Türken­straße

Origin of the name

Türkenstraße takes its name from the Türkengraben ("Turkish ditch"), a canal that ran alongside it. Elector Max Emanuel wanted to link the Residenz with the palaces of Nymphenburg and Schleißheim by a system of canals and commissioned the electoral surveyor Mathias Paur to plan it. Digging began in 1702, with soldiers of the electoral infantry ordered to do the work. The rumour that Turkish prisoners of war helped dig persists to this day, but the last Turkish prisoners of the Great Turkish War had left Munich in 1699 (Arz 2018, p. 48). The name "Türkengraben" was in any case attached to the canal only afterwards (Stephan 2013, p. 63). After just two years work came to a halt; the ditch reached barely as far as the Georgenschwaige in Milbertshofen and, for lack of water, was never navigable. In 1811 it was filled in and partly built over. Its course today corresponds to Fürsten-, Nordend-, Kurfürsten- and Belgradstraße, and the obliquely cut plots between Amalien- and Türkenstraße still betray it. At the corner of Schelling- and Türkenstraße five "windows" set into a wall by the artist Joachim Jung have kept the memory of the Türkengraben alive since 2005.

In the expansion plan for the Maxvorstadt the street was first called Florastraße from 1808. On 1 December 1812 a royal rescript of King Max I Joseph renamed it Türkenstraße, making it one of the oldest street names in the Maxvorstadt still in use; the name was later passed on to the barracks, its gate and the school.

History

Türkenstraße was laid out with the expansion plan for the Maxvorstadt (from 1808) as one of the north–south axes west of Ludwigstraße. For a long time it inspired little enthusiasm: in 1886 the cultural critic Theodor Goering harshly criticised Amalien-, Theresien- and Türkenstraße, "laid out for the purpose of mass housing, which as endlessly long, dead-straight streets preserve the character of the most desolate sobriety" (Bäumler et al. 2015, p. 14). From the 1870s the richer forms of the Italian and then the German Renaissance spread through the northern sections of Amalien- and Türkenstraße; 32 buildings are listed today. In 1955 the journalist Tim O. Tim told the residents in the Abendzeitung that "the intellectual cradle of Schwabing undoubtedly stood in Türkenstraße", and the street remains one of the main arteries of the quarter.

The southern stretch near Brienner Straße was shaped early on by courtly buildings. In 1842 Franz Jakob Kreuter, a pupil of Gärtner, was commissioned to build the Palais Dürckheim (no. 4), a red-striped brick building for Georg Friedrich Wilhelm Alfred Count of Dürckheim-Montmartin, chamberlain and lord high steward to Queen Therese. As early as 1855 the Prussian government bought the property for its legation; for 54 years the Prussian coat of arms hung over the portal until the legation moved in 1909 into the new building on Prinzregentenstraße (today the Schack-Galerie) donated by Kaiser Wilhelm II. Right next door Crown Prince Maximilian had Friedrich von Gärtner build the neo-Gothic Wittelsbacher Palais in 1843–1848. Gärtner loathed the Gothic style – "This is the most repugnant building I have ever directed!" – and the crown prince never moved in: shortly after completion King Ludwig I had to abdicate, father and son swapped residences, and the ex-king grumbled about the "hideous box" until his death in 1868 (Arz 2018, p. 54). Later the future King Ludwig III lived here; after his flight in 1918 the revolutionaries around Kurt Eisner installed themselves in the palais, the Räterepublik was proclaimed here, and the newly created social ministry moved in.

For over 150 years the middle section was dominated by the Türkenkaserne barracks. King Max I Joseph had planned a whole military quarter with garrison church, cadet corps and veterans' home; not until 1823 did he approve the budget for the block between Türken-, Gabelsberger-, Barer and Theresienstraße, and in November 1824 the first soldiers of the 1st Line Infantry Regiment "König" moved in. Ludwig I accepted the barracks only reluctantly, fearing explosions and fire next to his planned Pinakothek; in 1826 he stopped further construction, commissioned Leo von Klenze with the design and asked for a park as a transition to the gallery. Wings on Gabelsbergerstraße (1872/73) and Theresienstraße (1874) followed, while the Barer Straße front was left open out of consideration for the Pinakothek (Stephan 2013, p. 47). Conditions must have been modest: locals soon called Türkenstraße simply "Wanzenallee" (bedbug avenue). In 1835 a huge explosion shook the military grounds of the Maxvorstadt; hardly a house between Karl- and Türkenstraße remained intact. From 1890 the complex, later officially the Prinz-Arnulf-Kaserne, housed only the Infanterie-Leibregiment. In the revolution of 1918 the soldiers of the Türkenkaserne sided with Kurt Eisner; in 1919 the last regiment moved to new barracks on the edge of the city, in 1920 the state police took over, and the Nazi regime used the barracks militarily once more.

In 1893 Prinz-Ludwig-Straße was cut between Barer and Türkenstraße through the plot of the old Huter-Schwaige dairy farm ("Milchgarten"); at the corner with Türkenstraße, opposite the Wittelsbacher Palais, the orchestra director Franz Kaim had Martin Dülfer build the Kaim-Saal (no. 5) in 1895, after the Odeon the city's most important concert venue. Under Felix Weingartner the Kaim Orchestra earned an international reputation in 1898–1905; when Kaim left Munich in 1905 the hall was renamed Tonhalle, the Munich Konzertverein took over the orchestra, Wilhelm Furtwängler made his debut here a year later, and in 1928 it became the Munich Philharmonic. In the Kaim-Saal audiences marvelled at the phonograph and X-rays in 1897, and in 1907 Rudolf Steiner held his theosophical congress here. Thomas Mann wrote to Katia Pringsheim in May 1904: "Strangely, it is almost always the Kaimsaal where I see you" – and on 30 November 1926 he gave his lecture The Struggle for Munich as a Cultural Centre here, lamenting that Munich was "decried as a stronghold of reaction, as the seat of all obstinacy and recalcitrance against the will of the age" and called "the stupid, the truly stupid city" (Arz 2018, p. 55; Bäumler et al. 2015, p. 41).

Around 1900 Türkenstraße became a stage of Munich modernism; Heinrich Mann and Alfred Walter Heymel lived here, and in 1891 Anton Ažbe founded his painting school in the street, where women too were allowed to study, before it moved to Georgenstraße. On 13 April 1901 Die Elf Scharfrichter (The Eleven Executioners) – Germany's first political cabaret – opened in the rear building of the tavern "Zum Goldenen Hirschen" at no. 28, directly opposite the barracks. The brewery owner Gabriel Sedlmayr (Franziskaner-Leistbräu), who owned the house, had made the unused fencing hall in the back yard available after the plan to perform in the courtyard of Café Stefanie had failed. The architect Max Langheinrich converted it into a theatre with a sinkable orchestra pit and 100 seats; at the entrance a skull in a wig with an axe stuck in it kept watch. The Frenchman Marc Henry had gathered ten young men around him, among them Otto Falckenberg, Leo Greiner and the sculptor Wilhelm Hüsgen; they performed under names like Peter Luft, Till Blut and Dionysius Tod in scarlet hoods, the diseuse Marya Delvard brought the chanson to Munich, and Frank Wedekind sang his guitar songs, which "were extorted from him with stamping and shouting", as the Münchener Post reported (Bäumler/Fromm 2017, pp. 52–53). To dodge taxes and censorship the Scharfrichter initially charged no admission but an "exorbitant cloakroom fee". After more than 600 performances and 16 programmes the ensemble dissolved in 1904; the house was destroyed in the war and no plaque marks the site.

On Walpurgis Night 1903 a procession led by Wedekind on the lute moved from the artists' tavern Dichtelei to Türkenstraße 57, where Kathi Kobus, formerly a waitress at the Dichtelei, opened her own tavern on 1 May. When the old landlord sued over the name "Neue Dichtelei", she simply named it after the satirical magazine whose editors were among her guests: publisher Albert Langen allowed the name Simplicissimus and Thomas Theodor Heine's red bulldog, which as house sign was given a champagne bottle between its paws (Arz 2018, p. 46). Erich Mühsam described the routine: "Often a generously donated bottle of champagne was enough to prompt poets, singers and musicians of both sexes to perform." Joachim Ringelnatz, house poet from 1909, was paid first in kind and later two marks per appearance; broke painters paid with pictures, Isadora Duncan danced on the tables in a polar-bear coat, regulars included Ludwig Thoma, Oskar Maria Graf, Thomas Mann and Franziska zu Reventlow, and Karl Valentin performed from 1907. In 1914 the diseuse Marietta di Monaco is said to have recited a poem by Hugo Ball and Klabund here in which the syllables "Dada" were heard for the first time. Under the Nazis the tavern was closed because its owners were considered too left-wing.

The Nazi era left traces at both ends of the street. Reinhard Heydrich lodged at no. 23 from December 1931 to August 1932 and from there built up the NSDAP's intelligence service, the later SD. In autumn 1933 the Wittelsbacher Palais became the seat of the Bavarian Political Police, the later Gestapo; in 1934 the palace administration built the Gestapo prison on the site and the park served as prison yard – Ernst Wiechert described his detention there in Der Totenwald (Bäumler/Fromm 2017, p. 26). Hans and Sophie Scholl were held here in February 1943. Hitler's planners intended to lay out a "Platz der NSDAP" on the barracks site east of Türkenstraße, with a "Hall of the Party" to which Hitler's mausoleum was to be attached (Köpf 2005, p. 131). From 1 September to 31 October 1939 the carpenter Georg Elser lodged at no. 94, told his landlady he was an inventor, and in a small rented workshop at no. 59 assembled the bomb with its intricate timer that exploded in the Bürgerbräukeller on 8 November at 9.20 pm; neighbouring craftsmen unknowingly made parts for him (Liedtke 2018, pp. 60–61). The air raids of 1944 destroyed the Tonhalle, the Simplicissimus, the Scharfrichter house and the Wittelsbacher Palais and badly damaged the barracks.

After the war nobody spoke up for the hated palais: the ruin was demolished in 1950, while the almost undamaged prison annex served a car dealer as a workshop until it too was pulled down in 1964. The city planned an adult education centre with concert hall on the site but sold the 4,200 square metre plot to the Bayerische Landesbank in the early 1970s – the proceeds financed the Gasteig. The firm Beck-Enz-Yelin built the bank complex in 1977–1982; a stone lion by Alfred Göring on Gabelsbergerstraße recalls the portal lions of the palais, and a bronze plaque at the corner the Gestapo headquarters. The Palais Dürckheim, a police hospital from 1937, housed the state identification office, later the Landeskriminalamt, from 1946, stood empty after 1968, narrowly escaped the Altstadtring and was bought by the Landesbank in 1977, which handed it over to art education as the "Palais Pinakothek" in 2006. The Simpl was rebuilt more plainly in the 1950s and under Toni Netzle (1960–1992) became, as the "Alter Simpl", the haunt of Brigitte Bardot, Rock Hudson, Willy Brandt, Ella Fitzgerald, Duke Ellington and Franz Josef Strauß, who was temporarily banned. The Heyne publishing house moved onto the barracks site in 1950, to Türkenstraße 24 in 1961 and to no. 7 in 1969; the ARRI cinema (no. 91) opened in 1958 with "The Bridge on the River Kwai", and the art-house cinema "Türkendolch" (no. 74) ran from 1961 to 2001. The remains of the barracks were cleared and the site became the Kunstareal: Pinakothek der Moderne (2002), Museum Brandhorst (2009) and the Türkentor, restored in 2010 to house Walter De Maria's "Large Red Sphere". In 1997 the square in front of the Türkenschule was named after Georg Elser, and in 2009 Silke Wagner's neon installation "8. November" was unveiled there, lighting up for one minute every night at 9.20 pm; on the site of the Tonhalle the Prinz-Ludwig-Palais office building rose in 2015.

Today

Over its 1.3 kilometres Türkenstraße changes character: the southern end belongs to the Kunstareal with the Landesbank, Museum Brandhorst, Türkentor and university institutes; north of Theresienstraße a densely built residential and pub street begins, with bookshops and antiquarian dealers (such as Antiquariat Hammerstein at no. 37, whose window displays old issues of Simplicissimus, and the architecture bookshop Werner at no. 30), boutiques, cafés, the Türkenhof (no. 78), an institution among student pubs, and the Alter Simpl (no. 57), which reopened in April 2024 after an insolvency. At nos. 89/91 the film-technology company ARRI still keeps its premises and cinema, although its headquarters moved to Parkstadt Schwabing at the end of 2018. At the northern end stands the Academy of Fine Arts; the primary school at no. 68 with Georg-Elser-Platz in front of it is the centre of the neighbourhood.

Between Gabelsbergerstraße and Akademiestraße the street is one-way outbound; Universität underground station (U3/U6) is a few steps away. The location is sought after and expensive. Luxury refurbishments and evictions, for example at nos. 52/54, triggered residents' protests; a request by the district committee in 2019 to protect the street as an ensemble was rejected by the Bavarian State Office for Monument Protection in March 2019.