Schellingstraße 50
After the NSDAP was refounded in 1925, the party's “Reich head office” sat at Schellingstraße 50 until 1931 — arranged by the photographer Heinrich Hoffmann, in whose rear-building studio Hitler later met Eva Braun. A weathered Reich eagle still survives on the façade.
From Thierschstraße to Schellingstraße
After the NSDAP was banned following the suppressed Hitler putsch of 1923, the party headquarters were first moved, unofficially, into the building of the party-owned Eher publishing house at Thierschstraße 15, where the party was refounded in February 1925. After only a month the office moved into more representative premises at Schellingstraße 50, now calling itself the “Reich head office”.
The location suited the party: diagonally opposite, at Schellingstraße 39/41, the editorial offices of the likewise temporarily banned “Völkischer Beobachter” sat in the Buchgewerbehaus — party and party paper on the same street.
Heinrich Hoffmann
The move into the Maxvorstadt was arranged by the photographer Heinrich Hoffmann, who ran his firm “Photographische Berichterstattung” in the rear building of Schellingstraße 50 — made popular by documenting the revolutionary events in Munich of 1918/19. Hitler's mentor Dietrich Eckart had introduced the two; Hoffmann became Hitler's personal photographer and built a Reich-wide photographic empire. In 1933 he rose to “Reich photo reporter” and was responsible for the entire visual propaganda of the Nazi state.
It was also in Hoffmann's studio that Hitler met his secretary Eva Braun, who later moved as his companion into a villa in Bogenhausen.
Growth and move
The office expanded with the rapidly growing membership of the NSDAP; the party also rented parts of the rear building. Where the office had four employees in 1925, there were already 56 by 1930. In 1931 it moved into the larger and more representative “Brown House” on Brienner Straße.
The building still stands: on the façade of Schellingstraße 50 a weathered Reich eagle still recalls the former party headquarters — one of the few directly visible relics in the streetscape of the northern Maxvorstadt.
Words.
“The NSDAP office was moved into more representative premises at Schellingstraße 50, which now called itself the »Reich head office«.”— Rüdiger Liedtke · 111 Orte … Nazi-Zeit
“On the façade of Schellingstraße 50 a weathered Reich eagle still recalls the former party headquarters.”— Rüdiger Liedtke · 111 Orte … Nazi-Zeit
Furtherreading.
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