Munich: The Führerbau is renovated and the music college is expanded into a campus – Munich

The driver’s building is being completely renovated. The debate about it has been going on since 1957, when the state music college moved into the historically heavily contaminated building. Now Art and Science Minister Markus Blume (CSU) has apparently been able to convince the Council of Ministers that the plans can no longer be postponed. Blume says he is “glad” to be able to pass the relevant resolution during this legislative period.

The house on Arcisstrasse in the immediate vicinity of Königsplatz was built for Adolf Hitler between 1933 and 1937 according to plans by the architect Paul Ludwig Troost. In 1938, the “Munich Agreement” was signed there at the height of the Anglo-French appeasement policy towards Nazi Germany. At the beginning of the discussion about the renovation, the focus was on how the house would be used, but today the solution of allowing young, talented people from all over the world to study music there has long been seen as the only sensible remedy for the place.

But for more than a decade now, the massively dilapidated condition of the building has been obvious and is becoming the most pressing problem. The building technology is more than 70 years old. Everything that was repaired was only sparsely addressed in view of an impending general renovation. That’s why university operations there have been constantly at risk for years and the structural problems are increasing from month to month. The school, which enjoys a global reputation for its standard of education, has also had to partially close once. That was last November. Water damage in the stairwell paralyzed the northern atrium. Lessons and practice sessions literally fell through the cracks.

Ten years ago, the university’s main archives were massively infested with mold. However, after extensive decontamination work, the important stocks were saved. However, the basement is still damp. We hear from university circles that there is currently another mold alarm and parts of the library holdings are threatened. An outer wall and an organ room in the north are currently again affected by water damage.

In addition, despite all major planning, a new fire alarm system was recently installed. Otherwise the large concert hall could no longer have been used. This wood-panelled hall, which was subsequently added to the Troost building in the 1950s and was specifically placed under monument protection, is an important place for performances and therefore for examinations at the university.

The project application that the university submitted and which Blume’s ministry has now approved goes well beyond the general renovation of the main building. An entire campus for the academy is to be built around the former Führer building, fitting into the art area that has emerged around it over the decades. This is possible because another neighboring Free State property has become vacant in recent years: the site of the former state lottery administration.

The future of the university will be secured in this way

Its main entrance is on Karolinenplatz, and this building is now also to be renovated so that the library and a “Digital Learning Center” can move in. In addition, a new building is planned, a simple office block into which the university administration, the Digital Arts Center and the science and media center could move. The high, large old rooms in the main building are better suited for other things anyway.

Open detailed view

The Munich University of Music and Theater is the largest state art university in Bavaria and offers training not only in the field of music, but also in the subjects of dance and theater, cultural management and, from this winter semester, also in cultural journalism. The university’s president, Lydia Grün, is “very grateful” for the political decision that is necessary to secure the future of the institution. Her predecessor Bernd Redmann, who will take over as president of the Lübeck University of Music in the winter semester, had already fought intensively for this.

A total of 1,300 students come and go from the Munich University of Music. However, some of them are primarily taught at the school’s other four locations, which are maintained due to lack of space – such as the Gasteig Interim. Without appropriately equipped alternative accommodation, the renovation of the Troost building will not be possible. Blume’s team has now also initiated planning with the building authority. It is located in a well-known location, at Frankenthaler Straße 23-25. The University of Television and Film was housed there for decades in an old bed spring factory before it moved to its new building in the art area, in the immediate vicinity of the University of Music.

Some of the rooms in the east of Munich are already used by the University of Music, while others on the same site are used by the Bavarian State Theater as rehearsal rooms. This also explains why Blume says that the decision to renovate Arcisstrasse “is another step in my cultural cascade.” For him, it began with the groundbreaking ceremony for the construction of the rehearsal and workshop building for the Bavarian State Theater. Stage two is the reorientation of the Biotopia project towards the Bavarian Natural History Museum. Level three is now the music college campus.

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According to the status of the building application, the total volume of the construction project for the renovation of the main building and the new campus is estimated at up to 400 million euros. The move from Arcisstrasse to Frankenthaler Strasse will “definitely take place in the 1920s,” says Blume. If students and teachers move back, the culture of remembrance in the building could be cultivated differently, even more modernly, than before. Right next door, for example, the razed temples of honor have so far been left to a controlled state of decay. Whether the overgrown stone blocks really serve a purpose has been discussed in urban society for a long time.

The cost could be around 400 million euros

“The university building is a memorial to the unjust Nazi rule. This historical legacy must be handled carefully,” says Blume. “That’s why this general renovation is not only an obligation for us towards the music college and the people who teach and study there. It is important to preserve the house and continue to provide it with cultural use in the spirit of democracy.” There will therefore be an accompanying “dialogue forum”, “a panel of experts with national and international membership, in which neighboring institutions such as the NS Documentation Center and the Art Area are also involved”.

The fact that Blume’s cultural cascade with the decision surrounding the Führer building is still far from being finally sorted out is made clear by a simple question: What should now happen to the barely less dilapidated twin building, which stands right across Brienner Strasse? The former party headquarters of the NSDAP is connected to the Führerbau underground via cellar passages such as the “Diplomat Tunnel”.

Open detailed view

The building houses, among other things, the Central Institute for Art History (ZI) and the Cast Museum. After the war, both houses temporarily formed the Americans’ “Central Art Collecting Point”, i.e. the central collection point for works of art found during the Nazi art theft. Parts of the Free State’s graphic collection are now stored in the basement of the ZI. These have also suffered from water damage and mold in the past.

The entire house and its technology are no younger than that of the musical neighbor. The answer from the ministry is: No, so far there are no plans to include its renovation. This planning is separate. And that for the other large cultural Nazi building, which is now a little further back, anyway: the Haus der Kunst.