Renovation backlog, planning hurdles, funding holes – many urban cultural institutions are chronic construction sites. A new proposal is now intended to smash the Gordian knot in the case of two problem children. In a letter sent to the city leaders, some city council factions and the press on Monday, the Valentin Karlstadt Society advocates the establishment of a “Valentin Karlstadt Center” in the former Viehmarktbank.
The background to the proposal is the dramatic situation of the Valentin-Karlstadt-Musäum in the Isartor. For years, the implementation of current fire protection regulations has been hanging like a sword of Damocles over the long private facility, which has been a municipal facility since 2018. Fire protection will probably only grant a period until September for operation. Culture consultant Anton Biebl reported to the culture committee that without the appropriate conversions “a museum operation is no longer possible”.
The problem is that the required conversions make it rather impossible to run a museum: Suspended ceilings, fire protection doors, an “escape hole” with a rescue ladder and the enclosure of the stairwell would, among other things, reduce the already extremely cramped exhibition space by at least a third. Museum director Sabine Rinberger and the cultural department have therefore proposed the addition of an additional tower construction connected with a battlement as a way out, for which there is a finished design.
“Identity-defining landmark of the state capital”
In addition, of course, the monument protection authority, which watches over the Isartor, which was completed in 1337, as a “monument of supra-regional importance” and “identity-defining landmark of the state capital”., communicated: “Not finally checked, but it can already be said that there is no possibility of approval for the … project from the point of view of monument protection.”
The Valentin Karlstadt Society – founded 26 years ago by Karl Valentin biographer Alfons Schweiggert for all Valentin friends as a “protective community” to defend his legacy against “false interpreters, intolerable talkers and epigones” – now sees the way out in moving in the former cattle market bank. A municipal building that – as often reported in the SZ – has been empty for 25 years and is decaying. And where the “Forum Humor und Komische Kunst” association wanted to move in a few years ago, with a complete, comprehensive concept and investor in their pockets. However, the city rejected this in favor of a public tender. Since then, however, it has still not been used.
The former cattle market bank is a municipal building that has been vacant for 25 years and is falling into disrepair.
(Photo: Stephan Rumpf)
The Valentin-Karlstadt-Society sees the solution in a museum expanded there to the center in cooperation with the “Forum Humor and Comic Art”. If only because there was finally enough space in the Viehmarktbank for the extensive Valentin archive, which was previously only in storage, or the film work. In any case, the collection of ideas presented with the letter is full: it ranges from the resurrection of the “Panoptikum”, the first museum set up by Valentin himself, to the reconstruction of the original Isartor “Turmstüberl”.
The history of the museum in the Isartor linked to the painter Hannes König could find its own place, as could the history of the Munich folk singers, the many facets of the artist Karl Valentin and his significance today, including Valentineskem all over the world. Changing special exhibitions, a cinema hall and a stage are also on the list.
Gerhard Polt has already written a letter to the mayor
In any case, the “Forum Humor and Comic Art” is fundamentally behind the idea, even if “the details still have to be worked out”, as its chairman Reinhard G. Wittmann emphasizes. The “co-inspirator” of the association Gerhard Polt even wrote a letter to Mayor Dieter Reiter a week or two ago, in which he vehemently advocated “uniting our Forum Humor project with the Valentin/Karlstadt project in the Viehmarktbank realise”. One hears that Reiter has now asked all the departments involved to submit the status quo. Of course, in his letter, Polt also relies on the willingness of the museum management. Sabine Rinberger, who could not be reached for a statement, does not seem to want to give up the fight for the Isartor just yet.
The whole thing is a little reminiscent of the history of the Volkstheater. That too was popular, but ailing, and eventually had to move. Which turned out to be a stroke of luck in the end. As you can experience today in the slaughterhouse district – right around the corner from the Viehmarktbank building.