Should the unimaginable, the horrible, the horrific happen, should the Valentin-Karlstadt-Musäum actually have to evacuate the Isartor because of a lack of fire protection, then – well, what then? In any case, on the day of the move, a funeral march from the Isartor to Ritter Unkenstein’s castle in Grünwald would be due, at least as big as the Christopher Street Day parade, but excluding the Narrhalla, who with the outrageous awarding of their Karl Valentin Order has forfeited any right to participate in humorous rivets such as Stoiber, Söder or Heino. Mourning flags and a gala performance of Valentin Karlstadt’s play “The Repaired Headlight” in the Kammerspiele, starring real electricians who were hired years ago to refurbish the Gasteig and have been unemployed since then, would also be essential.
But what will become of the Isartor, the medieval walls that cannot be flattened as easily as a watchmaker’s house in Giesingen? Unless investor René Benko turns it into an extravagant adventure department store, the three-towered city gate will become a home for house mice and bats, along with a few million flies, which Valentin says are poultry and “very often take hot baths”. Preference in the soup pot.
But that’s not all. Someone else will live in the Isartor, someone who has lived there since the museum opened in 1959: Karl Valentin’s spirit. This is not meant poetically in any way, no, it is a veritable ghost, just like in the case of the old knights, of whom the master sang: “Only the spirits of the same / haunt the vaults at night.” Sabine Rinberger, the famous head of the Musäum, will deny it, but certainly when she descended the tower stairs at night, she has often seen a skinny, violet shimmering figure of ethereal substance, which croaked in a horrible voice: “I sing and pluck it Harp, I don’t know what else I was doing, I don’t know what it’s supposed to mean, the song will soon become boring to me.” No question, that was Valentin’s astral body from the realm of shadows.
No, you can never get this spirit out of the walls, it will stay until the day of judgment, if not until the completion of the second main line. They buried him in Planegg, his last place of residence – but let’s be honest: Valentin and Planegg, it’s like farming and nature conservation, it doesn’t go together. Valentin was a Munich heart and soul, and one day the soul escaped from the Planegger gravesite, hiked along the Würm to Pasing, then on Landsberger Straße towards the city, to where his terrifying historical drama “Robber Knights in front of Munich” is set: to the Isartor . Valentine’s spirit immediately felt at home in these vaults. No matter what comes, it won’t go away. And so, in 100 years, midnight strollers will still see a skinny, violet shimmering figure haunting the tower window. “There’s no such thing,” they will say. “Munich shines.”