Handpicked experience · Munich
Munich, Germany
A guided walk through Munich’s part in the rise of the Nazi movement — where it began, the buildings it left behind, and how the city confronts that history today.
Where the Nazi movement began, and why it began in Munich.
The Hofbräuhaus and the programme proclaimed there in 1920.
The Feldherrnhalle, the 1923 putsch and what followed it.
Königsplatz, the Brown House and the Führerbau of the Munich Agreement in 1938.
Viscardigasse, the shirkers’ alley, and its bronze line.
A guide who deals in evidence rather than anecdote.
The Nazi movement began in Munich. It was founded here, it attempted its first seizure of power here, and the party called the city its capital long after the government had moved to Berlin. This walk is about that history, in the streets where it happened.
What the walk coversThe route runs through the centre of the city, from the old heart around Marienplatz out to Königsplatz, and much of the physical evidence is still standing — a good deal of it unmarked. Ordinary squares and ordinary buildings that were anything but.
It begins with the beginnings: the beer halls of a defeated and unstable post-war Germany, among them the Hofbräuhaus, where the party proclaimed its programme in 1920. Then the Feldherrnhalle at Odeonsplatz, where the failed putsch of 1923 was stopped, and the trial that followed, which turned its leader into a national figure.
Königsplatz is where the movement built once it was in power. The square was paved over for rallies and lined with the apparatus of a party that governed from here: the Brown House, its headquarters; the Führerbau, where the Munich Agreement was signed in 1938; and the two memorial temples raised to the men killed in the putsch. The NS-Dokumentationszentrum now stands on the ground the Brown House occupied.
Refusal, and afterwardsThe resistance is not left out. Behind the Feldherrnhalle runs Viscardigasse, a narrow lane Munich came to call the Drückebergergassl — the shirkers’ alley — because people who would not give the salute at the memorial took the detour through it instead. A bronze line is set into the paving today along the route they walked. It is a small thing, and it is the most human thing on the walk.
The rest is what Munich has since done with this inheritance — what was demolished, what was deliberately left standing, what went unacknowledged for decades, and the long argument about how a city should mark a history it would rather not have.
What is dealt withWorth knowingThis is a serious walk about a difficult subject, and it is handled as such. It is conducted on foot and outdoors, so dress for the weather and wear shoes you can walk in. The walk passes the NS-Dokumentationszentrum but does not go inside; its admission and any museum entry are not included. It is not recommended for young children.
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