Karl­straße

Origin of the name

Karlstraße honours Prince Karl Theodor Maximilian August of Bavaria (1795–1875), the younger brother of King Ludwig I. Born in Mannheim, the son of the future King Max I Joseph by his first marriage pursued a military career, fought under Wrede in the Wars of Liberation in 1814, became a field marshal in 1841 and in 1866 commanded the Bavarian army and the south German federal contingents against Prussia. He declined the Greek crown offered to him in 1831; it went to his nephew Otto (Arz 2018, p. 147). His morganatic first marriage cost him his claim to the throne; from 1825 he lived in the Prinz-Carl-Palais at the start of today's Prinzregentenstraße, which still bears his name. The address books of 1879 and 1880 praise him as a "tireless benefactor of the poor" who every year had people of limited means treated at his own expense in his spa at Bad Kreuth – a trait that fits remarkably well with what happens on his street today at St Boniface and in the Karla 51 women's shelter.

The namesake should not be confused with Elector Karl Theodor (1724–1799), after whom Karlsplatz ("Stachus") is named. As early as 1879 Fernberg's dictionary of street names noted that Karlstraße was "a later creation than Karlsplatz" and named after Prince Karl; Rambaldi (1894) and the 1943 address book likewise explicitly name Ludwig I's brother. The fact that the prince himself bore the first names Karl Theodor has encouraged the mix-up.

The name is as old as the Maxvorstadt. On 21 November 1808 the first sections of the new street grid received names: the stretch from Arcisstraße to Luisenstraße was called "Kronstraße", that from Luisenstraße to Dachauer Straße "Karlstraße", and the rest up to the Marsfeld "Bergstraße". Only on 1 December 1812 was the whole route united as Karlstraße; in popular usage the old names lingered for a while (Arz 2018, p. 147). Early town plans read "Carls Straße", from the 1830s "Karls Straße", and only after 1870 the present spelling. The distinction between an "inner" and an "outer" Karlstraße ended in 1875–1877; the part beyond Pappenheimstraße, heading out of town, has been called Blutenburgstraße since 1876.

History

Karlstraße follows one of the oldest routes outside the city: beyond the Neuhauser Tor, the "very old road to Neuhausen", whose course corresponds to today's Karlstraße and Blutenburgstraße, branched off the highway to Pasing (Stephan 2013, p. 29). It became a street proper with the planning of the Maxvorstadt from 1808. The reference point of the new quarter was the Botanical Garden, which Friedrich Ludwig von Sckell laid out from 1804 for the Academy of Sciences and was at the same time to link with the planning of the residential district (Bäumler et al. 2015, p. 19); from 1812 the Academy's chemical laboratory also stood at the start of Arcisstraße, and in 1852 it was greatly enlarged for Justus von Liebig (Stephan 2013, p. 41). The section east of Arcisstraße first had to be cut through the "tailors' gardens": in 1824 the street was extended to Barer Straße and in 1827 completed to Ottostraße. The oldest surviving buildings date from these years – Rudolf Röschenauer's villa (No. 32) of 1818, his symmetrical group of apartment houses Nos. 18–22 of 1828, and Joseph Höchl's palatial corner building No. 21 of 1829, a "rental palace" containing the Frohsinn hall. How rich the street once was is hinted at by Erwin Schleich's lament for the war-destroyed neoclassical house No. 44, which "would have deserved to be illustrated in every history of art".

It was King Ludwig I who turned the street into a monument. As early as 1817 he discussed with Leo von Klenze an "Apostles' church" opposite the Glyptothek, intended to bring the Benedictines back to Munich (Köpf 2005, p. 30). In 1827 he then told Georg Friedrich Ziebland: "I am minded to build a church in Munich to the Apostle of the Germans and Bavarians, St Boniface, and in the form of a basilica", sent him on a study trip of several years to Italy, and set S. Apollinare in Classe in Ravenna as the model and 400,000 guilders as the ceiling (Huse 2009, p. 153). The foundation stone was laid on 12 October 1835, the king's silver wedding anniversary; construction of the five-aisled basilica, 76 metres long and 36 metres wide, with 66 marble columns, frescoes by Heinrich von Heß and Johann and Claudius Schraudolph and an open roof truss, took fifteen years (Arz 2018, p. 98). Its portal with three Ionic columns faces Karlstraße, while the rear adjoins Ziebland's exhibition building on Königsplatz – religion, art and learning were visibly meant to belong together; above the central portal a bust shows the architect in medieval dress (Smith 2009, p. 94). Stephan calls it "indisputably" the most splendid church in the Maxvorstadt (Stephan 2013, p. 42). The monastery with its large library was built behind it in 1838–1848; so that the monks could earn their keep, Ludwig gave them the secularised Andechs Abbey with its estates (Arz 2018, p. 98). The complex was consecrated in 1850.

St Boniface also became the king's burial place – after a proper scandal. When Queen Therese died of cholera in 1854, the clergy refused to inter the Protestant queen in a side chapel. The compromise was to bury Therese in a vault and to place Ludwig's sarcophagus above it – "for that is just the fitting position for husband and wife!", the former king is said to have scoffed (Arz 2018, p. 98). The tomb was designed by Leo von Klenze, who negotiated with the Curia in Rome specifically for it (Freitag 2013, p. 126). Ludwig died in Nice at the end of February 1868; on 9 March the funeral procession moved from the Residenz along Brienner Straße, past the obelisk, the Glyptothek and the exhibition building and through the Propylaea to the basilica, where the king – except for his heart, which went to Altötting – was laid to rest above his consort (Köpf 2005, pp. 44 f.). Rambaldi's street-name dictionary of 1894 stresses that Ludwig had the basilica and monastery built "from private funds". Only in 2002 was Therese's sarcophagus freed from the "fitting" position and placed next to Ludwig's (Arz 2018, p. 99).

In the 19th century the street filled up with apartment houses, studios and workshops. To the south, in the Old Botanical Garden, Maximilian II had the Glaspalast built in 1854, the first successor on the Continent to Paxton's Crystal Palace in London (Huse 2009, p. 159) – 234 metres long and assembled with 37,000 panes of glass in just six months (Arz 2018, p. 63); for decades it made the district the setting of major industrial and art exhibitions. On Karlstraße itself, Arnold Böcklin lived in the villa at No. 32 in 1872–1874, Wilhelm Busch used a studio in the rear building of No. 36, built in 1861 for the sculptor Johann Petz, and the royal court photographer Joseph Albert had his studio at No. 10. At the western end, imposing neo-Renaissance houses went up in the Gründerzeit (Nos. 52, 54, 118, 120), followed in 1897/98 by Ferdinand Schratz's corner building No. 49 and in 1899 by a substation for the young electricity supply at No. 47. From 1906 tram line 4 ran from Lenbachplatz through the "Bernheimer Klamm" and along Karlstraße to the west – until 1975; eyelets for the overhead wire on the façade of the basilica still recall it.

In the Weimar years the street became an address of the völkisch right. At the end of 1928 Erich and Mathilde Ludendorff founded their "Volkswarte-Verlag" at Karlstraße 10, which spread anti-Christian "knowledge of God" and conspiracy myths and only moved to Tutzing in 1935 (Weyerer 1993, p. 148). In the night before 6 June 1931 the Glaspalast burned down; some 3,000 works of art, among them 110 paintings from the newly opened exhibition of Romantic art, were lost, and the cause was never established (Liedtke 2013, p. 84). The poet Eugen Roth ran "along Karlstraße towards Arcisstraße" to the scene of the fire (Arz 2018, p. 62). After 1933 the NSDAP's party quarter swallowed the eastern section: as early as 1934 the party had acquired the entire block on Karlstraße between Barer and Arcisstraße (Köpf 2005, p. 112). The houses were occupied by the Reich SS leadership (No. 10, from 1936 with the SS court), Baldur von Schirach's Reich Youth Leadership (No. 14), the Reich leadership of the Nazi Students' League (No. 16), the Reich Press Office (No. 18) and the Reich Propaganda Directorate (No. 20) (Liedtke 2018, pp. 172, 184); Heinrich Himmler and his aide Karl Wolff sat at No. 10, the first chamber of the Supreme Party Court at No. 12 (Köpf 2005, p. 113). The Nazis seized No. 21, bought in 1908 by the Bernheimer art-dealing family, in 1936 and installed the Reich Chamber of Physicians there (Arz 2018, p. 95); Karlstraße was also home to the Nazi Physicians' League of "Reich Physicians' Leader" Gerhard Wagner, who shared responsibility for forced sterilisations and "euthanasia" (Liedtke 2018, p. 96). South of the "Administration Building", a district heating plant, a post office and staff flats were built facing Karlstraße (Lauterbach/Grammbitter 2009, p. 20). In 1939 the party owned 56, soon afterwards 68 buildings in the block between Karl-, Gabelsberger-, Barer and Arcisstraße; more than 6,000 people worked in the Nazi administrations (Köpf 2005, p. 124).

The war destroyed up to 75 per cent of the Maxvorstadt (Arz 2018, p. 93). St Boniface was badly hit in the raids of 25 April 1944 and 7 January 1945; in 1945 only the southern outer walls and 22 columns were left standing (Huse 2009, p. 221). By 1950 Hans Döllgast had restored the remains in such a way that the scars of war stayed visible as a warning, closing them off with a new north wall. In the early 1960s the Benedictines finally gave up any rebuilding at the original size and erected a pastoral and educational centre in exposed concrete on the site of the destroyed northern part; by 1975 the now almost square interior had been rearranged with the altar in the centre, and in 1993–1996 Friedrich Koller and Peter Burkart remodelled it once more (Arz 2018, p. 99). Stephan regrets that the building thus survived as a place of worship, "but not as a unique Munich work of art" (Stephan 2013, p. 43). The former party buildings were first taken over by the American military government (Lauterbach/Grammbitter 2009, p. 70); most were replaced by new buildings, while Nos. 18–22 survived. Tax offices moved into the new office and administrative blocks: the Corporate Tax Office into Höchl's No. 21 from April 1951, and Munich Tax Office I into Nos. 9–11 from 1954 (Arz 2018, p. 132). On the corner of Barer Straße the Staatsbauschule (State Building School) was built in 1954–1957 to designs by Franz Ruf, Adolf Peter Seifert and Rolf ter Haerst, now a listed key work of Munich's post-war reconstruction.

Since the 1990s the street has acquired a new, social profile. When Brother Emmanuel Flotter came to the monastery in 1990, he was shaken by the misery of the homeless in the nearby station district; a mobile food service grew into a dining hall, an emergency clinic, a clothing store and emergency beds, followed in 1994 by the Bonifatius Haneberg Foundation and in 2001 by the Haneberghaus (Arz 2018, p. 99). In December 1996 the Protestant relief organisation opened "Karla 51" at No. 51, the first emergency shelter in Germany specifically for women (Arz 2018, p. 107). At the same time land became precious: on the site of the LMU's old chemistry institute between Karlstraße and the Old Botanical Garden the "Lenbach Gärten" with offices, luxury flats and a five-star hotel were built in 2004–2007 (Arz 2018, p. 96), made possible by the relocation of the chemistry institutes (Bäumler et al. 2015, p. 18). Huse laments that the "outstanding" urban layout of the botanical institutes was sacrificed for it (Huse 2009, p. 224). Finally, at the western end, on the former site of a car dealership between Denisstraße and the Spaten brewery, David Chipperfield Architects built the "Karl" office building, into which Apple moved its Munich chip development centre around 2023.

Today

The eastern section between Ottostraße and Luisenstraße is today a street of higher education, public authorities and offices. The Munich University of Applied Sciences runs its Karlstraße campus here (Arz 2018, p. 117), where the faculties of its "building cluster" teach some 2,000 students, opposite are tax offices and the Munich II Tax Construction Office (Arz 2018, p. 132); where the Reich SS leadership once sat, the neo-brasserie "Hoiz" (No. 10) now serves food (Arz 2018, p. 136). Nothing on the façades recalls the Nazi offices, whose addresses could be listed almost house by house along Karlstraße. St Boniface remains the focal point: the food service in the Haneberghaus feeds 150 to 200 people a day, and the new building on the monastery grounds houses the P.I.B. counselling service, the Münchner Chorbuben & Chormädchen choirs and a youth café where, among others, the "Bonifazeria", a group for young adults, meets once a month (Arz 2018, p. 99). Opposite, behind the Lenbach Gärten development, lies the Old Botanical Garden; Arz calls the luxury of the quarter a "foreign body" in the lively Maxvorstadt (Arz 2018, p. 96).

West of Luisenstraße Karlstraße becomes more residential and noisier. Tram lines 20 and 21 stop at the junction with Dachauer Straße, lines 27 and 28 at Barer Straße; the Gründerzeit houses Nos. 49, 52 and 54 have survived here. "Karla 51" is the only emergency shelter in Germany that also takes in women with children, and it turns no one away (Arz 2018, p. 107). Beyond Seidlstraße, where the Munich Chief Public Prosecutor's Office sits in the Seidl-Forum (Nos. 64–68), begins the world of the breweries – the Löwenbräu site to the north, the disused Spaten brewery grounds to the south – and that of the tech giants: in Chipperfield's "Karl" building (No. 77) Apple develops semiconductors for its devices. The culinary range stretches from "Japan Sushi Gourmet" at No. 56 (Arz 2018, p. 136) to the canteens of the office blocks.