Haus der Kunst: A Building That Faces Its Past
Why is it significant?
Walk along the row of heavy square columns at the front of the long stone building, and feel how it is made to make you small. No ornament, no curve, just mass and repetition.
Key Facts
| Place | Haus der Kunst: A Building That Faces Its Past |
|---|---|
| Address | Prinzregentenstraße 1, 80538 München, Germany |
| Geo Coordinates | 48.14390, 11.58580 |
| Part of Walk | River and Meadow: Munich's Isar, the Angel of Peace & the English Garden |
| Generated | Generated |
Walk along the row of heavy square columns at the front of the long stone building, and feel how it is made to make you small. No ornament, no curve, just mass and repetition. At the corner, you may hear shouts and splashes from the bridge: that is the famous standing wave of the Eisbach, where surfers ride a river in the middle of the city.
This is the Haus der Kunst, and its history needs to be told plainly. It was built from 1933 to 1937 as the House of German Art, designed by Paul Ludwig Troost, Hitler's favourite architect, and it was the first monumental building of the Nazi regime. Hitler laid the foundation stone himself in October 1933. The story goes that the ceremonial hammer broke in his hand, and that superstitious Munich read it as an omen.
It opened in July 1937 with the Great German Art Exhibition, a show of officially approved painting and sculpture. The very next day, a few hundred metres away in the Hofgarten arcades, the regime opened the exhibition of so-called degenerate art, designed to mock modern artists, many of whom were driven into exile, banned from working, or persecuted. Two exhibitions, one city, one message.
After the war the building served the American army, among other things as an officers' club. Then, slowly, it was turned against its origins. In 1955 it showed a great Picasso exhibition, including Guernica, his painting of a town destroyed by German bombers. Since then it has become a house for contemporary art from all over the world, and it has repeatedly put its own Nazi past on display rather than hiding it.
It is a strange thing to stand here, in a park built for pleasure, beside a building designed for propaganda. The trees behind it do not care. Now walk round the building into the English Garden, and follow the path north along the stream until you see a small wooden house on an island.