Adminis­trative Building

Architecture and location

The NSDAP Administrative Building is built in parallel with the Führerbau in 1933–1937, to plans by Paul Ludwig Troost, executed after his death in 1934 by Studio Troost (Gerdy Troost, Leonhard Gall). Externally it is identical to the Führerbau and stands as its mirror image to the south. Joint inauguration on 25 September 1937 on the occasion of Mussolini’s state visit. Material: shell-limestone cladding over a steel and reinforced-concrete structure, classicist façades, monumental pier portico.

Inside, the offices of the NSDAP administration are arranged on three floors around two glazed light wells. In the centre of the building a three-storey library extends. The address has changed over the decades — today it is Katharina-von-Bora-Straße 10, previously Meiserstraße 10, originally Arcisstraße 10.

NSDAP Reich leadership

The NSDAP’s central offices were based in the Administrative Building:

• Reich Treasurer Franz Xaver Schwarz (1875–1947), responsible for all party finances, NSDAP assets and membership administration — from 1925 to 1945.
• Reich Organisation Leader (at times Robert Ley) — steering of party apparatuses, training, membership administration.
• Office of the Deputy of the Führer — first Rudolf Hess, later Martin Bormann with the Party Chancellery.
• Central NSDAP membership index, with around 8 million index cards at its peak in 1939 and around 11 million entries by the end of the war. Today held by the Federal Archives.

Up to 600 staff are said to have worked in the Administrative Building. The building was the NSDAP’s command centre — the party bureaucracy clothed in monumental architecture.

Central Collecting Point Gallery I

Like the Führerbau, the Administrative Building is taken over by the US Army in April/May 1945 with little war damage. From June 1945 it serves as Gallery I of the Munich Central Collecting Point — here large-format holdings and sculptures in particular are restituted.

Central Institute for Art History (ZI) since 1948

The Central Institute for Art History is founded in 1947 — directly out of the work of the Collecting Point, as an interdisciplinary research institution for art history and provenance research. Since 1948 it has had its seat in the former Administrative Building and is still there. The ZI is an independent federally and state-funded institution of international standing and remains central to provenance research into Nazi-looted art.

Today: Munich House of Cultural Institutes

The former Administrative Building today houses, among others, the Central Institute for Art History (ZI), LMU’s Institute of Classical Archaeology and Institute of Egyptology, and depots of the State Collections of Antiquities. The building ensemble is now called the “Munich House of Cultural Institutes”. The State Museum of Egyptian Art is in the immediate vicinity, but in a separate underground new building (architect Peter Böhm) beneath the University of Television and Film at Gabelsbergerstraße 35 — opened on 10 June 2013.