Jewish
Maxvorstadt

A bourgeois topography

Between 1860 and 1933 a Jewish community grew in Munich that was disproportionately visible in the educated bourgeoisie, in science, the art trade and the publishing world. A substantial part of this life played out in the Maxvorstadt: on Arcisstraße, Georgenstraße, Türkenstraße, on Brienner Straße, on Leopold- and Römerstraße. Salons, galleries and publishing houses formed a dense network whose traces remain legible to this day — usually as a void, sometimes as a memorial marker, occasionally as a building.

This page tries to make three layers of time visible: the matter-of-course Jewish life before 1933, the systematic annihilation between 1933 and 1945 — and the renewed visibility since the building of the Jewish Centre on St.-Jakobs-Platz in 2006. The Nazi era itself — with 'Capital of the Movement', Brown House, party quarter — is treated on its own page.

Lion Feuchtwanger

Born in Munich in 1884 into an orthodox Jewish family, Lion Feuchtwanger lived from 1918 to 1925 at Georgenstraße 24, third floor, on the border between the Maxvorstadt and Schwabing. Bertolt Brecht, Thomas and Heinrich Mann came and went in the flat; here the first drafts of Jud Süß (1925) and of the key novel Success. Three Years of the History of a Province (1930) took shape, in which Feuchtwanger gave a literary protocol of the Hitler putsch and the antisemitic climate of Bavarian Munich.

In 1925 the couple moved to Berlin. While Feuchtwanger was on a lecture tour in the USA in 1932/33, his Berlin house was looted; in 1933 he was stripped of his citizenship and the LMU withdrew his doctorate. Exile in France, internment in 1940, finally Pacific Palisades (California), where he died in 1958.

Karl Wolfskehl and the George circle

Karl Wolfskehl (1869–1948), poet and centre of the George circle, was at home in the Maxvorstadt–Schwabing transition zone from 1900 to 1921: Leopoldstraße 51 (1900–1904), Leopoldstraße 87 (1904–1909), Römerstraße 16 (1909–1921). The 'Jours' at Hanna and Karl Wolfskehl's were among Munich's defining literary-artistic gatherings; Stefan George regularly spent weeks with the Wolfskehls.

Wolfskehl left Germany for Switzerland in 1933, for Italy in 1934, and finally for New Zealand in 1938, where he died in 1948. In 1937/38 he sold his roughly 9,000-volume library to Salman Schocken — it was transferred to Jerusalem in 1938 and is today part of the National Library of Israel.

Walter Benjamin at the LMU

In the winter semester of 1915/16 Walter Benjamin studied at the Ludwig Maximilian University. It is a short Munich episode, but it points to the Jewish profile of the LMU in those years: mathematics, philosophy, art history, classical philology — many chairs were shaped by Jewish scholars, almost all of whom were removed by 1933.

Old Main Synagogue, Herzog-Max-Straße

Inaugurated in 1887 by Albert Schmidt, with over 1,000 seats one of the largest synagogue buildings in Germany. It stood south of Lenbachplatz, right at the edge of the Altstadt, in direct sight of the Maxvorstadt. On 8 June 1938 the Israelitische Kultusgemeinde was told to vacate the building on the same day for 100,000 Reichsmark. On 9 June 1938 the demolition began on Adolf Hitler's personal order — five months before Kristallnacht. Pretext: 'traffic-engineering reasons'. Contractor: Leonhard Moll. Hitler's deadline: the synagogue was to vanish by the 'Day of German Art' on 9 July 1938. It was thus the first synagogue in Germany destroyed by the National Socialists.

Since 1969 a memorial stone by Herbert Peters at the corner of Herzog-Max-Straße/Maxburgstraße has recalled the destroyed synagogue. In 2006 rubble fragments were recovered during construction works.

Old Ohel Jakob, Herzog-Rudolf-Straße 3

The orthodox synagogue of the IKG, inaugurated 1892 by August Exter. In the pogrom night of 9/10 November 1938 set ablaze by the 'Stoßtrupp Adolf Hitler'; the demolition of the ruin in March 1939 was charged to the Jewish community by municipal order. Today a memorial plaque marks the site. The name Ohel Jakob was taken up again in 2006 for the new Main Synagogue on Jakobsplatz.

Reichenbachstraße Synagogue 27 — a Bauhaus jewel

Outside the Maxvorstadt, in the Isarvorstadt — but central to the Munich thread: opened in 1931, a Bauhaus synagogue, the only one in Munich to survive the Nazi era structurally. From 1947 to 2006 it served as the IKG's Main Synagogue. After more than a decade of restoration it was reopened on 15 September 2025 — a project owed essentially to the initiative of Rachel Salamander.

New Ohel Jakob, St.-Jakobs-Platz

On 9 November 2006 — the 68th anniversary of the November pogrom — the new Main Synagogue on St.-Jakobs-Platz is inaugurated. Architects: Wandel Hoefer Lorch + Hirsch of Saarbrücken. Travertine plinth as tent symbolism ('Ohel' = tent), glass Star-of-David top. Part of the three-part Jewish Centre (synagogue, community centre, museum). Only a few steps from the destroyed Main Synagogue on Herzog-Max-Straße — and on the city map a clear signal: Jewish life in the heart of the city.

A Munich format of its own

Unlike most German cities, Munich decided after long debate against Gunter Demnig's Stolperstein system — chiefly at the urging of the IKG, which considers stepping on the names of victims unworthy. Instead, in 2015 the Munich city council resolved on the 'Erinnerungszeichen' (memorial markers) programme: steles or wall plaques at eye level at the last freely chosen home addresses of the victims. The operator is the City of Munich. Implementation since 2018.

As of October 2025: 331 memorial markers have been placed across the city. In October 2025 alone, 14 new locations were added in Schwabing and the Maxvorstadt, twelve of them for Jewish victims. The locations are mapped at map.erinnerungszeichen.de.

Munich Documentation Centre on National Socialism

On the former site of the Brown House, Brienner Straße 34/Max-Mannheimer-Platz 1, the Munich Documentation Centre on National Socialism opened on 30 April 2015 — the 70th anniversary of Munich's liberation. A cubic building by Georg Scheel Wetzel Architects, four floors of permanent exhibition 'Munich and National Socialism'. Founding director: Winfried Nerdinger.

Square of the Victims of National Socialism

At the corner of Brienner Straße/Maximiliansplatz: named by the city council in 1946, fitted in 1985 with a memorial by Andreas Sobeck (basalt stele, steel-grille cube, eternal flame). Redesigned 2012–2014, with an 18.5 m bronze plate inscribed 'In memory of the victims of the National Socialist tyranny'.

Israel at Karolinenplatz

The Consulate General of the State of Israel for Southern Germany was inaugurated on 8 April 2011 by Bavarian Minister-President Horst Seehofer and Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman — as Israel's only consulate general in Europe. Consular district: Bavaria, Baden-Württemberg, Hesse, Rhineland-Palatinate and Saarland. First Consul General: Tibor Shalev-Schlosser. After a provisional seat at Brienner Straße 19, the consulate moved into a new building on Karolinenplatz, directly next to the NS Documentation Centre.

The symbolic topography is obvious and intentional: Karolinenplatz and Brienner Straße formed, between 1933 and 1945, the centre of the NSDAP 'party quarter'. Just a few steps from the site of the Brown House the Jewish state now resides. The former Wittelsbacher Fountain, the former Brown House, the Führerbau, the Pringsheim Palace — and the Consulate General: all within a few minutes' walk.

Security and the 2024 attack

The consulate is under permanent 24/7 protection by the Munich police. On 5 September 2024 — the 52nd anniversary of the 1972 Olympia attack — an 18-year-old Austrian opened fire with a repeating rifle in front of the consulate and the NS Documentation Centre. The perpetrator was shot dead by police; there were no casualties on the consulate side. The authorities assumed a terrorist background.

History also weighs: in 1970, seven people were killed in an unsolved arson attack on the Munich IKG's care home (Reichenbachstraße) — the attack has not been finally clarified to this day; suspicion fell on far-right perpetrators.

The decision of 28 May 2026

The World Holocaust Remembrance Center Yad Vashem will build its first Education Center outside Israel on Karolinenplatz in the heart of Munich. The announcement was made on 28 May 2026 in a press release issued by the Freundeskreis Yad Vashem e.V., whose chair is Kai Diekmann.

This concludes a three-year preparation: the idea of a German Yad Vashem education center goes back to a 2023 meeting between Yad Vashem chair Dani Dayan and the then German Chancellor Olaf Scholz. In September 2025 Yad Vashem announced that, following an initial feasibility study, Bavaria, Saxony and North Rhine-Westphalia had been short-listed; intensive research, two on-site visits and consultations with authorities and partners followed.

Selection criteria

According to Yad Vashem, the choice of Munich was driven by its strategic location within Germany and Europe, adequate infrastructure, a high security standard, integration potential within the existing education system, the dense network of relevant institutions in the region, the particular historical significance of Munich — and not least by the financial commitment of the Bavarian State Government. The Bavarian State Government under Minister-President Markus Söder had been engaged for years in support of the site.

Mandate: teachers, Holocaust education, prevention of antisemitism

The center is aimed at a nationwide audience and at neighbouring countries, with particular emphasis on teachers. Its goals: strengthening Holocaust and democracy education at a time of growing historical distortion and antisemitism; developing pedagogical materials and multiplier training; conveying the "perspective of the victims" (Karin Prien). Yad Vashem already maintains cooperation agreements with all sixteen German federal states and has trained thousands of German teachers, students and public-life leaders over the years.

In parallel with the Munich center, Yad Vashem is establishing an additional satellite office in Leipzig — a smaller facility with interactive learning spaces for teachers across central Germany and neighbouring countries. The long-standing educational partnership with North Rhine-Westphalia is being expanded; together these are to form a nationwide cooperation model. The Munich center is scheduled to open within three years.

Topography in the Maxvorstadt

Karolinenplatz sits in the Maxvorstadt, right in the former NSDAP "party district". The Yad Vashem Education Center therefore joins a density of related institutions that has no equal in Europe — all within a few minutes' walk: the NS Documentation Centre at Brienner Straße 34 on the site of the Brown House; the Consulate General of the State of Israel, likewise on Karolinenplatz; Königsplatz as the former centre of the party quarter; the Munich University of Music and Performing Arts in the former Führerbau (Arcisstraße 12, formerly the Pringsheim Palace); and the LMU chair for Jewish History and Culture held by Prof. Michael Brenner. The Jewish Centre on St.-Jakobs-Platz, with the main synagogue Ohel Jakob, the Jewish Museum and the IKG, is only a few hundred metres away — though already beyond the Maxvorstadt.

Voices

"The choice of Munich, the birthplace of the NSDAP, carries a profound symbolic meaning and reflects how important it is to confront this history where it began. […] Through this education center, Yad Vashem will bring its distinctive pedagogical approach to Germany at a critical moment, as relativisation, instrumentalisation or denial of the Holocaust, and antisemitism, are on the rise." — Dani Dayan, Chair of Yad Vashem · 28 May 2026

"The fact that Yad Vashem's selection committee chose a site in the former NSDAP party district of Munich for the education center underlines the rich historical foundations that Bavaria offers to partners and academia here. Yad Vashem's pedagogical experience provides a unique opportunity, through innovative educational formats, to convey the perspective of the victims even more effectively and to train multipliers for the whole republic." — Karin Prien, German Federal Minister for Education, Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth · 28 May 2026

"This reflects the deep trust between Yad Vashem and Germany and builds on many years of successful cooperation." — Kai Diekmann, Chair of Freundeskreis Yad Vashem e.V.

Editor's note

This entry will be updated as further details emerge (exact property, governance, programme profile, opening date). The primary source is the press release of the Freundeskreis Yad Vashem e.V. of 28 May 2026.