MUNICH

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 60, Issue 4235, 24 January 1940, Page 9

MUNICH

THE NAZI CAPITAL. CITY OF ART AND BEER.

(By

H.A.G.

in Melbourne Age.)

It is surely a strange jest of fate that the recent and most successful attempt on Hitler’s life should have been perpetuated in Munich. For not merely is this lovely Bavarian city the only one in the whole of Greater Germany for which he cherishes a deep and abiding personal affection, but it has also been the scene and the inspiration of most of the decisive events in his political career. “Mein Kampf” abounds in numerour references to the magnetic influence which the former Wittelsbach capital has at all times exerted upon his mind. “Most of all,” he writes, “am I captivated by the harmonious combination of racial power and fine artistic feeling of this genuine German town. That I am to-day more devoted to it than to any other place in the world results probably from the fact that it is, and ever will remain, inseparably connected with the development of my own life. That from the minute of my arrival I fortunately received a time inner contentment is due only to the magic which this wonderful residence of the Wittelsbaeher calls forth in every person gifted, not only with common sense, but also with emotional sentiment.”

In its early history Munich was celebrated chiefly as a commercial centre and a religious metropolis. During the nineteenth century it acquired fame through its magnificent art collections and its unique Deutsches Museum of Technology, wherein, as Charles Graves observes, anything from television to coal mining and the Ptolmaic system is duly illustrated with models that actually work. It is perhaps the misfortune of the National Socialist movement that its associations with the city have the more prosiae setting of the local beer halls. It was in a small room on the ground floor of the Sterneckerbrau that the first office of what was then called the German Workers’ party was opened in September, 1919. Number 7 on the committee roll was an unemployed ex-corporal whose name was inscribed as Adolf Hittier, until one “t” was crossed out at his urgent request. Likewise it was in an upstairs room of the celebrated Hofbrauhaus that the Twenty Five Points of the party programme were adopted. The Hofbrauhaus is the largest “beer house in Munich, and the one most popular with foreign tourists. Directly opposite it is the Platzl. This hostelry has never actually been associated with the Nazi party, but the music hall shows which are produced by its inimitable comedian, Weiss Ferdl, have long been famous for their subtle digs at the German leaders. Ferdl has been repeatedly cautioned for his daring, but is so popular that he always manages to escape punishment. The Platzl is the resort most frequented by the Municheners themselves, and to-day is the special abode of that delightful Bavarian and un-Nazi quality called Gemutlichkeit— a word which has no exact counterpart in English, but which means, conviviality, and a lot else besides. Still another beer hall, the Burgerbrau on the opposite bank of the Tsar, was the starting point of the abortive putch of November 9, 1923. A fore-domed failure, this attempted revolution was snuffed out by a Government machine-gun burst, just as the Nazi forces reached the Feldherrenhalle, a military monument on the Odeonsplatz. It was at the Burgerbrau, while the anniversary of this event was being honoured, that the recent bomb explosion occurred.

A TEN-YEAR PLAN. Despite the rather ludicrous atmosphere which surrounds the early attempts of the National Socialists to gain power, there is much to admire in the colossal efforts they are making to rebuild Munich and other large German towns, and provide cultural and recreational facilities for the people. A grandiose scheme of reconstruction was drawn up in 1935, and, as in Soviet Russia, was form-

ulated as a Ten-Year Plan. Of course preparations for war put a sudden end to the more laudable aims of social amelioration, but not before National Socialist architecture had shown what it was capable of producing. One outstanding example in Munich is the really very fine House of German Art which was erected to hold the works of those painters who eschew the “bolshevistic” ideas of modernism, and follow the conventional, unimaginative canons of Nazi taste.

In the eyes of the average German citizen all these titanic schemes for cultural progress and civic improvement emanate exclusively from the all-embracing, brain of the Fuehrer. Actually, however, they are the creation of men like Dr Fritz Todt, the brilliant engineer, who designed the Siegfried Line and the State motor roads.

If Nuremberg is the political metropolis of the Third Reich, it is Munich which can justly claim the proud title of the “Capital of the Movement” (Hauptstadt der Bewegung). The short but imposing Brienner Street, which connects the Feldherrenhalle with the Koenigplatz, is the brain and nerve centre of National Socialistic Germany, for here are situated the central administrative offices and head quarters of the various branches of the entire party. Of all these buildings easily the most famous is the Brown House. Externally it is quite an unpretentious structure, but the internal decorations were designed by Hitler himself. Brown and red, the party colours, predominate in the great Hall of Flags where the banners and standards of the S.A. organisation of Munich are preserved, while in the downstairs cafe everything from the tablecloth to the lights are made in the shape of the swastika. Immediately beyond the Brown House is the magnificent Koenigsplatz, one of the most spacious squares in Europe, and one of the few areas in Munich which has been completely remodelled in accordance with Nazi ideas. Here stand the Fuehrer and Administrative buildings, two impressive specimens of National Socialist reconstructive will. It was in the first of these two edifices that the famous Munich conference of September, 1938, was held. At the entrance to the Koenigsplatz are the two opeil Temples of Honor of each of which eight of the Nazi fighters who lost their lives in the Beer-Hall Putsch of 1923 lie in black marble tombs, keeping “eternal watch.” Like Lenin’s tomb in Moscow, these twin shrines are a centre of nation-wide pilgrimage.