The Feldherrnhalle at Odeonsplatz is one of the most famous landmarks in Munich. The classical building by Friedrich von Gärtner, flanked by the Theatinerkirche on one side and the Residenz on the other, is a popular meeting place for locals and tourists from all over the world. When not slowed down by the pandemic, numerous summer concerts take place in front of the building commissioned by King Ludwig I and completed in 1844. A place of music, encounters and exchange.
Since her childhood and adolescence, Barbara Bronnen has had an intimate connection with Munich’s unique open-air salon, for which the Florentine Loggia dei Lanzi served as a model. The writer, who died in Munich three years ago shortly before her 81st birthday, even dedicated an entire book to her special relationship. Its title is simply “Feldherrnhalle”. Released in 2016, it was to be her last major work.
Barbara Bronnen came to Munich for the first time shortly after the Second World War. She saw rubble and debris.
(Photo: imago stock&people)
In her typical mixture of autobiographical stories and historical reflections, the native Berliner tries to unravel the “riddle” of this architecture, which she sees as a “code for both an old and a new age”. She is a special kind of city guide, who happily associates with you, confronting the silent stones and the monument to the Bavarian army designed by Ferdinand von Miller, the monumental bronze statues of Count Tilly and Prince Wrede and the majestic lions with her doubts and questions.
“I believe that war is a creation of the frigid man.”
“I walk towards the monument in the middle of the arcades… Why, I ask, did von Miller represent the basic conflict between war and peace as man and woman?” A few lines later she herself gives the brilliant answer: “I believe that war is a creation of the frigid man.” At the same time, she imagines how the artists and writers she admired might have rubbed shoulders with the monumental building.
She imagines the rebellious, feverish Oskar Maria Graf, to whom the old stones speak after the failed revolution of 1918/19: “Suddenly he feels a violent current of air coming out of the rock, and a powerful voice sounds that he feels mercilessly at his mercy. What’s going on in Munich, are the stones roaring here?” Or she empathizes with Ricarda Huch, about whom she had already written the book “Flying with Supported Wings” about the last years of her life a good ten years earlier. Lets the writer and historian, who was hushed up by the Nazis after 1933, stroke the lion’s heads and speculates: “It’s a consolation to be in a city where there are monuments like this.”
In “Feldherrnhalle” she shows herself once again as a clever, sharp-tongued observer. It’s the contradictions that draw her in. Because the magnificent building was not always a place where people came together in an informal way. After the victory in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870/71, the soldiers filed past him.
She never tires of warning that the new right is gaining strength
In 1914 they were to do it again. Except this time the battlefields of World War I awaited them. Nine years later, Hitler’s coup attempt ended at Odeonsplatz. “She will not get rid of the smell of the march to the Feldherrnhalle,” writes Bronnen, “the relationship with the loggia will never be unproblematic.” And that’s why she never tires of warning about the strengthening of the new right, which was gaining popularity at the time the book was written. It was the time of the so-called refugee crisis.
The writer grew up in Bad Goisern and Linz. She was in Munich for the first time immediately after the Second World War, saw rubble and rubble. When she began studying German and philosophy here in the late 1950s, these had long since disappeared. Together with her bold grandmother Else, she hiked her new home: “More important than reading your books, she said, is deciphering the city, and she closed my book: so get out!”
“Feldherrnhalle” can also be read as the author’s examination of her family history. She doesn’t sugarcoat anything. Her grandmother’s husband, Ernst von Lossow, was a cousin of Otto von Lossow, who, as commander of the Reichswehr, was “obscurely involved in the Hitler putsch of 1923”. Against this background, your reflections on the Feldherrnhalle gain a personal touch. Sometimes it becomes downright obsessive. She collects things left by visitors, such as blankets and socks, and keeps them at home.
In “Feldherrnhalle” she also talks about her father, the playwright, Brecht friend and political opportunist par excellence, Arnolt Bronnen, for the last time. She has already worked on him in the books “Das Monokel” and “Meine Väter”, who adhered to all the ideologies of the 20th century.
The Feldherrnhalle is a monument steeped in history. The book “Feldherrnhalle” also has features of a monument. In its most moving chapters, it is reminiscent of men who resisted the Nazis, such as Georg Elser or Walter Klingenbeck.
Barbara Bronnen, Feldherrnhalle. Europa Verlag, Berlin 2016. 270 pages. 15.99 euros. (only as eBook)