Viscardigasse: The Dodgers' Alley
Why is it significant?
You are in a short, narrow lane linking Theatinerstraße with Residenzstraße, right behind the great open loggia of the Feldherrnhalle. Now look down at the cobbles. A winding trail of bronze-coloured stones runs through the grey ones, like a path someone traced with a golden pen.
Key Facts
| Place | Viscardigasse: The Dodgers' Alley |
|---|---|
| Address | Viscardigasse, 80333 München, Germany |
| Geo Coordinates | 48.14130, 11.57760 |
| Part of Walk | Munich 1918-1945: The Nazi Era, Its Victims and the White Rose |
| Generated | Generated |
You are in a short, narrow lane linking Theatinerstraße with Residenzstraße, right behind the great open loggia of the Feldherrnhalle. Now look down at the cobbles. A winding trail of bronze-coloured stones runs through the grey ones, like a path someone traced with a golden pen.
On the 9th of November 1923, Hitler and his followers marched through Munich in an attempt to seize power, the so-called Beer Hall Putsch. At the Feldherrnhalle, just around the corner, the Bavarian State Police blocked the way and shots were fired. Sixteen of the marchers and four policemen died that day. Hitler fled, was arrested, and wrote much of Mein Kampf in prison at Landsberg.
After 1933 the regime turned that defeat into a cult. A memorial plaque to the sixteen dead was fixed to the side of the Feldherrnhalle facing Residenzstraße, with an SS guard of honour standing beside it, and everyone who passed was expected to raise an arm in the Hitler salute. So people who did not want to, quietly turned off into this lane and walked around the back. Münchner nicknamed it the Drückebergergassl, the dodgers' alley.
Be honest about what this was. It was not resistance in the heroic sense. It was a small sideways step, a refusal made with the feet. But in a dictatorship, even a habit like that could be noticed, and the story goes that the lane was watched. The bronze trail was laid in 1995 by the artist Bruno Wank to mark the path of all those who chose not to salute.
Today a plaque on the Feldherrnhalle remembers the four policemen who died stopping the putsch in 1923. It took a very long time for them to be honoured; for twelve years, the city honoured only the men they had stopped. Walk the bronze line yourself, out onto Residenzstraße, and then head north to the square with the bronze horseman in front of the palaces.