A long east–west axis from St Mark's on the inner ring road to Dachauer Straße, lined by the Pinakothek der Moderne, the Alte Pinakothek, the Egyptian Museum, the film school and the TUM – with a forgotten Nazi building project beneath it.
The street has borne its name since 1862 in honour of Franz Xaver Gabelsberger (1789–1849), inventor of modern German shorthand. The son of a Munich court wind-instrument maker, he entered the Bavarian civil service as a clerk at 21; at 28 he began developing a system of "rapid writing" that quickly caught on everywhere (Arz 2018, p. 145). When the Bavarian parliament, created by the constitution of 1818, needed verbatim records, Gabelsberger became its first parliamentary stenographer; he published his system in 1834, and it remained in use in parliaments and government offices well into the 20th century, paving the way for today's standard German shorthand. Around 1900 the number of Gabelsberger stenographers was estimated at some four million. King Maximilian II approved the city council's proposal to name the street after him in 1861; the name has been official since 1862.
The choice had a very specific local connection: Gabelsberger had lived on this very street, then still called Kasernstraße, until his death on 4 January 1849. Sources give the address as the first floor of Kasernstraße 6, while Rambaldi's 1894 book of street names speaks of "No. 10 on Gabelsbergerstraße". A photograph from around 1910 shows "the modest corner house" at Barer-/Gabelsbergerstraße in which the inventor died; it disappeared in 1935 to make way for the planned Nazi Party chancellery (Stephan 2013, p. 130). A seated bronze figure of Gabelsberger by Syrius Eberle (1890) stands not on his street but on Ottostraße near Maximiliansplatz; his grave is in the Old Southern Cemetery.
Before 1862 the street changed its name several times. When it was first named on 21 November 1808, the sections then being laid out were called "Ritterstraße" (from Jägerstraße to Barer Straße), "Theresienstraße" (Barer Straße to Luisenstraße) and "Apollostraße" (Luisenstraße to near Schleißheimer Straße). From 1 December 1812 the whole route was called "Ludwigstraße", until in 1826 that name passed to King Ludwig I's new grand boulevard; thereafter the street was named "Kasernstraße" after the Türkenkaserne barracks built in 1823–1826 (Arz 2018, p. 145). Five names in little more than fifty years reflect how gradually the street took shape within the grid of the Maxvorstadt.
Gabelsbergerstraße belongs to the basic grid of the Maxvorstadt, laid out north-west of the old town from 1808 onwards; at first its sections were little more than tracks between gardens and meadows. Its first large neighbour was the army: King Max I Joseph planned a veritable military quarter around the future Königsplatz, but it was not until 1823 that he approved the budget for a barracks in the block bounded by Türkenstraße, Gabelsbergerstraße, Barer Straße and Theresienstraße; the first soldiers moved in in November 1824 (Arz 2018, p. 68). Ludwig I accepted the Türkenkaserne only with a heavy heart, fearing explosions and fire right opposite the picture gallery he was planning; the side facing Barer Straße was therefore left unbuilt (Stephan 2013, p. 47). In 1826, "in the middle of a meadow", he had construction of the Pinakothek begun in the block formed by Barer-, Arcis-, Theresien- and Gabelsbergerstraße – deliberately free-standing, to protect the collection from a fire like the one that had struck the National Theatre in 1823. With this building Ludwig gave the decisive impetus for the development of the whole district (Bäumler/Fromm 2017, p. 43). Since 1836 the Alte Pinakothek has looked out with its southern front onto the street, which by then was named "Kasernstraße" after the barracks.
In the Biedermeier period, plain two- and three-storey suburban houses with string courses and segmental-arched windows went up along Kasernstraße, some of which survive – the group at Nos. 11/13/15, the suburban house at No. 38 and Nos. 68 and 70. In one such modest corner house on Barer Straße lived the ministry official Franz Xaver Gabelsberger, who died there in 1849 (Stephan 2013, p. 130). Around 1850 Wilhelm and Franziska von Dönniges opened their "Blue Salon" at Neue Amalienstraße 66 – today's Gabelsbergerstraße 80. Franziska, a baptised Jew, knew salon culture from Berlin; her husband was librarian and adviser to Maximilian II and arranged for "northerners" such as Liebig and Sybel to be appointed in Munich. The salon was meant to bring newcomers and locals together, but popular opinion regarded the Protestant Dönniges as the Catholic king's "evil spirit" (Bäumler et al. 2015, p. 34).
In the 1860s and 1870s technology and faith both took root on the street. In 1865–1868 Gottfried von Neureuther built the new Polytechnic west of Arcisstraße and north of Gabelsbergerstraße in the style of the Italian High Renaissance, "visually designed to harmonise with the Alte Pinakothek opposite" (Stephan 2013, p. 41); in 1868 the school became the Royal Bavarian Polytechnic, and in 1875 Carl von Linde set up Germany's first machine laboratory here (Arz 2018, p. 84). On 10 November 1873, Luther's birthday, the foundation stone of St Mark's, Munich's second Protestant church, was laid amid great public interest. Dean Karl Buchrucker had deliberately chosen the middle-class Maxvorstadt close to the Residenz; the building was funded with 100,000 guilders from the city, 250,000 from King Ludwig II and 240,000 from a lottery (Bäumler et al. 2015, p. 74). Originally the church was to have stood free on the right bank of the Isar or on Schellingstraße, but the royal house feared for Munich's status as a bulwark of Catholicism and offered instead a plot squeezed between town houses opposite the Wittelsbacher Palais (Arz 2018, p. 48). In 1872/73 the Türkenkaserne, too, gained a southern wing on Gabelsbergerstraße (Stephan 2013, p. 47).
Around 1900 the street filled up into a late-19th-century urban thoroughfare with Neo-Renaissance apartment blocks such as the twin buildings at Nos. 49 and 51 (1872), the exposed-brick house with oriels at No. 36 (1897) and the Art Nouveau gabled house at No. 83 (1904). Trade settled between the flats: at Gabelsbergerstraße 36 the precision mechanic Alexander Heinrich Rietzschel founded his "Optical Institute" in 1896, built the "Clack" camera from 1900 and employed a hundred people just a year later, until the firm left the Maxvorstadt in 1912 (Arz 2018, p. 83); via Bayer it passed to Agfa in 1925. In 1894 Löwenbräu took over the brewery at Gabelsbergerstraße 65 (Arz 2018, p. 122). In 1910–1916 Friedrich von Thiersch built the southern wing of the Technical University with its far-visible tower, completed in 1916 and the institution's landmark to this day (Arz 2018, p. 84); the new university building on Gabelsbergerstraße also gave the architecture museum's teaching collection prestigious rooms (Arz 2018, p. 73). In 1926–1928, following a commission of 1923, came German Bestelmeyer's corner blocks at Arcis-/Gabelsbergerstraße, whose fortress-like overall impression already "foreshadows the design principles of the Third Reich" (Weyerer 1993, p. 128). In 1916 the Masonic lodge "In Treue fest" moved into the rear building of Gabelsbergerstraße 26, which soon became the centre of Freemasonry in Munich; by 1930 five lodges met here (Weyerer 1993, p. 128).
After 1933 the eastern part of Gabelsbergerstraße became part of the Nazi Party quarter: more than 50 buildings on Brienner, Arcis-, Gabelsberger-, Barer and Karlstraße passed into the ownership of the NSDAP (Lauterbach/Grammbitter 2009, p. 4); in the block between Karl-, Gabelsberger-, Barer and Arcisstraße the party owned first 56, soon 68 buildings, and by 1939 more than 6,000 people worked there, among them the "Hitler Youth" on Gabelsbergerstraße (Köpf 2005, p. 124). The regime confiscated the Freemasons' property in 1934 and handed it to the National Socialist Teachers' League (Weyerer 1993, p. 128); the "Central Archive of the NSDAP" installed itself at No. 41 (Stephan 2013, p. 57). Opposite the Alte Pinakothek the party had every building between Barer Straße and Arcisstraße demolished – as early as 1935 according to Stephan, eleven houses in 1938 according to Köpf – to erect a vast "chancellery building" designed by Leonhard Gall (Stephan 2013, p. 129; Köpf 2005, p. 124; Lauterbach/Grammbitter 2009, p. 41). Work began in the winter of 1938/39 but never got beyond the basements, which were linked underground to the party buildings on Königsplatz (Lauterbach/Grammbitter 2009, p. 88). Hermann Giesler thought bigger still: a "Party Hall" on Türkenstraße was to be connected by a bridge across Gabelsbergerstraße to Hitler's mausoleum (Large 2001, p. 365; Smith 2009, p. 112). At the same time, the city-history database records at least ten Jewish residents of Gabelsbergerstraße 35 who were deported to Theresienstadt and Auschwitz in 1942/43 and murdered.
The bombs of the Second World War hit the street hard: some 80 per cent of the Technical University's facilities were destroyed (Arz 2018, p. 84), the Alte Pinakothek was torn open in the middle and St Mark's badly damaged. From 1952 Hans Döllgast closed the gallery's wound with a deliberately simplified brick façade and moved the main staircase to the south front on Gabelsbergerstraße; the museum reopened in 1957 (Arz 2018, p. 74; Stephan 2013, p. 138). In 1955–1957 Gustav Gsaenger gave St Mark's a barrel vault with an ornamented stucco ceiling, nicknamed "pretzel stucco" by locals, and a concrete façade – a solution that proved highly controversial in the congregation (Arz 2018, p. 50) and whose "utter insignificance", in Stephan's view, "has not been healed by the passage of time either" (Stephan 2013, p. 43). On the foundations of the chancellery the Technical University put up three "architecturally meaningless glass-and-concrete blocks" (Stephan 2013, p. 129); the Türkenkaserne was cleared except for its gateway on Türkenstraße (Stephan 2013, p. 140). In the 1960s, in the spirit of the "car-friendly city", Gabelsbergerstraße was to be widened to 40 metres as a motorway-like "east–west tangent", with Barer Straße tunnelled under the junction (Bäumler et al. 2015, p. 16; Arz 2018, p. 15). To link the street to the Oskar-von-Miller-Ring, the corner building next to the Palais Dürckheim was demolished (Stephan 2013, p. 141); resistance from the residents' initiative Aktion Maxvorstadt prevented further clearances. In the back courtyard of No. 50 the Hinterhoftheater opened in 1977, staying until 1980 and putting performers such as Gerhard Polt and the Biermösl Blosn on stage.
Since the 1990s the eastern section has turned into the museum mile of the Kunstareal. On the southern part of the barracks site – known since the 1970s as "Roncalliplatz" after the circus that regularly pitched its tent there (Arz 2018, p. 13) – the Pinakothek der Moderne by Stephan Braunfels opened on 16 September 2002, made possible only by 10 million in private donations for the initial funding (Arz 2018, p. 71). The move of the TU's mathematics institutes to Garching freed the so-called bunker site opposite the Alte Pinakothek (Bäumler et al. 2015, p. 18): in mid-2007 the TU buildings were demolished, and with them the foundations and basements of the Nazi chancellery (Lauterbach/Grammbitter 2009, p. 88). In their place rose a glass and exposed-concrete building designed by Peter Böhm; on 15 September 2011 the University of Television and Film returned to the Maxvorstadt, followed in June 2013 by the State Museum of Egyptian Art (Arz 2018, p. 85). The square in front of the film school has been called Bernd-Eichinger-Platz since 2012. In 2026 the Kinderoase day-care centre by architects Francis Kéré and Hermann Kaufmann closed a gap at No. 41, opposite the Thiersch tower, that had stood empty since the war.
Today Gabelsbergerstraße falls into two halves. In the east, between St Mark's and Luisenstraße, it is a street of institutions: on the north side come the Protestant university and deanery church, the Pinakothek der Moderne, the Alte Pinakothek with Döllgast's staircase front and the TU's southern wing with the Thiersch tower; on the south side lie the long block of the film school and Egyptian Museum with Bernd-Eichinger-Platz, and the new Kinderoase. Students, museum-goers and cyclists set the tone; since 2021 one lane of the one-way street has been marked as a cycle lane. Between Barer Straße and Arcisstraße nothing visible now recalls the basements of the Nazi chancellery, which lay in the ground until 2007.
West of Luisenstraße the street becomes a residential and nightlife strip lined with Biedermeier, late-19th-century and Art Nouveau apartment houses. Of the colourful mix of places to eat and drink that Arz listed in 2018, the burger and cocktail bar "Drunken Cow" (No. 58) and the Japanese "Kaito" (No. 85) remain (Arz 2018, pp. 136, 138); the Lebanese "Cardamom" (No. 50) and the steakhouse "Grill & Grace" (No. 97) are gone – since 2021 No. 97 has been home to the Italian "Casa Nostra" – and the club "Bob Beaman" (No. 4) closed in 2019. Whether the Japanese-European "Campanula" (No. 46) and the Bosnian "Happy Fildjan" (No. 64), also named by Arz, are still open is uncertain. Galleries show contemporary art at Nos. 7 (Barbara Ruetz), 51 (Britta Rettberg) and 83 (Michael Heufelder) (Arz 2018, p. 140). At No. 72 Gudrun Hofmann ran her antiquarian bookshop for more than 50 years (Arz 2018, p. 139) until closing it in June 2024; in the same building the Catholic men's welfare association runs the "Haus an der Gabelsbergerstraße", a permanent home for 65 older homeless men (Arz 2018, p. 83). Tram and bus routes cross the street at Barer Straße, Augustenstraße and Dachauer Straße; the location between the Kunstareal and the main station is much sought after.
Munich's second Protestant church, funded by the city, King Ludwig II and a lottery (Bäumler et al. 2015, p. 74). After a dispute over cast-iron piers Eberlein took over from Gottgetreu; seat of the deanery since 1896 (Arz 2018, pp. 48, 50). Remodelled by Gsaenger with "pretzel stucco" after heavy war damage; today a university church with some 5,800 parishioners (Bäumler et al. 2015, p. 89).
A rare continuous ensemble from the old Kasernstraße: the hipped-roof Biedermeier group at Nos. 11/13/15 (c. 1850/60), No. 17 with pilaster strips (c. 1860), the stuccoed late-Neoclassical façade of No. 19 (c. 1870) and the richly articulated Neo-Renaissance No. 9 with two oriels (c. 1880). In 2018 Arz still listed the gallery van de Loo Projekte at No. 19 (Arz 2018, p. 140); it ended its exhibition programme in February 2018 and is now based on Winthirstraße in Neuhausen.
Stands on the site of the Türkenkaserne, whose southern wing went up on Gabelsbergerstraße in 1872/73 (Stephan 2013, p. 47); the open ground was previously known as "Roncalliplatz" after the circus (Arz 2018, p. 13). Four museums under one roof around a rotunda 30 metres across, opened on 16 September 2002 thanks to private seed donations (Arz 2018, p. 71).
Begun in 1826 "in the middle of a meadow" in the block formed by Barer-, Arcis-, Theresien- and Gabelsbergerstraße (Bäumler/Fromm 2017, p. 43). In rebuilding it, Döllgast moved the main staircase to the south front on Gabelsbergerstraße and left the war wound visible in simplified brickwork; reopened in 1957 (Arz 2018, p. 74; Stephan 2013, p. 138).
In 1916 the lodge "In Treue fest" moved into the rear building; by 1930 five lodges were based here. Confiscated in 1934 and handed to the regional leadership of the Nazi Teachers' League (Weyerer 1993, p. 128); Stephan places the "Regional Office for Educators" here (Stephan 2013, p. 57). The front building housed a tobacconist's (Weyerer 1993, p. 129).
On the site of the never-completed Nazi chancellery, whose basements were demolished in 2007 (Lauterbach/Grammbitter 2009, p. 88). The film school, whose alumni range from Doris Dörrie to Wim Wenders, moved in on 15 September 2011; the Egyptian Museum followed in June 2013 (Arz 2018, p. 85), its galleries largely below ground. In front lies Bernd-Eichinger-Platz (2012).
Of Neureuther's Polytechnic only the rusticated ground floor on Gabelsbergerstraße survives; above it rises Thiersch's south wing with the tower completed in 1916, the university's landmark (Arz 2018, p. 84). At the corner of Arcisstraße stands Bestelmeyer's block, which already "foreshadows" Nazi architecture (Weyerer 1993, p. 128).
Here Alexander Heinrich Rietzschel founded his optical works in 1896, built the "Clack 1900" camera from 1900 and already employed 100 people in 1901; the firm moved away in 1912 (Arz 2018, p. 83) and later became part of Agfa. Next door stand the Biedermeier houses at Nos. 38 and 40 (mid-19th century, No. 40 raised by two storeys in 1879).
Five storeys built almost entirely of timber behind rust-red Corten steel louvres fill a gap that had stood empty since the Second World War diagonally opposite the Thiersch tower; donated by Ingeborg Pohl and handed over to the TUM in July 2026. Under the same house number the "Central Archive of the NSDAP" had installed itself during the Nazi era (Stephan 2013, p. 57).
A unified block with iron window balustrades from the days of Kasernstraße; to the west of No. 47 is a gateway with a splendid wrought-iron grille – a rare piece of suburban elegance in the western part of the street.
Two identically designed Neo-Renaissance apartment houses with Neoclassical touches, typical of the street's densification after German unification. No. 51 is home to Galerie Britta Rettberg, a focal point of the young gallery scene west of the Pinakotheken (Arz 2018, p. 140).
On 1 December 1977 Günter Knoll and Thomas Brönner founded a cabaret stage in the back courtyard where Gerhard Polt and the Biermösl Blosn, among others, performed; in July 1980 it moved to the Wirtshaus am Hart. On the street front Arz listed the Lebanese restaurant "Cardamom" in 2018 (Arz 2018, p. 136), which has since closed.
The green building next to the city's health centre offers 65 older homeless men with addiction and social problems an open-ended roof over their heads, full board, social support and nursing care (Arz 2018, p. 83). At the same address Gudrun Hofmann ran her antiquarian bookshop for more than 50 years (Arz 2018, p. 139) until closing it in June 2024.
Wilhelm von Dönniges, librarian and adviser to Maximilian II, and his wife Franziska introduced a new, Berlin-style form of sociability here, intended to bring locals and incoming "northerners" together (Bäumler et al. 2015, p. 34).
A gabled building with two oriels and rich stucco decoration, the finest Art Nouveau building on the street. The building houses Galerie Michael Heufelder, listed by Arz in 2018 as the gallery of Michael Heufelder and Anuschka Koos (Arz 2018, p. 140), which shows contemporary figurative painting and sculpture.
A polygonal basin with an octagonal pillar that stood on the Viktualienmarkt in the 19th century; since 1961 it has marked the western end of Gabelsbergerstraße, opposite the junction with Dachauer Straße.
Lived on what was then Kasernstraße until his death and died in the corner house on Barer Straße, demolished in 1935 (Stephan 2013, p. 130); the street has borne his name since 1862 (Arz 2018, p. 145).
Built the Alte Pinakothek in 1826–1836, whose south front faces Gabelsbergerstraße, and was also commissioned by Ludwig I to continue the design of the Türkenkaserne (Arz 2018, p. 68).
Around 1850 they ran the "Blue Salon" at Neue Amalienstraße 66, today Gabelsbergerstraße 80, a meeting place for locals and "northerners" (Bäumler et al. 2015, p. 34).
From the early 1870s drove forward the building of St Mark's on Gabelsbergerstraße and consecrated the church in 1877 (Bäumler et al. 2015, p. 74).
Designed St Mark's in the Gothic Revival style but fell out with the congregation over cast-iron arcade piers and was replaced by Georg Eberlein (Arz 2018, p. 48).
Built the Polytechnic north of Gabelsbergerstraße in 1865–1868, attuned to the Alte Pinakothek opposite; only the rusticated ground floor survives (Stephan 2013, p. 41).
Founded his optical works at Gabelsbergerstraße 36 in 1896 and built the "Clack 1900" camera here (Arz 2018, p. 83).
According to the city-history database registered at Gabelsbergerstraße 77 in 1897, during his Munich years before moving to Berlin.
Built the Technical University's south wing with its tower on Gabelsbergerstraße in 1910–1916, the TU's landmark to this day (Arz 2018, p. 84).
Built the Technical University's corner blocks at Arcis-/Gabelsbergerstraße in 1923–1928, whose forms anticipated Nazi architecture (Weyerer 1993, p. 128).
Designed the Nazi Party chancellery opposite the Alte Pinakothek on Gabelsbergerstraße, which never got beyond its basements (Lauterbach/Grammbitter 2009, p. 41).
Remodelled the war-damaged St Mark's in 1955–1957 with a barrel vault, "pretzel stucco" and a concrete façade (Arz 2018, p. 50) – an intervention that remains controversial (Stephan 2013, p. 43).
One of the film school's best-known graduates (Arz 2018, p. 85); since 2012 the square in front of its new building on Gabelsbergerstraße has borne his name.
Designed, with Hermann Kaufmann, the Kinderoase at Gabelsbergerstraße 41, opened in 2026 – a five-storey timber building in a gap left by the war.
21 November: the sections are first named Ritterstraße, Theresienstraße and Apollostraße.
The whole route is named "Ludwigstraße".
November: the first soldiers move into the Türkenkaserne between Türken-, Gabelsberger-, Barer and Theresienstraße.
Foundation stone of the Alte Pinakothek laid; the street is henceforth called "Kasernstraße" after the barracks.
Franz Xaver Gabelsberger dies in his house on Kasernstraße.
Renamed Gabelsbergerstraße (approved by the king in 1861).
Neureuther builds the Polytechnic on the north side of the street.
St Mark's, Munich's second Protestant church, is built (No. 6).
A. Heinrich Rietzschel founds his optical works at No. 36.
The Technical University's Thiersch tower is completed.
Houses opposite the Alte Pinakothek are demolished for the Nazi chancellery, which never gets beyond its basements.
Heavy bomb damage to the Technical University, the Alte Pinakothek and St Mark's.
Gsaenger remodels St Mark's; in 1957 the Alte Pinakothek reopens after Döllgast's reconstruction.
16 September: the Pinakothek der Moderne opens on the former barracks site.
The film school (2011) and the State Museum of Egyptian Art (2013) move into Böhm's building at Nos. 33–35.
The Kinderoase by Kéré and Kaufmann fills the wartime gap at No. 41.
"Along Gabelsbergerstraße, which on the side earmarked for this purpose has already been cleared of the old buildings previously standing there, the party's office building is going up."Gauleiter Adolf Wagner, "The urban development of Munich" (Die städtebauliche Entwicklung Münchens), 1937 – quoted in Köpf 2005, p. 122
Online sources