To the beautiful tower (Munich)

The building in Munich's pedestrian zone

The building to the beautiful tower is a representative office building. It is located on Kaufingerstraße in the center of Munich, right next to the Frauenkirche . The building was built from 1912 to 1914 according to plans by the architects Eugen Hönig & Karl Söldner on behalf of the Jewish owners of the textile trading company Bamberger & Herz .

Surname

Memorial plaque on the front of the Hirmer headquarters

The name refers to the beautiful tower , a gate tower of Munich's medieval city wall , which was demolished in 1807.

“ The beautiful tower . Built in 1157 in front of today's Hirmer House as a gate tower in Munich's oldest city wall. Rebuilt in 1479 and adorned with frescoes that gave it the name 'Beautiful Tower'. Canceled in 1807. The marking on the ground shows its former location. "

- Inscription on the plaque on the Hirmer headquarters

architecture

Figure decorations on the facade

The original figurative decoration on the outside facade of the building in Munich style came from the German sculptor Julius Seidler , but was not fully reconstructed until the 1980s as a result of the damage of the Second World War and the subsequent numerous renovations to the office building. The building is listed in the list of monuments of the city of Munich .

Bamberger & Heart

The textile department store in the Schönen Turm in Kaufingerstraße was one of numerous branches that the brothers Max, Siegfried "Fritz", Ludwig and Gustav Bamberger - starting from their parent company in Worms - had opened in the German Empire from 1909 . The merchant Siegfried Bamberger (1885–1976), who lived in Frankfurt am Main , was responsible for the Munich branch. During the Nazi dictatorship , sales fell significantly after the so-called Jewish boycott of April 1, 1933, in which SA people covered the shop windows in Kaufingerstrasse and urged “Germans” not to shop with Jews. The branch in Saarbrücken was closed in 1934, and the stores in Cologne, Frankfurt and Stuttgart were " Aryanized " or closed by 1938 . The branch of Bamberger & Herz on Augustusplatz in Leipzig ( Königsbau ) was set on fire during the Reichspogromnacht in 1938 and the owners were subsequently charged with arson. The brothers Ludwig and Gustav Bamberger were deported to the Buchenwald concentration camp on November 11, 1938 by the National Socialists .

Siegfried Bamberger was only able to transfer the Munich branch to the department head Johannes Hirmer, who also took over the management of the company, in 1938, before the ordinance on the elimination of Jews from German economic life came into force . Since sales had shrunk to a third since the boycott, Hirmer immediately changed the company to his name.

Siegfried Bamberger, the only one of the brothers who had survived after fleeing to the United States, received an offer from Johannes Hirmer in November 1945 to return the business after the end of the war . Since Bamberger did not want to return to Munich, the two merchants agreed that the Bamberger family would hold a 50 percent stake.

Hirmer headquarters

Plastic of the beautiful tower on the corner of the building

The Hirmer family acquired the shares of the Bamberger family on January 1, 1952. The Hirmer parent company today describes itself as the world's largest men's fashion store and is part of the Hirmer Group , which also includes the Hirmer Grosse Grössen , Eckerle , Hirmer Eckerle Service and Hirmer Real Estate divisions .

literature

Angelika Baumann (editor and publisher): Jewish life in Munich. History competition 1993/94 , Buchendorfer, Munich 1995, ISBN 978-3-92798438-7 , p. 154.
The Art: Monthly Issues for Free and Applied Arts (Volume 34) , F. Bruckmann, Munich 1916, pp. 140–148.
Wolfram Selig : "Aryanization" in Munich: the annihilation of Jewish existence 1937-1939 , Metropol, Berlin 2004, ISBN 978-3-93641133-1 , p. 92ff.
Hans-Diether Dörfler: From Bamberger & Hertz to HIRMER - A respectable piece of economic history , Munich 2015.