What to look out for on Munich's main shopping streets
Neuhauser Strasse and its extension, Kaufingerstrasse, are the two pedestrian streets linking Karlstor and Marienplatz and belong to the Kreuzviertel: one of four districts that lie within the old city walls of Munich. Today these streets are primarily of interest for shoppers, a fact that has all but eclipsed a colorful and interesting history. Most visitors to Munich have their first glimpse of the Karlstor’s towers and archways through a roaring sea of traffic, after walking down to the end of Bayer- or Schützenstrasse from the Hauptbahnhof. In 1972 Munich’s city planners decided to extend the pedestrian zone created a few years earlier to include Karlsplatz, once the busiest traffic junction in Europe. More commonly known as “Stachus,” after the innkeeper Eustachius Föderl who ran a beer cellar here in the 18th century, Karlsplatz’s most imposing features are the two towers, once part of the city wall, dating back to the early 14th century. The square itself was added later by Elector Karl Theodor—hence the name—in 1791. At 10:30 pm, on September 15, 1857, an explosion rocked the city of Munich: a blast of such force that it could be heard 50 kilometers away in the town of Landsberg. The cause was a stash of gunpowder stored in the home of Oskar Rosenlehner, an ironmonger, whose house backed directly on to the Karlstor, now the site of Sporthaus Oberpollinger. Five people died and three others were injured, but what caused the gunpowder to ignite was never discovered. Today most pedestrians stop here only to look at the Brunnenbuberl, an Art Nouveau fountain designed by Matthias Gasteiger in 1895, depicting an old satyr spitting water down on a naked boy. Showing the boy in a state of undress was considered shocking at the time and a group of moralists offered to knit him some pants. The offer was turned down. The Karstadt Oberpollinger building dates back to the year 1904 and was preceded by a row of steeply gabled houses that had stood there for at least 300 years. The name Oberpollinger can be traced back to the Pollinger family, brewers who owned premises on the Neuhauser Strasse and briefly, from 1890 to 1903, a hotel. Next door is the Bürgersaal, the work of architects Giovanni Antonio Viscardi and Johann Georg Ettenhofer. Initially, the Bürgersaal (Civic Hall), built in 1709–10, was owned by the Jesuits and used as an auditorium for sermons and sacred music, but the building was sanctified in 1778 and has been used as a church ever since. Nowadays there are, in fact, two churches under its roof: in the basement you will find a modern place of pilgrimage dedicated to Pater Rupert Mayer, who opposed Hitler, was thrown into prison, died in 1945 and was beatified in 1987. On the second floor is a beautifully restored Baroque church, with an Annunciation relief on the high altar by Andreas Faistenberger. Almost opposite the Bürgersaal is the Augustinerbräu, Munich’s oldest brewery, founded in 1328, with its unique beer garden, flanked by cool arcades, and its Muschelsaal (Shell Room), decorated with tens of thousands of conches and similar shells. This establishment offers visitors the chance to glimpse life in Munich as it must have been a century or more ago. The two churches, St. Michael’s and the former Augustine Church (now the German Museum of Hunting and Fishing), have been the subject of previous Landmark features in MUNICH FOUND—St. Michael’s in October 2003 and the museum in November 2002—so we will pass by them here and move on to the Kaufingerstrasse, which begins at the junction of Augustinerstrasse and Färbergraben. The name Kaufinger derives from Choufringer, an old patrician family first mentioned in chronicles of Munich in 1239. Not much is known about them, though they probably owned a house on the street. One of this street’s most interesting anecdotes concerns the Hirmer building at number 22. Once, many years ago, so the story goes, a goldsmith who had his workshop on this corner, was commissioned by a rich merchant to copy a valuable piece of jewelry. However, when the merchant returned to collect the trinket, it had disappeared. The goldsmith was accused of theft and, despite protestations of innocence, put to death. Barely had the sentence been carried out when workmen discovered the missing object high up on the turret of the building. A thieving magpie, so we are told, had stolen the piece of jewelry through an open window and carried it to the top of the building. On the corner just above eye-level is a stone statue of the goldsmith. The rest of the street is of less historical interest. The next time you rifle through the clothes rails at Gap, however, you may like to remember that this was once the site of a famous inn, Der Schwartze Adler, frequented by no less distinguished persons than Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and JohannWolfgang von Goethe.