless, it quickly ended. Already by May 6, 1945 reconstruction of the station was begun despite the lack of building materials and complicated approval procedures, so that after July 24, 1945, another 128 trains could be dispatched. From December 16 there were 235 trains daily. At the moment a new façade for the railway station and service hall are to be built according to a design by Auer+Weber+Assoziierte but, because of difficulties in financing, it is questionable when the project will actually be started.

 

Nearby at Arnulfstrasse 52 across from the station is the Augustiner-Keller where Hitler spoke seven times between 1921 and 1931. On September 2, 1928 he spoke after 21.00 in a NSDAP-Führertagung led by Gregor Straßer, followed by Alfred Rosenberg speaking about the goals of National Socialist cultural work and Franz von Pfeffer gave a speech entitled “Political Movement and SA”. Hitler began his speech, its title shortened to The Flame, with how

It is necessary that the individual party comrade be strengthened in his confidence in the victory of the entire movement. I cannot end this conference today without trying to strengthen your confidence and the success of this movement. This can be done by raising hopes or making promises. But there is another way, that of a sober, logical examination of a movement.

Another time was on July 18, 1931 in a meeting that began at 20.00. No text of the speech has been recorded and all that is known is that is that the flag consecration of the SA Sturm 53 was the occasion for Hitler's speech.

Hitler's supposed watercolour from 1913 of the Sendlinger Tor and the view with Drake Winston on the left. The original owner of the painting on the left was a teacher from Ingolstadt, Friedrich Echinger, who, according to Gaab (130) in Munich: Hofbräuhaus & History: Beer, Culture, & Politics, "sold several paintings to the NSDAP archives for RM 5000 a piece, by far the best art investment Echinger ever made." Echinger sold these pictures to the Nazi main archive on March 23, 1939 for 15,000 RM in toto. He himself described how "[a] well-known lady of mine, who knew about my inclination for good pictures, first bought the watercolour 'Die Propylaea' on my behalf in 1913 in a stationery shop in Munich. I liked the picture so much at the time that I commissioned the lady to buy more pictures for me by the same artist, if she could get them. In the same way, the lady then acquired the “Münzhof”, the “Sendlinger Tor” and the “Hofbräuhaus” for me. The 'Münzhof' is now owned by Pastor Friedrich Loy. The other three pictures are still in my personal possession." Pastor Loy from Hamborn would later sell the picture to the Nazi main archive in Duisburg on May 11, 1939 for 5000 RM.

On the right is another painting of the gate attributed to Hitler.

A 31-year-old goldsmith and gem cutter named Otto Paul Kerber would recall how "[i]n 1912 a young man came into the Georg Lotthammers Nachf. business, founded in 1880, in which I was a partner from 1913, and offered me a watercolour of the Munich Residenz. I liked the picture and subsequently bought several pictures of the young Hitler, who kept coming to see me. As far as I can remember, I paid him 15 to 20 marks for a picture, depending on the version." Dr Alfred Detig, who dealt with Hitler's pictures from 1935 and wrote several newspaper articles, reported that he bought his first Hitler watercolour from Kerber in the spring of 1936 when he "met the Munich chemist Dr. Schnell, Sendlingerstrasse, who showed me five watercolours in the room behind his shop, which he himself had bought from the Führer in the last few years before the war. The pictures made a deep impression on me, as did the description of Dr. Fast. In the near future in Munich I saw a number of the Hitler's watercolours from his time before the war in Munich, and I wrote several articles about them, some of them illustrated, which appeared in Reich German newspapers, especially in several party newspapers. Some editors informed me that among the readership there was an extraordinary interest in the Fuehrer's work as an artist, of which most had no idea. The various inquiries in the editors prompted me to continue to deal with this topic and to investigate all the traces available to me. In this way, the desire arose to own one or the other picture, if possible, and so I bought the watercolor of the Munich Residenz from the jeweler Kerber in Dienerstrasse in the summer of 1935 and a short time later from the widow of the Juweliers Haug in Türkenstrasse which his wife Emma continued to run after his death....Both gave me the express assurance that they had bought the watercolors themselves from the Führer in Munich in the years before the World War. Kerber added that he bought a total of 21 watercolours from the Führer, two of which he still owns."

Hardly damaged in in the war, Sendlinger Tor was completely renovated in the 1980s; a remnant of the city wall can still be seen which had continued up the Herzog-Wilhelm-Straße. Recently this sign in the Sendlinger Tor underground station was discovered during construction work which has left historians puzzled. In the course of the refurbishment and modernisation of the subway station the wall paneling was removed revealing an old instruction board for the staff came to light directly at the entrance to the U1 and U2 railway lines, reading "Caution, train operations - only enter the tunnel on the platform!" The notice itself isn't so surprising as the font used, reminiscent of the Nazi era. However, the tunnel couldn't have been built under the Nazis given that its construction only began in the 1970s, with underground lines 1 and 2 rushing through for the first time on October 18, 1980. The only pre-war structure of the Munich subway is the station at Goetheplatz from where the so-called Lindwurm tunnel leads 590 metres in the direction of Sendlinger Tor where the U3 and U6 train lines run today- but the tunnel is one floor higher. The Lindwurm Tunnel had been built between 1938 and 1941 under the eponymous Lindwurmstraße, leading to Goetheplatz and which is now part of the Munich U-Bahn network. After Hitler gave the order to restructure the Munich railway system around a new main station near today's Friedenheimer Bridge, the Deutsche Reichsbahn decided to construct two S-Bahn tunnel routes through the city centre. On May 22, 1938 Hitler started the construction work for the tunnel of the Munich Stadtbahn network, in which an underground S-Bahn between Harras and Freimann was to run. The first trains had already been ordered, but construction was halted after 590 metres had been completed by 1941 due to the war.  During the wartime bombing the tunnel served as an air raid shelter. After the war, the building was partly filled with rubble, and in the early 1950s a mushroom farm was operated there. The tunnel and station remained unused until 1965, when it was decided to build the Munich subway. The old tunnel was supposed to connect to the new subway network but, according to experts from the city's subway department, it was almost too close to the street. And so in March 1965, the Lindwurm Tunnel was blasted free again with 125 kilogrammes of TNT. The route to Goetheplatz station, which was also built in shell form before 1941, was opened on October 19, 1971 and is still used today.

Hitler's drawing of the Asamkirche on Sendlinger Straße, built between 1733-1746. When painting such architecture in his paintings, rather than developing his technique Hitler copied 19th century artists and many of the masters preceding him. He claimed to be the synthesis of many artistic movements but it is clear that he drew primarily from Graeco-Roman classicism, the Italian Renaissance, and Neoclassicism. He liked the technical ability of these artists, as well as the understandable symbolism. He described Rudolf von Alt as his greatest influence although, whilst both are similar in their use of colour and subject matter, but Alt displayed fantastical landscapes giving as much attention to nature and the surrounding environment as to the architecture. In Mein Kampf Hitler described how, in his youth, he wanted to become a professional artist, but his aspirations were ruined because he failed the entrance exam of the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. Hitler was rejected twice by the institute, once in 1907 and again in 1908. In his first examination, he had passed the preliminary portion which involved drawing two of the assigned iconic or Biblical scenes in two sessions of three hours each. The second portion was to provide a previously prepared portfolio for the examiners. It was noted that Hitler’s works contained “too few heads” and it was felt that he had more talent in architecture than in painting. One sympathetic instructor believing he had some talent suggested he apply to the academy's School of Architecture which would have required returning to secondary school from which he had dropped out and which he was unwilling to do. Hitler would eventually frequent the artists' cafés in Munich in the unfulfilled hope that established artists might help him with his ambition to paint professionally. According to a conversation in August 1939 before the outbreak of the war, published in the British War Blue Book, Hitler told British ambassador Nevile Henderson, "I am an artist and not a politician. Once the Polish question is settled, I want to end my life as an artist."