Leopoldstraße: The Boulevard and the Walking Man
Why is it significant?
Look up at the white giant striding along the pavement: a faceless man as tall as a five-storey house, caught in mid-step and going nowhere. This is the Walking Man by the American artist Jonathan Borofsky, set up in 1995 outside the headquarters of a big insurance company.
Key Facts
| Place | Leopoldstraße: The Boulevard and the Walking Man |
|---|---|
| Address | Leopoldstraße 36, 80802 München, Germany |
| Geo Coordinates | 48.15640, 11.58440 |
| Part of Walk | Munich's Schwabing: Blue Riders, Bohemians and Banned Poets |
| Generated | Generated |
Look up at the white giant striding along the pavement: a faceless man as tall as a five-storey house, caught in mid-step and going nowhere.
This is the Walking Man by the American artist Jonathan Borofsky, set up in 1995 outside the headquarters of a big insurance company. Borofsky is better known for his Hammering Men, giant dark silhouettes that hammer away in Frankfurt, Seattle and other cities; this one, for a change, simply walks. It is around seventeen metres tall, and people in Munich have argued ever since whether it is an insult to the boulevard or its perfect symbol: always on the move, never quite arriving.
Leopoldstraße was Schwabing's catwalk. Lined with poplars, cafés and terraces, it was where the bohemians of 1900 strolled, and where, after the Second World War, a new generation came to see and be seen: students, jazz fans, painters, film people, and tourists hoping to spot a real live artist. In the 1960s Schwabing was one of the most fashionable addresses in West Germany, and this boulevard was its stage.
On a warm June night in 1962, the stage turned into a battlefield. Police moved against a few young street musicians playing late on the pavement, the crowd took the musicians' side, and for several nights thousands of young people and the police clashed in these streets. The Schwabinger Krawalle, the Schwabing riots, shocked the city. Afterwards Munich's police began to develop a calmer way of handling crowds, built on talking first, which became known as the Munich line.
Some historians see those nights as an early rehearsal for the student revolt of 1968. Others remember a handful of guitar players and a summer that got out of hand. Probably both are true. Now leave the boulevard and head east into the quiet side streets, to a little villa that its neighbours refused to let die.