NS-Dokumentationszentrum: The Site of the Brown House
Why is it significant?
In front of you rises a plain white cube with narrow vertical slats over its windows, standing at the corner of the wide, empty-feeling Königsplatz. It looks almost too clean for what it holds. It stands exactly where the headquarters of the Nazi party used to be.
Key Facts
| Place | NS-Dokumentationszentrum: The Site of the Brown House |
|---|---|
| Address | Max-Mannheimer-Platz 1, 80333 München, Germany |
| Geo Coordinates | 48.14540, 11.56770 |
| Part of Walk | Munich 1918-1945: The Nazi Era, Its Victims and the White Rose |
| Generated | Generated |
In front of you rises a plain white cube with narrow vertical slats over its windows, standing at the corner of the wide, empty-feeling Königsplatz. It looks almost too clean for what it holds. It stands exactly where the headquarters of the Nazi party used to be.
That building was the Brown House, a nineteenth-century mansion called Palais Barlow, which the party bought in 1930 and opened as its national headquarters in 1931. From here the party was run, membership files were kept, and careers were made. In 1935 Munich received the official title Capital of the Movement. The city had not only tolerated the Nazis... it had given them a home, money and a stage.
Look across at Königsplatz. In the 1930s its lawns were paved over with granite slabs for marches and rallies, and Münchner nicknamed it the Plattensee, the lake of slabs. The grass only came back in 1988. Inside the white cube, the windows are placed so that, floor by floor, you look out at the buildings whose story you are reading on the walls.
The Brown House was wrecked by bombs and its ruins cleared after the war, and then for decades the plot stood empty. Munich took a very long time to face this past head on. The documentation centre only opened on the 30th of April 2015, seventy years to the day after American troops entered the city. Its exhibitions do not ask how Hitler seized Munich; they ask how Munich made Hitler possible.
Notice the address: Max-Mannheimer-Platz. Max Mannheimer was a Jewish survivor of Theresienstadt, Auschwitz and Dachau. For decades he travelled to school after school to tell teenagers what had happened to him and his family, until his death in 2016 at the age of ninety-six. The square that once held the party's headquarters now carries his name. Walk a few steps east to the corner of Arcisstraße, to the long limestone building with two balconies above its doors.