Führerbau and the Temples of Honour
Why is it significant?
On your left stands a long building of pale limestone with heavy square columns and two balconies above its entrances. Right beside it, on the corner of Brienner Straße, a square stone platform rises from the ground, completely overgrown with trees and bushes. Both belong to the same story.
Key Facts
| Place | Führerbau and the Temples of Honour |
|---|---|
| Address | Arcisstraße 12, 80333 München, Germany |
| Geo Coordinates | 48.14650, 11.56790 |
| Part of Walk | Munich 1918-1945: The Nazi Era, Its Victims and the White Rose |
| Generated | Generated |
On your left stands a long building of pale limestone with heavy square columns and two balconies above its entrances. Right beside it, on the corner of Brienner Straße, a square stone platform rises from the ground, completely overgrown with trees and bushes. Both belong to the same story.
The building is the Führerbau, built between 1933 and 1937 to designs by Paul Ludwig Troost, Hitler's favourite architect, who died before it was finished. It held Hitler's Munich offices and rooms for receiving guests. Its twin to the south held the party's administration. Today the Führerbau is the University of Music and Theatre, and Hitler's former office is said to be used as a practice room.
On the night of the 29th to the 30th of September 1938, Hitler, Mussolini, the British prime minister Neville Chamberlain and the French prime minister Édouard Daladier signed the Munich Agreement in this building. It handed the Sudetenland, the border regions of Czechoslovakia, to Germany. Czechoslovakia itself was not invited to the table. Chamberlain flew home promising peace for our time. Less than six months later, German troops marched into Prague.
Now the overgrown platform. Here, and on a second one across the street, stood the two Temples of Honour, open colonnades built in 1935 to hold the bronze coffins of the sixteen Nazis killed in the failed putsch of 1923. SS men stood guard, and the dead were declared the eternal watch of the movement. In January 1947 the American army blew the temples up. Only the plinths remain, and the vegetation has been allowed to take them over.
There is a final twist. After the war, the Americans turned the Führerbau and its twin into the Central Collecting Point, where the Monuments Men gathered hundreds of thousands of looted artworks and returned them to their owners. Hitler's building became a lost-and-found for Europe's stolen art. Now walk east along Brienner Straße, past the Karolinenplatz obelisk, to a small square with a flame behind bars.