History
Arcisstraße belongs to the founding grid of the Maxvorstadt: it runs at right angles to Brienner Straße and was aligned on the Old Botanical Garden laid out in 1813/14. At its southern end stood, from 1812, the Academy's chemical laboratory, considerably enlarged in 1852 for Justus von Liebig, who had been called from Giessen (Stephan 2013, p. 41). At the crossing with Brienner Straße stood two matching corner houses: to the south the house Carl von Fischer had built for himself in 1810, to the north, as its counterpart, the house Joseph Höchl built in 1832 for the painter Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld (Lauterbach/Grammbitter 2009, p. 15). Further north the area was still rural: in 1826 Ludwig I had the Pinakothek begun "in the middle of a meadow" in the block bounded by Barer-, Arcis-, Theresien- and Gabelsbergerstraße (Bäumler/Fromm 2017, p. 43). Less idyllic were the military barracks on Theresienstraße, extended towards Arcisstraße in 1816 to house 300 soldiers and 777 horses (Arz 2018, p. 12). The king took a personal interest in the greenery; on 19 April 1841 he reprimanded his interior minister von Abel that of "the trees planted in Arcisstraße" "not only have some died, but several are already missing there again" (Arz 2018, p. 12).
With the Polytechnic, technology arrived on the street. In 1865–1868 Gottfried von Neureuther erected a new building in the style of the Italian High Renaissance west of Arcisstraße and north of Gabelsbergerstraße, "visually designed to harmonise with the Alte Pinakothek opposite" (Stephan 2013, p. 41). The plans were among the first to be put before the young Ludwig II; he found them too lavish, which is why the executed façade turned out comparatively restrained (Huse 2009, p. 161). In 1868 the school became the Royal Bavarian Polytechnic School; in 1875 Carl von Linde set up the first German machine laboratory here, and later Rudolf Diesel and Oskar von Miller studied at Arcisstraße 21 (Arz 2018, p. 84). A photograph from 1882 shows the noble, sprawling Neo-Renaissance building, with the iron frame of a panorama rotunda under construction on Theresienstraße behind it (Stephan 2013, p. 148).
At the same time a new cemetery was laid out at the northern end – against fierce opposition from local residents. A petition warned that a "field of corpses" would devalue "house and meadow land", stifle building and spoil the wells; the site would be better suited for a station on the line to Ingolstadt (Zuber 1984, p. 11). The city stuck to its decision: from June 1866, to plans by city architect Arnold Zenetti, a 4.47-hectare complex with Neo-Romanesque brick buildings for 7,272 graves and 30 arcade vaults was built between Teng-, Ziebland-, Adalbert- and Arcisstraße (main entrance). On 5 October 1868 Archbishop von Scherr consecrated the cemetery; in the afternoon Dean Meyer blessed it for the Protestants (Zuber 1984, pp. 11–12). In 1883 a city guide noted: "The Northern Cemetery at the northern end of Arcisstraße is also gradually gaining importance" (Zuber 1984, p. 12). North of Theresienstraße apartment blocks now grew up; in 1893 Hofrat Dr Guido Jochner founded the Josephinum, one of Bavaria's oldest private clinics, at Arcisstraße 41; it moved to Schönfeldstraße ten years later (Arz 2018, p. 27).
In the south, between Königsplatz and Karolinenplatz, Arcisstraße became the grand bourgeoisie's premier address. In 1889/90 the mathematician Alfred Pringsheim and his family moved into Arcisstraße 12, built for him by the Berlin firm Kayser & von Großheim in the German Neo-Renaissance style – one of the first houses in Munich with central heating, electric light and a telephone (Lauterbach/Grammbitter 2009, p. 13). Under Hedwig Pringsheim the mansion became a social hub; the frieze by Hans Thoma in the music room was famous (Köpf 2005, p. 92). In 1904 the young Thomas Mann described a visit to the house to his brother Heinrich: "No thought of Jewishness arises in the presence of these people; one senses nothing but culture" (Köpf 2005, p. 172). In 1905 he married the daughter of the house, Katia (Köpf 2005, p. 91). The neighbouring house, No. 14, had been built in 1889/90 by the Jewish brothers Moritz and Eduard Guggenheimer; it later also belonged to the Pringsheims (Köpf 2005, p. 92). After the First World War Pringsheim lost much of his fortune in war bonds, sold works of art and let rooms to students – "I live from the wall to the mouth" (Arz 2018, p. 92). Further north, from 1919 the geopolitician Karl Haushofer held lecture evenings in his flat at Arcisstraße 30, attended among others by his favourite student Rudolf Hess (Bäumler/Fromm 2017, p. 121).
The 1920s brought new large buildings. In 1928 the small Wallerstein Palais at Arcisstraße 13 on Königsplatz was demolished to make way for an administrative building of the Lutheran regional church – despite protests from the press, the Bavarian People's Party and the State Gallery (Köpf 2005, pp. 63–64). From here Consistory President Friedrich Veit led Bavaria's Protestants until 1933 (Weyerer 1993, p. 145). At the Technical University German Bestelmeyer built the corner blocks on Gabelsberger- and Theresienstraße in 1926–1928, whose defiant overall impression already "foreshadows" the buildings of the Third Reich (Weyerer 1993, p. 128). The nude horse-tamers by Bernhard Bleeker and Hermann Hahn, set up in the forecourt in 1931, outraged the "Bayerisches Vaterland" as the "scandal of the two naked louts in front of the Technical University in Arcisstraße" (Weyerer 1993, p. 129). In the same year, on 6 June 1931, the Glaspalast burnt down at the southern end of the street; an eyewitness ran along Karlstraße "towards Arcisstraße, towards the mighty blazing glow of the fire" (Arz 2018, p. 62).
With the purchase of the Brown House in 1930 the NSDAP began to take over the quarter. As early as 1932 Hitler commissioned Paul Ludwig Troost to design a party headquarters on Arcisstraße: "Next year we'll come to power! Create an ideal design for me!" (Weyerer 1993, p. 135). In 1932/33 the party bought the four plots at the Brienner/Arcisstraße crossing and had the houses demolished; after the seizure of power it included the entire east side of Arcisstraße in its plans (Lauterbach/Grammbitter 2009, p. 13). In August 1933 Alfred Pringsheim gave in to the pressure and sold house and land to the NSDAP far below value; in November 1933 the mansion and two other villas were pulled down (Lauterbach/Grammbitter 2009, p. 15). The Thoma frieze was salvaged and shown as a "loan from a private Munich collection" in the Stuttgart Staatsgalerie (Köpf 2005, p. 92). Nos. 20, 22 and 24 also passed to the party; the painter who rented in the house of art dealer Otto Alfons Böhler had to move out in a hurry (Köpf 2005, pp. 92–93). Construction began without a permit – in September 1933 the Völkischer Beobachter celebrated the building site with the caption "Work and Bread"; the permit was only granted in February 1934, and no foundation-stone ceremony took place (Lauterbach/Grammbitter 2009, pp. 17–18). Troost died on 21 January 1934 (Köpf 2005, p. 89); his widow Gerdy took over site management (Arz 2018, p. 92).
Thus two outwardly identical buildings rose between Karl- and Gabelsbergerstraße, each 85 metres long, 45 metres deep and 23 metres high, linked by a 105-metre tunnel (Köpf 2005, p. 93). Because they replaced several earlier buildings, the house numbers changed: the administration building on the site of the Pringsheim mansion was given No. 10, while the old No. 12 went to the Führerbau north of Brienner Straße (Lauterbach/Grammbitter 2009, p. 18). Between them, from 9 November 1935, stood the two "Temples of Honour" with the sarcophagi of the putschists killed in 1923 (Stephan 2013, p. 136). In February 1937 Hitler handed the administration building over to Reich Treasurer Franz Xaver Schwarz, whose bureaucrats administered the party's nearly ten million members there (Köpf 2005, p. 112); the Führerbau was inaugurated on the occasion of Mussolini's state visit (Liedtke 2013, p. 74). Here, in the night leading into 30 September 1938, Chamberlain, Daladier, Mussolini and Hitler signed the Munich Agreement without any Czechoslovak participation (Arz 2018, p. 93). By 1939 the party owned 56, soon 68 buildings in the block between Karl-, Barer-, Gabelsberger- and Arcisstraße, and more than 6,000 people worked in its offices; from 1937 the Reich Central Office for the Four-Year Plan was based at Arcisstraße 9 (Köpf 2005, p. 124). Opposite the Alte Pinakothek every building as far as Barer Straße was cleared for a "chancellery building", but it never got beyond its foundations (Stephan 2013, p. 57). At the northern end the cemetery, which stood in the way of a planned axis, was closed to burials in 1939 (Zuber 1984, p. 12).
In 1945 up to 75 per cent of the Maxvorstadt lay in ruins – yet of all buildings the Führerbau, the administration building and the Temples of Honour survived almost unscathed (Arz 2018, p. 93). In the first days people who knew their way around looted the Führerbau's air-raid cellars and stole paintings stored there, including works from the Adolphe Schloss collection confiscated in France (Lauterbach/Grammbitter 2009, p. 67). Because the museums had been destroyed, in June 1945 the American military government set up the Central Art Collecting Point in the administration building ("Gallery I") and the Führerbau ("Gallery II") (Lauterbach/Grammbitter 2009, p. 69), where art looted by the Nazis from all over Europe was gathered and returned; the Haus der Kulturinstitute grew out of it (Arz 2018, p. 93). The Temples of Honour were blown up in 1947 (Stephan 2013, p. 136); in 1948 the Amerika-Haus moved into the southern half of the Führerbau, which also housed the Bavarian Main State Archives (Lauterbach/Grammbitter 2009, p. 74); the music academy followed in 1957 (Arz 2018, p. 94). Opposite, in the 1950s, the Vorhoelzer building of the Technical University closed off the old forecourt on the street front, and in 1955 Hans Döllgast repaired the walls and arcades of the Nordfriedhof in a deliberately plain manner. A new row of trees along Arcisstraße separated Königsplatz from the relics of the Third Reich once more; the granite slabs of the "Plattensee", however, only disappeared in 1987/88 (Stephan 2013, p. 134).
Today
Today Arcisstraße is the western axis of the Kunstareal. Some 1,300 students of the University of Music and Performing Arts study in the former Führerbau; Hitler's former study now serves as a practice room (Arz 2018, p. 94). Opposite, in the Haus der Kulturinstitute on Katharina-von-Bora-Straße, the Central Institute for Art History and other institutions are at work, and at the crossing with Brienner Straße information panels (since 1999/2002) recall the NSDAP party headquarters (Lauterbach/Grammbitter 2009, p. 88). A few steps away, the Munich Documentation Centre for the History of National Socialism has stood on the site of the Brown House since 2015. The stepped plinths of the Temples of Honour are planted over but clearly visible (Liedtke 2018, p. 59). North of Gabelsbergerstraße the Technical University with its Bestelmeyer and Vorhoelzer buildings and the Alte Pinakothek line the street; the bullet holes in Hahn's horse-tamer group count as one of Munich's "wounds of remembrance" (Smith 2009, pp. 122–123). The café in the Vorhoelzer Forum under the roof of the TU main building, which offered one of the finest views over Munich (Arz 2018, p. 134), has been closed to the public since the end of 2021; since 2023 a student initiative has run a café there for TU members only.
Beyond Theresienstraße the street grows quieter: next to the Neue Pinakothek, closed since 2019 for a complete refurbishment, and the TU institutes come apartment buildings, student halls and small bars and restaurants such as the rustic pub "Ungewitter" at No. 62 or the Japanese "Kushi-Tei of Tokyo" at No. 39 (Arz 2018, pp. 135, 137). The Alter Nordfriedhof, without burials since 1939, is now a quiet park with numerous artistically valuable tombs. Beyond Georgenstraße Arcisstraße leaves the Maxvorstadt and ends at Elisabethplatz, with the Gisela-Gymnasium and the Elisabethmarkt, in Schwabing-West (Arz 2016, pp. 114–115).