Nazi Beer Halls in Munich: Where Hitler Spoke, Then and Now
WHERE HITLER SPOKE IN MUNICH: THE FIVE BEER HALLS
The long-standing degrading coloring of the statements on Adolf Hitler and the Nazi regime worryingly detains the new generations from taking mindful warnings from the painful experience of those who have lived, suffered, and fought before us. Put in the words of recognized historian IAN KERSHAW, purposeful oversimplification detaches us from the realness. Even though the author has entitled one of the chapters of the landmark biography of Hitler as ‘Beer Hall Agitator’, the modern authoritative sources Kershaw and the other respected authors (for example Volker Ullrich and Brigitte Hamann) have used can offer a factual glimpse beyond the socio-cultural, historical, and political curtain of the long-gone Weimar Republic and the Third Reich. It’s always easier and mindfully cheaper to call the Nazis’ supporters no more than drunk frequenters of the Munich beer halls, tempted by free food and drinks. However, it’s way more exciting and substantial to go beyond the established historical clichés, read the works of the best historians of our time, and make your own mindful journey to the very heart of Bavaria.
GERMANY AFTER 1918: WHY THE BEER HALLS BECAME POLITICS
The bitterness of the defeat of Germany and its allies in the Great War (The First World War) went the extra mile beyond the fall of the monarchy, the abdication of Kaiser Wilhelm II, and the dictated peace on the pages of the nationally hated Versailles Treaty. The following alien occupation of the time-honored German territories, the loss of lands, the challenge of the communist revolution, the cutback of the army to allusive proportions, and finally the loss of millions of lives on the battlefields, devastating inflation, and necessity: all these influenced German society. Any of these painful issues had the potential to become a one-second spark for heated discussions anywhere from an intimate family ambiance to public places.
All of this was greeted with incredulous horror by the majority of Germans. The sense of outrage and disbelief that swept through the German upper and middle classes like a shock wave was almost universal and had a massive impact on many working-class supporters of the moderate Social Democrats as well.
RICHARD J. EVANS (The Coming of the Third Reich, 2003)
For the first time in German history, the year 1919 witnessed the manifestation of democracy in the form of a state system. The ‘Mittelstand’ (middle class) had historically included farmers, army officers, small-scale entrepreneurs, clerks, and state officials of small caliber. All these people were now frustrated both by the crackdown on historical values and the lack of confidence in the future. It’s important to understand that the right-wing mood and nationalism were not an invention of the 1920s, nor were they a later invention of Adolf Hitler or a creature of the Bavarian beer halls. Alois Hitler, Adolf’s father, was a conservative favourer of the pan-germanic sentiment at the turn of the XX century.
In a way that the right-wing trendiness had consolidated the national self-consciousness in the face of foreign enemies in the span of a Great War, these radical views were now regarded as a threat by the government and democracy. Another social layer of disgruntled masses was shaped by millions of veterans of the now-gone Kaiser’s army. In the aftermath of the lost war and bitterness of rankled defeat, as the ever-to-be-known Alan Bullock wrote, the ‘Frontkämpfer’ (combat veterans) now lived in a world of self-unimportance and disgrace.
The big city was suffering from hunger. Discontent was great. He hardly recognized the city. There he found “anger, discontent, cursing” wherever he went. “The general mood was miserable: to be a slacker passed almost as a sign of higher wisdom, while loyal steadfastness was considered a symptom of inner weakness and narrow-mindedness.”
THOMAS CHILDERS (The Third Reich, 2017)
By the autumn of 1923 the beer hall meetings had become a problem for the Bavarian state rather than a curiosity. On 26 September 1923 the government of Minister President Eugen von Knilling declared a state of emergency and appointed Gustav von Kahr General State Commissioner with dictatorial powers; together with the Reichswehr commander in Bavaria, Otto von Lossow, and the state police chief, Hans Ritter von Seisser, he formed the triumvirate that would be standing on the Bürgerbräukeller platform six weeks later.
The immediate trigger was Hitler’s own announcement that he would hold fourteen mass meetings in Munich beginning on 27 September. One of Kahr’s first acts was to ban them. Ian Kershaw treats this as the moment the pressure became unbearable: a movement built entirely on the beer hall meeting had just been denied the beer hall meeting, and the alternative to speaking was acting.
BAVARIA 1919–1923: BEER HALLS AND THE RISE OF THE NAZI MOVEMENT
In the aftermath of the Great War, Munich, by being the heart of Bavaria, was overtaken by disorders and riots, and the left-wing parties declared the ‘Bavarian Republic’. In the prime of the year 1919, a temperate democratic government was overthrown by communists, who proclaimed the so-called ‘Soviet Bavarian Republic’. Shortly after, the riot-hit Munich was ‘liberated’ by military formations and nationalistically tinted groups of volunteers. A young Adolf Hitler was a witness to the ‘bloody spring’. Only a few of more than fifty political organizations in Munich in 1919 had constant party headquarters. The majority of these formations settled in public places, including the traditionally spacious halls of the Munich beer houses.
Adolf Hitler, who got into an argument in Sterneckerbräu beer hall on September 12, 1919, had skillfully taken advantage of the tendency of the future phobia of the middle class, as well as of fear of communist threat and the made-up Jewish conspiracy. The German people and especially a politically active part of the nation, who used to spend time within the Munich beer halls, were now hustled to catch sight of the enemies from without (who had dictated Germany’s reparations and alien values), as well as the opponents from within. The energy of Hitler, his political instincts, and confidence in his abilities, when paired with the support of sympathetic feelings of the upper class, granted him a chance to scale the importance of the beer hall meetings.
Through the leaflets, made by Hitler himself back in 1919, to mass-printed pamphlets, red banners, and his own publishing house. From forty attendees of the meeting at Sterneckerbräu to the 2000 audience within the roomy halls of Hofbräuhaus. From the semi-intimate gatherings at the beer table to marches of thousands along the streets of cities of Bavaria and a wave of violence against the political opponents. Hitler’s admiration of Munich in the years 1913-1914, in his own words, the streets of the city were now in the possession of the Nazi movement, as well as the hearts and minds of its people.
Nevertheless, some four thousand followers gathered in the beer hall to hear Hitler once again and he did not disappoint them. His eloquence was as moving as ever. At the end of a two-hour harangue, the crowd roared with applause. Despite the many desertions and the bleak prospects, Hitler made it clear that he still considered himself the dictatorial leader of the party.
WILLIAM SHIRER (The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, 1960)
MAP OF HITLER’S BEER HALLS IN MUNICH
Where did Hitler speak in Munich? Between 1919 and 1943 he spoke in dozens of halls across the city, but five beer halls carried the movement from a back room of forty men to a party of millions. This is the sequence, and it doubles as the shortest possible summary of how the NSDAP grew.
— Sterneckerbräu, Tal 38 · 12 September 1919 · about 40 in the room · Hitler attends a DAP meeting as an army informant and argues from the floor. The party rents its first office here in October 1919.
— Hofbräukeller, Wiener Platz · 16 October 1919 · 111 attendees · Hitler’s first speech to a real audience, second on the bill, overrunning his twenty minutes by half an hour. He later called it the turning point.
— Hofbräuhaus, Platzl 9 · 24 February 1920 · about 2,000 · the 25-point programme is read out and the DAP is renamed the NSDAP. Twenty more Hitler speeches here in 1920 alone, drawing 800 to 3,000 each.
— Kindl-Keller, Rosenheimer Straße · September 1920 · 3,000 · across the road from the Bürgerbräukeller.
— Bürgerbräukeller, Rosenheimer Straße 25 · 8 November 1923 · 3,000 listening to Kahr when Hitler fires into the ceiling. And 27 February 1925 · 4,000 · his first speech after the ban was lifted.
— Löwenbräukeller, Stiglmaierplatz · 8 November 1923 · about 2,000 SA men mustering under Röhm, waiting for the call from the Bürgerbräukeller. Later Hitler’s annual putsch speech, 1940–1943.
Four years separate the room of forty from the hall of four thousand. Hitler himself reduced the whole story to one line in the 1930s: «I started with seven men in a beer hall.»
The topography of the Munich beer halls is in no way limited to five famous public places, as well as Hitler’s speeches and Nazi events had historically come over to dozens of beer houses and restaurants in the city. But for all that, these very five beer halls in Munich were destined to play a role in the rise of national socialism, Hitler’s rise to definite power in Germany, and later in occupied Europe. Three of the five beer houses have survived the Second World War and the past eight decades and preserved their primary intended purpose, whereas the former location of the Sterneckerbräu is now being used as a computer store. In a wider sense of the geographical changes, the entire city district once attributed to Bürgerbräukeller was reshaped to be occupied with several modern buildings, including the Hilton hotel. Three of five were intimately related to the so-called ‘Beer Hall Putsch’, the failed Nazi revolution of 1923.
The five halls sit in three clusters. The Hofbräuhaus and Sterneckerbräu are four minutes apart inside the old town, both a short walk from Marienplatz. The Hofbräukeller and the site of the Bürgerbräukeller face each other across the Haidhausen side of the Isar, ten minutes apart on foot. The Löwenbräukeller stands on its own, north-west of the centre at Stiglmaierplatz, two U-Bahn stops from the main station. Walking all five in one day is entirely possible — about five kilometres in total, and the route overlaps for most of its length with the Beer Hall Putsch march of 9 November 1923.
STERNECKERBRÄU, TAL 38: WHERE HITLER JOINED THE PARTY IN 1919
In the days of the Third Reich, this very location within a march route of the failed ‘Beer Hall Putsch’ was attributed as much as the ‘Cradle of the movement’ (national-socialistic). As far back as the middle of the XVI century, the city district was already praised as a home for beer houses. Things were going so brilliantly that in 1696 a cozy alley, a filiation from Tal street, was entitled Sterneckerstraße after an owner of the brewery, who had this plot of land in his ownership. At the turn of the 20th century, the historical buildings on the intersection of Tal and Sterneckerstraße were demolished and replaced with a new city district with a new five-story building, built in 1902. In this historical sense, by the time a young ‘Deutsche Arbeiterpartei’ under Anton Drexler used to bring together one evening a week, generally on Fridays, within one of the halls of Sterneckerbräu beer house, the building was a whole new one. For all that, Sterneckerbrau was attributed to a low-class category of the Munich beer halls, and its owner had no perspective to gain as much audience as Hofbräuhaus or Löwenbräukeller at that time.
On September 12, 1919, a young Adolf Hitler (in league with a few of his army colleagues) visited one of the weekly meetings of the DAP at the depths of the poorly illuminated Sterneckerbräu. That very meeting became history due to a battle of words between Hitler and one of the 40 attendees (the preserved attendance list includes 41 names, including Hitler), graced with enormous attention in ‘Mein Kampf’ and also in the recollections of Anton Drexler. As early as October 1919, four months after the signing of the Versailles Peace Treaty in Paris and a month after Hitler had joined the party, the DAP provided itself with its first headquarters in Munich. Just in this small room with a separate entrance from the Sterneckstrasse alley, the party committee had formed (starting from January 1920) the core of the future values of the Nazi movement and its program, which would fall into oblivion only as of the fall of the Third Reich years later. To a wide practical and historical extent, the party was indeed created within this location just as it was.
Even before the end of 1919 the German Workers’ Party, at Hitler’s insistence, set up its headquarters in a dark, vaultlike cellar room in the Sternecker beer hall. The rent was fifty marks; in co-signing the lease Hitler again gave his occupation as “painter.” A table and a few borrowed chairs were placed in the room, a telephone installed, and a safe obtained for the membership cards and the party treasury.
JOACHIM FEST (HITLER, 1973)
Regardless of the accession for Hitler to use the more recognized beer halls of Munich as a platform for his speeches, the future German Führer used to address the audience in Sterneckerbräu. In the summer of 1920, Hitler gave three of his speeches in this beer house. In consideration of the tight space of Sterneckerbräu and the light of the steadily growing Nazi Party, this initial ‘cradle of movement’ had gradually lost its favor and practical attractiveness for the Nazis. On October 31, 1921, they established a new headquarters only a few streets to the South of the initial location. On the other hand, Sterneckerbräu played a small part in the failed ‘Beer Hall Putsch’ for a couple of reasons. In the late hours of November 8, 1923, one of the groups of stormtroopers was rallying up inside the Torbrau hotel, just across the street. On the following day, a column of the putschists overpassed a police squad on Ludwigsbrucke and marched along Tal Street, a few steps from the first headquarters.
As soon as Hitler and the Nazis took power in Germany in 1933, the Führer gave a speech in Sterneckerbrau on November 8, on the anniversary of the ‘Beer Hall Putsch’, and ceremonially opened a small party museum within a former headquarters. Fuelled by Hitler’s passages from ‘Mein Kampf’ and Goebbels’ media machine, the museum became a site of pilgrimage for the devotees of the Nazi movement in the years of the Third Reich. In later years, the column of the annual march along the route of the ‘Beer Hall Putsch’ used to make a stop in front of the Sterneckerbräu with a minute of silence. The building was not damaged in the course of the Allied bombings in 1944, which in contrast caused a significant demolition of ISARTOR gates. Since 1957, for the first time in four centuries, the location has not served as a beer house. In modern times, the primary entrance from Tal Street leads us to an electronics store, and the back alley entrance opens into a residential estate.
THE HOFBRÄUHAUS AM PLATZL: HITLER’S 25 POINTS AND THE NAZI YEARS
As long ago as 1589, the former poultry farm was leveled to the ground to make space for a large brewery, and the famous Hofbräuhaus would occupy the ground two centuries later. In 1897, the old building was destined to be demolished to be replaced with a large beer hall without a brewery itself, open to the public just as we know it today. By the time a young Adolf Hitler came to Munich on the afternoon of May 25, 1913, the city had become a safe harbor for artists, sculptors, and writers from all over Europe. He used to create landscape pictures, drawn from life, or used to take advantage of copying postcards with the city landmarks. At that time, many postcards were devoted to the Hofbräuhaus beer hall, and the painting of Adolf Hitler has survived the decades and has come down to us. It was this very beer house and its spacious summer garden that granted young Hitler a chance to find clients for his paintings between the tables with glasses of beer.
In the late hours of February 24, 1920, the Hofbräuhaus witnessed Hitler’s appearance in front of 2000 people, a figure and success that surprised Hitler and Drexler like a ton of bricks. It is worth mentioning that a significant portion of the attendees, up to ¼, amounted to political opponents, including the communists. That very day, the party was re-titled into ‘Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei’; Hitler did use the improvised grand stone within the Festsaal of Hofbräuhaus to proclaim the infamous 25 points of the party program. 2000 people had encapsulated the new reality with Hitler’s access to the hearts and minds of a wide audience within the biggest beer halls in Munich. In that very year, 1920, Hitler made 20 of his speeches here, with a running time of up to two hours each and the number of attendees from 800 to an enormous 3000. On July 29, 1921, the Hofbräuhaus witnessed the election of Hitler (employing 554 members) as the chairman of the NSDAP, making him the supreme leader of the movement and leaving Anton Drexler as a nominal honorary president.
The meeting was to start at 7:30 P.M. and when Hitler entered the great Festsaal of the Hofbräuhaus at seven-fifteen he found it jammed with almost 2000 people. His heart “burst with joy.” He was confident that the true idealists among this hostile group would swing over to his side and he welcomed any disturbance they might provoke.
JOHN TOLAND (ADOLF HITLER, 1976)
Notwithstanding a note of warning that Hitler could be expelled from Bavaria, the Nazis turned the day of November 4, 1921, into a bloody fistfight within Hofbräuhaus, throwing their rage against the supporters of the left-wing parties. That fight has become history as the ‘Battle for Hofbräuhaus’. In November 1922, Hermann Esser, nominally the man №2 in NSDAP after Hitler at that time, addressed the audience of the Hofbräuhaus to proclaim Hitler a German Mussolini (one month after the Italian Fascists had marched on Rome). On February 24, 1933, only a few weeks after taking the role of the German Chancellor, Hitler established an annual tradition of his speeches in front of the ‘Altes Kameraden’ in Hofbräuhaus. Such commemorative events would be held here annually until 1941. The complex of the building was heavily damaged during the Allied raids on Munich in the years 1944-1945. It took a decade to bring Hofbräuhaus to the pre-war state with a new grand opening ceremony in 1957.
THE HOFBRÄUKELLER ON WIENER PLATZ: HITLER’S FIRST BIG SPEECH, 16 OCTOBER 1919
Things were once going so brilliantly for the brewery industry that the end of the XVIII century encapsulated a new era of expanding the undisputed golden goose to a never-seen extent, with Staatliches Hofbräuhaus as an absolute leader among the producers. A barren landscape within a sparsely inhabited right bank of the Isar River had been marked on the XVII century map as ‘Auf dem Gasteig’ (On Gasteig), which was chosen to locate new brewery venues and spacious beer cellars. High sides of the river and caves of natural origins were predestined to become an exceptional location for freshy cellars, planted around with chestnuts, brought to Bavaria to provide additional shade and coolness for a new beer craft. The German title ‘Hofbräukeller’ is to be translated as ‘Hofbrau Beer Cellar’. The famous beerhouse was ceremonially opened in 1894 within the Wiener Platz (Viennese square) of Munich in a newly built building of neo-renaissance style.
In the days when a young Adolf Hitler became a member of DAP in mid-September 1919, the party had been doing beer hall politics without a party office. The party cards were to be handwritten and then amateurishly printed with a typing machine. Within the next few weeks, Hitler himself distributed leaflets in public places in Munich, thus inviting people to attend the upcoming party meeting. On October 16, 1919, 111 attendees crowded the main hall of the Hofbräukeller beerhouse to give an audition to a few speakers, with a young and largely unknown Adolf Hitler as the second spokesperson. The future German Führer exceeded the given 20-minute agenda by up to 30 minutes. Five years from that day, while spending his routine in Landsberg prison, the author of the infamous ‘Mein Kampf’ would praise his speech at Hofbräukeller as the turning point for the movement.
Eventually, a move to mimeographed notices brought a modest rise in numbers attending, and funds were raised to allow a newspaper advertisement in the Münchener Beobachter for a meeting on 16 October 1919 which attracted 111 people to the Hofbräukeller, the large drinking saloon attached to one of Munich’s big breweries, situated in Wienerstraße to the east of the city centre (and not to be confused with the better-known Hofbräuhaus, located in the city centre itself).
IAN KERSHAW (HITLER: HUBRIS, 1998)
In the years of the Third Reich, the Hofbräukeller had attained the status of one of the early symbols of the Nazi movement, and the beerhouse became a speechless witness of the Nazi arrangements. Given a deeper consideration, Hofbräukeller was a popular place of leisure in the 1930s not so much by Hitler or the NSDAP cult as by the actual comfort of its summer beer garden, a spacious main hall, and a variety of beer brands. Within the years of the Second World War, the building was used to accommodate a first aid station and was occupied by the American soldiers on April 30, 1945, who allocated a military headquarters within the famous beer hall. The Hofbräukeller and the Wiener Platz square have avoided bombardments, and the building looks pretty much the same as it was a hundred years ago.
THE BÜRGERBRÄUKELLER: THE PUTSCH, THE ELSER BOMB AND THE DEMOLITION OF 1979
Similar to the Hofbräukeller, the motivation to allocate beer cellars here was once formed by the natural geography of the right bank of the Isar River. While the freezing installation was invented back in 1871, for more than a century the Munich breweries had used the natural coolness of the underground galleries and cellars for the beer craft. Bürgerbräukeller was opened in 1885 with a destiny to be praised as one of the largest breweries not only in Bavaria but also in the whole of Germany. The spacious halls of Bürgerbräukeller used to offer seats for 1800 guests as well as another 3000 seats within a large summer garden. Factually speaking, the Bürgerbräukeller had once occupied a whole city district with the main entrance on Rosenheimer Strasse. On the opposite side of the road was another beer hall called KINDL-KELLER, a place for several of Hitler’s speeches, particularly in September 1920 with 3000 attendees.
Starting in 1920 and with the growing ambition of Hitler’s speeches across Munich, the Bürgerbräukeller had played the role of an arena for NSDAP venues. It was in the main hall of this very beer house that the famous theatrical gunshot of Hitler into the ceiling was witnessed, which was intended to break in the speech of Commissar Gustav von Kahr (who addressed 3000 people). Half an hour before the afternoon of the next day, after doubts and discords, the column of the putschists, led by Hitler, former general Erich Ludendorff, and Hermann Goering, moved forward in a march to take the Bavarian War Ministry. On February 27, 1925, Friday, Hitler drew an audience of 4000 attendees within the main hall of Bürgerbräukeller as his first public speech after the repeal of a ban, which had been given eleven days before. The year 1928 witnessed eleven public appearances of Hitler here.
“Pale, a dark lock of hair hanging down his forehead, and with a pistol-wielding stormtrooper on either side,” Hitler began to negotiate the clogged way to the stage. When he was ten steps away from Kahr, he got up on a chair and fired a shot into the ceiling to quiet the tumult. Then he took the stage and proclaimed excitably: “National revolution is under way. The hall is under the control of 600 heavily armed men. No one is allowed to leave.
VOLLKER ULLRICH (HITLER, 2013)
On November 8, 1933, months after gaining the one-step-to-ultimate power in Germany (not until the death of President Hindenburg), the party organized the first ceremonial march along the route of the failed ‘Beer Hall Putsch’. Within the next seven years up to 1939, the Bürgerbräukeller had become way more than a starting point for the annual march but was also an arena for Hitler’s annual speeches. The famous beerhouse was destined to become a place for the second most well-known (second to the July 20, 1944 plot) assassination attempt of Hitler. In the span of the following four years, the ceremonial appearance of Hitler used to be held in the Löwenbräukeller beer hall. World War Two and the growing needs of wartime had left the damaged (by the bomb of Georg Elser) building of Bürgerbräukeller in ruins. The iconic Munich beer house faced the end of the war semi-devastated, yet magically avoided the air raids.
The American contingent used to accommodate the building up to 1957. At one time, the filiation of the Red Cross was allocated within the premises of Bürgerbräukeller. Years after, the repaired halls of the famous beer house were reopened in the tradition of pre-war times. The legendary beer house as well as the summer garden, which had survived the Third Reich era, the bombshell of Georg Elser, and the Allied air raids, were completely demolished in 1979.
THE LÖWENBRÄUKELLER AT STIGLMAIERPLATZ: THE SA MUSTER POINT AND HITLER’S WARTIME SPEECHES
It was no less than two decades to June 14, 1883, when Ludwig Brey, a brewer from Munich, grand-opened a large and blindingly glaring beer house on a spot of land within a topographic triangle on the crossroads of three streets, which he had once bought. The new beer hall to the north of the medieval walls of Munich soon came into ascendance among the locals and guests of the city. In 1894, the initial architectural complex of buildings was accompanied by an added tower and electricity (a rarity at the time at that time) in another year. The Löwenbräukeller beerhouse was inaugurated with an official emblem, a lion, as early as 1911, and had been a desired place for attendees from all over Europe for years.
On the sunny afternoon of May 25, 1913, a young Adolf Hitler and his friend Rudolf Häusler (two young men who had been associates within the Männerheim hostel for men in Vienna for some time) met their fates on the railway platform of the Munich Hauptbahnhof. Considering the common fact that Hitler was fascinated with the city from his first steps in Munich, it’s highly likely for two friends to take notice of a luxurious Löwenbräukeller beer hall, located just on their way from the railway station to the upcoming accommodation on Schleißheimer Straße 34.
Herr Popp and his wife, tailors, who used to run a small dressmaking store on the first floor and later rented a cozy room to Hitler and Hausler, would afterward recall Hitler looking in Löwenbräukeller from time to time. At the same time, a young resident conventionally, yet mannerly, rejected an invite to share supper with the renters, taking some purchased food upstairs. Hitler would use a room on Schleißheimer Straße 34 as his Munich home until August 1914 (from February on his own, as Hausler had left the place) and the Löwenbräukeller had become, one way or another, a part of his Munich period.
The Löwenbräukeller was historically designated to become associated with an event of the year 1923, known as the ‘Beer Hall Putsch’. It was here that around 2000 of the nazi stormtroopers and their supporters gathered on the eve of November 8, led by Ernst Röhm, waiting for a call from Hitler from Bürgerbräukeller. Years later, in 1928, Hitler, the self-re-established leader of the movement, would appeal to 2500 students of Munich from the grandstand inside the Löwenbräukeller. In less than a year from that speech, in April 1929, Hitler would deliver an oration, full of allusions to the historical megapolises of ancient Europe, such as Athens and Rome, and would proclaim a vision for the heritage of the Third Reich to become grandiose and to figure in history.
After the failed assassination attempt of Georg Elser on November 8, 1939, and because of the wrecking of the Bürgerbräukeller, Hitler’s annual speech (commemorating the failed 1923 Putsch) challenged them to find a new location. Löwenbräukeller was chosen to become such a place for the next four years. On December 17, 1944, a month and a little over since the called-off speech of Hitler, the famous beer hall was heavily damaged throughout the massive Allied air raid on Munich. To the horror of the citizens, the main hall of Löwenbräukeller collapsed, and one of the most postcard-like buildings was now in ruins. The repair works had become a reality only six years later, and the renovated Löwenbräukeller was opened in 1955.
VISITING THE MUNICH BEER HALLS TODAY: ADDRESSES, HOURS AND WHAT SURVIVES
Three of the five are working beer halls you can walk into today; one is a shop; one no longer exists. Here is what is actually there.
Hofbräuhaus am Platzl — Platzl 9, Altstadt. Open daily, from morning until late; no admission charge, no reservation needed for the ground-floor Schwemme. The Festsaal on the second floor — the hall where the 25 points were read out on 24 February 1920 — is used for functions and is not always accessible; if it is open, the staircase is on the left of the entrance. The building was rebuilt after the 1944–45 raids and reopened in 1957, so the interior is post-war, but the plan and the vaulting follow the 1897 original. Nearest station: Marienplatz (S-Bahn, U3/U6), five minutes on foot. This is by far the most crowded of the five at any hour.
Hofbräukeller — Innere Wiener Straße 19, am Wiener Platz in Haidhausen. Open daily; beer garden under chestnut trees, seating well over a thousand. The building survived the war intact and looks essentially as it did in 1919 — of the five, this is the one where you are standing in the actual room. Nearest station: Max-Weber-Platz (U4/U5), three minutes. Note the confusion this name causes: the Hofbräukeller in Haidhausen and the Hofbräuhaus in the old town are two different places, three kilometres apart, and Kershaw goes out of his way to say so.
Löwenbräukeller — Nymphenburger Straße 2, Stiglmaierplatz. Open daily from 10 a.m.; beer garden with about a thousand seats under old chestnuts, and a ballroom that still seats around two thousand — one of the largest halls in the city. The main hall collapsed in the raid of 17 December 1944, and the building was reopened in 1955 in reduced form, so what you see is a post-war reconstruction of a nineteenth-century original. Nearest station: Stiglmaierplatz (U1/U7), directly outside. Noticeably less touristed than the Hofbräuhaus.
Sterneckerbräu — Tal 38, at the corner of Sterneckerstraße. Not a beer hall since 1957. The Tal frontage is now an electronics shop; the back entrance on Sterneckerstraße, which led to the party’s first office and later to the Nazi party museum, opens into a residential building. Nothing marks either. Nearest station: Isartor (S-Bahn) or Marienplatz, both about four minutes.
Bürgerbräukeller — Rosenheimer Straße 25. Demolished in 1979. The site is occupied by the Gasteig cultural centre, the GEMA building and the Hilton Munich City; a pavement plaque commemorates Georg Elser’s bomb of 8 November 1939. Nearest station: Rosenheimer Platz (S-Bahn). The full account of this location is in my article on the Beer Hall Putsch route.
Opening hours and access to the upper halls change — check the beer halls’ own sites before you go. All five sites are free to look at from the street; only the Hofbräuhaus, the Hofbräukeller and the Löwenbräukeller are places you can sit down in.
OTHER MUNICH ADDRESSES CONNECTED WITH HITLER AND THE NSDAP
Five halls carried the movement, but the map of Nazi Munich is wider. A few addresses worth knowing if you are walking the city:
— Kindl-Keller, Rosenheimer Strasse, directly across the road from the Bürgerbräukeller. Hitler spoke here to some three thousand people in September 1920. Demolished; the site is built over.
— Augustiner-Keller, Arnulfstraße 52, and the Ratskeller under the Neues Rathaus on Marienplatz — both used for NSDAP meetings in the early 1920s, both still working today.
— Circus Krone, Marsstraße 43, where Hitler spoke to some six thousand people in February 1921 — his first audience outside the beer hall format, and still a working circus building.
— Osteria Bavaria (today Osteria Italiana), Schellingstraße 62, and the Schelling-Salon at Schellingstraße 54 — the restaurant and the café that Hitler used in the 1920s and 1930s. Both still in business.
— The Brown House (Braunes Haus, formerly Palais Barlow), Brienner Straße 45, NSDAP headquarters from 1931. Destroyed in the war; the NS-Dokumentationszentrum stands on the site today.
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
Which beer hall did Hitler speak in? All five in this article, but three matter most. The Hofbräukeller on Wiener Platz heard his first real speech on 16 October 1919, to 111 people. The Hofbräuhaus am Platzl heard the 25-point programme on 24 February 1920, to about 2,000. The Bürgerbräukeller is where he fired into the ceiling on 8 November 1923 and launched the putsch.
Where did Hitler give his first speech? His first speech as a party member, and the one he himself called the turning point, was at the Hofbräukeller in Haidhausen on 16 October 1919. He was the second speaker of the evening, was given twenty minutes, and spoke for fifty. Note that this is not the Hofbräuhaus in the old town — the two names are constantly confused, and they are three kilometres apart.
Can you still visit the beer halls where Hitler spoke? Three of them, yes: the Hofbräuhaus, the Hofbräukeller and the Löwenbräukeller are all open daily and free to enter. The Sterneckerbräu closed in 1957 and is now an electronics shop. The Bürgerbräukeller was demolished in 1979, and the site is occupied by the Gasteig, the GEMA building and a Hilton hotel. Addresses and stations are in the section above.
Is any of this marked or commemorated? Barely. There is a pavement plaque to Georg Elser on the former Bürgerbräukeller site. None of the three surviving beer halls carries anything about its Nazi-era history, and none mentions it in its own material — which is part of why this article exists.
Did Hitler actually drink beer? Barely, and less and less over time. In the Munich years he drank the occasional beer — the setting made abstinence conspicuous — but from the mid-1920s he was effectively teetotal, and by the 1930s he did not drink alcohol at all, taking mineral water or a heavily diluted wine at official dinners. The point is worth making precisely because of where he built his career: the beer hall was a political venue for him, not a place to drink. The image of Hitler as a drinker in a Munich beer cellar is a myth, and a cheap one.
What is the difference between the Hofbräuhaus and the Hofbräukeller? They belong to the same brewery and nothing else. The Hofbräuhaus is the huge tourist beer hall at Platzl 9 in the old town, built in 1589 and rebuilt in 1897. The Hofbräukeller is a separate house on Wiener Platz in Haidhausen, opened in 1894, on the other side of the Isar. Hitler spoke in both, on different occasions, and the confusion between them runs through the popular literature.
Why did the Nazis use beer halls at all? Because in Munich in 1919 there was nowhere else. Of more than fifty political organisations active in the city that year, only a handful had permanent premises; the rest met in the large halls that Munich’s breweries maintained for exactly this purpose. The beer hall was the city’s public meeting room, and the movement that used it best got the audience.
Where did the Beer Hall Putsch start? At the Bürgerbräukeller on Rosenheimer Strasse, on the evening of 8 November 1923. The whole route, location by location, is in my separate article on the Beer Hall Putsch march.
