History of Munich

Events in the history of Munich in Germany.

Origin

coat-of-arms

The year 1158 is assumed to be the foundation date of Munich, which is only the earliest date the city is mentioned in a document. By that time the Guelph Henry the Lion, Duke of Saxony and Bavaria, built a bridge over the river Isar next to a settlement of Benedictine monks.

The monks' presence dated back to the 8th century, although settlement in the Munich area can be traced back to the late neolithic.

To force traders to use his bridge (and charge them for doing so) Henry also destroyed a nearby bridge owned by bishop

Imperial Diet held in Augsburg in 1158. This sanctioned Henry's spoliation

, and awarded an annual compensation for the bishop, and also confirmed Munich's trading and currency rights.

Middle Ages

Frauenkirche

in the background

Almost two decades later in 1175 Munich was officially granted city status and received fortification. In 1180, with the trial of Henry the Lion,

Otto II Wittelsbach and in 1255, when the dukedom of Bavaria was split in two, Munich became the ducal residence of Upper Bavaria

.

Duke Louis IV was elected German king in 1314 and crowned as Holy Roman Emperor in 1328. He strengthened the city's position by granting it the salt monopoly, thus assuring it of additional income. After outmaneuvering Freising, Munich was the principal river crossing on the route from Salzburg to Augsburg. Salzburg (vicinity) was the source of salt, and Augsburg was, at the time, a much more important city than Munich.

In 1327 most of the city was destroyed by a fire but was rebuilt, extended and protected with a new fortification some years later. Philosophers like

castle

was built close to the fortification, starting in 1385. An uprising of the guilds in 1397 was suppressed in 1403.

Another devastating fire destroyed parts of the city in 1429. Since the town fathers considered themselves threatened by the

Frauenkirche

—constructed within only twenty years, starting in 1468. The cathedral has become a symbol for the city with its two brick towers and onion domes.

Capital of the reunited duchy of Bavaria

When Bavaria was reunited in 1506 Munich became capital of the whole of Bavaria. The arts and politics became increasingly influenced by the court. During the 16th century Munich was a center of the German

Hofbräuhaus

for brewing brown beer in 1589.

The Catholic League was founded in Munich in 1609. In 1623 during the

Maximilian I, Duke of Bavaria was invested with the electoral dignity but in 1632 the city was occupied by Gustav II Adolph of Sweden. When the bubonic plague

broke out in 1634 and 1635 about one third of the population died.

Theatinerkirche

on Odeonsplatz in the historic city centre

After the war Munich quickly became a center of

Maximilian II Emanuel, elector of Bavaria

.

Munich was under the control of the

English Garden

was laid out—it is one of the world's largest urban public parks. By that time, the city was growing very quickly and was one of the largest cities in continental Europe.

Capital of the Kingdom of Bavaria

In 1806, it became the capital of the new

archdiocese of Munich and Freising being located in the city. Twenty years later Landshut University

was moved to Munich.

Many of the city's finest buildings belong to this period and were built under the reign of King

Perpendicular style

.

The railways reached Munich in 1839, followed by trams in 1876 and electric lighting in 1882. The

Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen, Emil Kraepelin and Alois Alzheimer, and the young Albert Einstein attended the Luitpold Gymnasium. In 1911 the Hellabrunn Zoo

opened in the city.

Munich also became a center of the arts and literature again, as Thomas Mann, Henrik Ibsen, Richard Wagner, Richard Strauss and many others prominent figures lived and worked there. Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider), a group of expressionist artists, was established in Munich in 1911.

In 1846 Munich's population was about 100,000, and by 1901 this had risen to about 500,000.

World War I and revolution

Following the outbreak of World War I in 1914, life in Munich became very difficult, as the Allied blockade of Germany led to food and fuel shortages. During French air raids in 1916 three bombs fell on Munich. After World War I, the city was at the center of much political unrest. In November 1918 on the eve of revolution,

Lenin, who had lived in Munich some years before, sent a congratulatory telegram, but the Soviet Republic was put down on May 3, 1919 by the Freikorps

.

On 3 May 1919, loyal elements of the German army (called the “White Guards of Capitalism” by the communists), with a force of 9,000, and Freikorps (such as the Freikorps Epp and the Marinebrigade Ehrhardt) with a force of about 30,000 men, entered Munich and defeated the communists after bitter street fighting in which over 1,000 supporters of the Munich Soviet government were killed. About 700 men and women were arrested and summarily executed by the victorious Freikorps troops.

After the Räterepublik had been put down and the republican government had been restored, Munich subsequently became a hotbed of right-wing politics, among which Adolf Hitler and the Nazis rose to prominence.

Weimar Republic/Nazi regime and World War II

In 1923 Hitler and his supporters, who were concentrated in Munich, staged the Beer Hall Putsch, an attempt to overthrow the Weimar Republic and seize power. The revolt failed, resulting in Hitler's arrest and the temporary crippling of the Nazi Party, which was virtually unknown outside Munich. At the end of the Residenzstrasse, where the putsch resulted in the death of 16 Nazis and four policemen, the government of Bavaria placed a plaque after the war on the ground with the names of the four policemen who died there.

The city once again became a Nazi stronghold when the Nazis took power in Germany in 1933. The Nazis created the first

NSDAP headquarters were in Munich and many Führerbauten ("Führer-buildings") were built around the Königsplatz, some of which have survived to this day. During the Night of the Long Knives in 1934, Hitler eliminated potential political rivals. Ernst Röhm was killed in Munich's Stadelheim Prison

.

In 1938, the Munich Agreement, Neville Chamberlain's famous act of appeasement to Hitler, was signed in the city by representatives of Germany, Italy, France and the Britain. It ceded the mostly German-speaking regions of Czechoslovakia, called the Sudetenland, to Germany. One year later Georg Elser failed in an attempt to assassinate Hitler during his annual speech to commemorate the Beer Hall Putsch in the Bürgerbräukeller in Munich. The Bürgerbräukeller is no longer there, but other beerhalls where Hitler spoke, like the Hofbräukeller, the famous Hofbräuhaus and the Löwenbräukeller are still there. One of the examples of Nazi architecture in München is the Haus der Deutschen Kunst, an art museum designed by architect Paul Ludwig Troost.

During the war, Munich was the location of multiple forced labour camps, including two Polenlager camps for Polish youth,^[1]^[2] and 40 subcamps of the Dachau concentration camp, including Agfa-Commando, Munich-Allach, München-Schwabing, in which men and women of various nationalities were held.^[3]

Munich was the base of the

Munich University by Hans and Sophie Scholl

.

The city was very heavily damaged by Allied bombing during World War II—the city was hit by 71 air raids over a period of six years. As the bombings continued, more and more people moved out. By May 1945, 337,000 people (41%) had left.^[4]

The final battle for Munich began on 29 April 1945, when the US 20th Armored Division. US 3rd Infantry Division, US 42nd Infantry Division and US 45th Infantry Division assaulted through the outskirts of the city, also liberating Dachau concentration camp in the process. Some sectors were well defended against this opening push. However, the city itself was captured rather easily, as the German defenders there offered only light resistance, on 30 April 1945.^[5]

Postwar Munich

Olympia Park

After American occupation in 1945, Munich was completely rebuilt following a meticulous and—by comparison to other war-ravaged German cities—rather conservative plan which preserved its pre-war street grid.

In 1957 Munich's population passed the one million mark. In 1958 Munich hosted the Chess Olympiad.

Munich was the site of the

Black September" group took hostage members of the Israeli Olympic team. A rescue attempt by the West German

government was unsuccessful and resulted in the deaths of the eleven Israeli hostages, five of the terrorists, and one German police officer.

Several games of the

2006 World Cup

were also held in Munich.

In 1992

Riem

, took place in 1998.

The previous

Archbishop of Munich

from 1977 to 1982.

In December 2007 the German Olympic Committee unanimously agreed to support Munich's bid to host the 2018 Winter Olympics, however the bid failed.

References

^ "Außenkommando "Polenlager Ost" des Jugendgefängnisses München-Stadelheim". Bundesarchiv.de (in German). Retrieved 11 December 2023.
^ "Außenkommando "Polenlager Süd" des Jugendgefängnisses München-Stadelheim". Bundesarchiv.de (in German). Retrieved 11 December 2023.
^ "Anlage zu § 1. Verzeichnis der Konzentrationslager und ihrer Außenkommandos gemäß § 42 Abs. 2 BEG" (in German). Archived from the original on 23 April 2009. Retrieved 11 December 2023.
^ Richard Overy (2014), The Bombers and the Bombed: Allied Air War Over Europe 1940–1945, p. 304.
^ Stanton, Shelby, World War II Order of Battle: An Encyclopedic Reference to U.S. Army Ground Forces from Battalion through Division, 1939–1946 (Revised Edition, 2006), Stackpole Books. pp. 69, 80, 129, 135.