Menterschwaige villa colony

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Landhaus Lehmann ; built for Julius Friedrich Lehmann , 1905

The villa colony Menterschwaige is a settlement on the high bank of the Isar in Munich in the Harlaching district . The development originally consisted of spacious residential buildings of the late historicism , especially the Heimat style . The colony is around 48 hectares and was developed by the Heilmann & Littmann construction company from 1896 . It is named after the Menterschwaige estate , which is located in the northwest of the area.

location

The estate was first mentioned in a document around 1012; it had been in the possession of the Munich Dukes of Bavaria since the 15th century and, with a brief interruption, remained the property of the Wittelsbach family until 1793 . It then went into private ownership and was sold several times in quick succession. In the 19th century the manor was expanded as a restaurant and was a popular destination for excursions and artist festivals. The entire area between the road from Harlaching to Grünwald in the east and the steep slope of the Isar valley in the west belonged to the farm . In the south it was bounded by the Munich – Holzkirchen railway , which crosses the Isar valley on the Großhesseloher bridge , which is considered a technical masterpiece . In the north, the property only extended a little beyond the estate. The area in the south consisted of loose forest, the rest were agricultural pastures and fields. Together with Harlaching, the Menterschwaige was added to Giesing in 1854 and incorporated into Munich with the latter in the same year .

Jakob Heilmann, 1871
General plan from Heilmann & Littmann's annual report 1900

history

Purchase and development

In 1896 the construction company Heilmann & Littmann bought the inn and site with a total of 52 hectares for 450,000 marks in order to create one of its villa colonies there, with which it had been successful in the greater Munich area since 1887. Two years earlier, the property had been offered to the city of Munich, which had refused a purchase with a narrow majority in the magistrate and thus lost the opportunity to intervene in the property policy. The magistrate wrote in 1910: "In the field of property policy, the city colleagues used to lack almost any initiative and foresight."

The company submitted a building line plan, which was approved by the city of Munich as early as 1897. He envisaged a road grid with a generous space to widen the access to the manor. Heilmann & Littmann offered the city to build the streets at its own expense and to give them to the community free of charge. From 1898, a legal obligation was introduced that property developer - at that time as terrain companies were called - 5% of the provision to be planned land as a public road space, create the streets and transferred to the town had. In the Menterschwaige, Heilmann & Littmann voluntarily offered these services, which were already the subject of political debate. In addition, they would also transfer the steep slope and the footpath on the high bank, popular with day trippers, to the city free of charge. This offer is the reason for the city administration to quickly accept the planning. The rigid street grid was unusual. Ever since Theodor Fischer was responsible for urban expansion in Munich's city administration, curved streets were common for high-quality residential areas in Munich. Heilmann & Littmann, too, had planned streets with curves and significantly more small squares that were adapted to the shape of the landscape for earlier villa colonies. According to a surviving letter from Fischer to Gabriel von Seidl , who asked for the name of the Isar Valley Association for the layout of the road, the construction of the building line in Menterschwaige was due to an error. The city approved a preliminary plan, which was only intended to be an example of the number of plots and their distribution. When it was implemented several years later, the company no longer remembered the preliminary character and felt bound by the plan.

Heilmann & Littmann sold the 48 hectares for the villa colony in the course of 1897 to the newly founded Heilmann'sche Münchner Aktiengesellschaft , another company in Jakob Heilmann's group that handled real estate transactions. The purchase price was 430,479 marks. In 1898 they sold the estate to the Bürgerliche Brauhaus München , a large brewery and restaurant operator that belonged to the family of Heilmann's second wife Josephine, née Hierl, and whose supervisory board Heilmann himself sat on. The price for the restaurant with around 4 hectares of land and various outbuildings was 220,000 marks, so that Heilmann & Littmann, who had paid 450,000 marks themselves, received around 200,000 marks or 44% from sales within the closely related companies within less than two years. Show profit.

The Heilmann'sche Immobiliengesellschaft offered the Menterschwaige in the form of individual, undeveloped properties. In contrast to earlier construction projects such as the villa colony Prinz-Ludwigs-Höhe on the opposite bank of the Isar, she did not build any houses herself; rather, the buyers of the land commissioned architects of their choice to design and build the houses. In the advertisement for the land, the company wrote: “Beautifully landscaped location on the steep edge of the Isar valley, wonderful view of Munich and south of the mountains. Magnificent forest! ”As early as 1900, more than a third of the land was sold, especially the wooded land in the south of the colony sold quickly. Thereafter, both the sale and the development of the land stalled until around 1910, when the city of Munich completed the tram line to Grünwald and thus made the new residential area accessible. Before, there was only the unpaved road from Harlaching to Grünwald, which residents of the adjacent upscale residential areas often complained about, and the railway line. Their next stop, however, was Großhesselohe on the other bank of the Isar, so that passengers could only reach the villa colony by walking at least twenty minutes over the railway bridge.

There had been a dispute about the construction of the tram since around 1902, the city had not pushed ahead with the long-standing planning itself, but on the other hand it had also not allowed a privately financed tram to receive a license. In 1899 Heilmann & Littmann had also acquired a nearby property in Geiselgasteig , where they were planning another villa colony. Therefore they had a strong interest in the progress of the tram planning. In 1907 Heilmann & Littmann offered the city a wider strip in the south of the slope edge. In 1909 the company finally came to an agreement with the city on a number of issues. They sold the extension areas on the edge of the slope, a 2.3 hectare property in the Geiselgasteig planning area and 1.8 hectares of controversial land in the Isar valley below Grünwald for 65,000 marks to the city. In the year the tram was opened in 1910, the city also took over the traffic areas according to the planning with the extended hillside property.

Buildings and residents

The development of the land was much slower. In 1910 only four houses were built, including the Landhaus Lehmann owned by the publisher Julius Friedrich Lehmann and the Landhaus Spatz belonging to his brother-in-law, Hofrat Bernhard Spatz.

The Landhaus Lehmann in the villa colony played a special role in the context of the Hitler putsch on the night of November 8th to 9th, 1923. Julius Lehmann systematically opened the specialist publisher he had taken over from Münchner Medizinische Wochenschrift (today: MMW-progress of medicine ) Racial theory and racial hygiene expanded. He is considered one of the leading pioneers of National Socialism in Munich, supported a large number of national clubs and associations and published anti-democratic publications. Later leaders of National Socialism met regularly in his house. On the night of the Hitler putsch, the representatives of the Bavarian government who had been arrested by the putschists in the Bürgerbräukeller , Prime Minister Eugen von Knilling , Minister of Justice Franz Gürtner , Minister of the Interior Franz Schweyer , Minister of Agriculture Johannes Wutzlhofer , Munich Police President Karl Mantel and other high-ranking politicians were accompanied by 30 armed SA men Transported to Lehmann's house under the direction of Rudolf Heß and taken into " protective custody " there. When the coup failed the following day, the hostages were handed over unharmed to the advancing police.

Rudolf Hess later became a resident of the Menterschwaige himself. In 1935 he bought one of the largest plots in the colony right on the edge of the slope, which had been built on in 1925 with a country house with outbuildings. Hess had the house largely rebuilt by the architect Peter von Seidlein and expanded to almost double the usable area. The building was damaged in World War II and partially burned down. After the war, the property was used by the US Army as a youth camp for the children of the occupation forces. It was not until 1991 that the Americans returned the property to the Free State of Bavaria, which still maintains two rehearsal stages for the Gärtnerplatztheater there . A conversion of the theater on Gärtnerplatz is planned for 2012 to 2014, in which the rehearsal stages in the Menterschwaige are to be integrated into the main building.

On the other hand, the German-Russian doctor Hugo Schmorell lived with his family in the Menterschwaige. His son Alexander Schmorell met Hans Scholl , who was also studying medicine, as a medical student in the Wehrmacht medical company in 1941 , and became friends with him. A circle of friends developed, which also included Christoph Probst and who met regularly in the Schmorell's house for literary and philosophical discussion and reading evenings. At the beginning of 1942, the Friends became active in the resistance against National Socialism and founded the White Rose . The only larger square in the Menterschwaige is named after Schmorell today.

Other prominent residents of the Menterschwaige before and during the Second World War were the hotelier and restaurateur Alfred Walterspiel , the writer Kuni Tremel-Eggert and the composer Siegmund von Hausegger .

The houses of the villa colony only suffered sporadic war damage; after the war, the entire Menterschwaige colony with the southern part of Harlaching was confiscated by the US Army on April 12, 1946 and served as a residential area for members of the occupation forces and the American civil administration. The houses were returned to their owners between 1955 and 1957 after the American settlement in the Obergiesing district had been completed.

Villa Arntz , 1912
Baumann House , 1912
Villa Ahles , 1913

Menterschwaige villa colony today

The Menterschwaige still forms its own quarter in the Harlaching district of Munich. After the Second World War, a small area was built on that borders the railway line to the south and extends to the city limits. The northern border is not exactly determined, the assignments of individual authors vary here. Since the city limits at the southern end of the Harlaching Clinic at Faistenbergerstraße bend at right angles from Geiselgasteigstraße and the narrow strip widens to a wide area here, this point is often viewed as the transition from Menterschwaige to the core area of ​​Harlaching. The Menterschwaige also includes the former Menterschwaige forest health resort on a cleared island in the Perlacher Forest, east of the road to Grünwald. It was set up in 1931 by the Upper Bavaria State Insurance Institute for women and girls with lung disease. The reclining halls built for breathing therapy were demolished in 1986, and today the Menterschwaige Dynamic Psychiatric Clinic is housed in the otherwise preserved building .

Architectural monuments

The Menterschwaige was originally shaped by the architecture of late historicism, especially the Heimat style, and the beginning Art Nouveau . Only a few buildings have survived. A large number of the houses were completely remodeled or demolished as out of fashion in the post-war period. The plots were often divided and several modern houses were built on. Apart from the Menterschwaige manor, only five other buildings from the original period have been preserved close to their original state and are under monument protection. These are:

  • the Landhaus Lehmann (Holzkirchner Straße 2) in the south of the area is described as a “stately villa” in a “half-timbered style with a strikingly steep roof”. It was built in 1905 by the architect Carl Ebert . The floor plan has been adapted to Lehmann's wishes for a house for the family and is less used for representation. This is particularly evident in a separate “children's living room” on the ground floor next to the general living room. The high roof with two storeys accommodates the servants' rooms on the one hand, and on the other hand there is a larger number of guest rooms here, as on the first floor. In a presentation of the house in 1908, the Architektonische Rundschau referred to the rich furnishings in the hall and living room with wood paneling and the many outdoor seating areas. Otherwise she calls the equipment “simple but very solid.” One of the verandas that was counted as an outdoor seating is closed today.
  • the Villa Arntz (Benediktenwandstraße 17) was designed by the architect Theo Urmetzer and completed in 1912. The floor plan is almost square. A chemical-pharmaceutical laboratory was set up in the basement, in which Doctor K. Arntz manufactured products for his company.
  • At the beginning of 1912, the architect Eduard Baumann bought three small, adjacent properties in the north of the area. He designed a group of terraced houses (Rabenkopfstraße 8, 10, 12) for the properties, which shows a symmetrical structure. The single-family houses are characterized by a continuous mansard roof and corner bay windows.
  • In 1913 the villa of the lawyer Max Ahles (Harthauser Straße 117) was completed, which stands on one of the larger, wooded properties. The architect was Ernst Günther , the building is symmetrical with two corner projections and is noticeable for its wooden cladding on the upper floor. The building was used as a children's home from 1934 to 1936 and has been a residential building again since then.

Memorials

In memory of Alexander Schmorell's place of residence and the meetings of the White Rose there , the Harthauser Platz east of the estate was renamed Schmorellplatz as early as 1946 . In 1975 a memorial stone was erected near the corner of Harthauser and Holzkirchner Strasse on the Isar high bank, commemorating the resistance fighters and those persecuted by the Third Reich .

literature

  • Dorle Gribl: Villa colonies in Munich and the surrounding area - The influence of Jakob Heilmann on urban development . Buchendorfer Verlag, 1999, ISBN 3-934036-02-3
  • Dorle Gribl: Harlaching and the Menterschwaige - From Noble Seat to Garden City , Buchendorfer Verlag, 2004, ISBN 3-937090-05-3

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The previous history is based on Gribl 2004, pages 170–178
  2. ↑ Gribl 2004, page 9
  3. ↑ a b Gribl 1999, chapter villa colony on the Menterschwaige, pages 149–161
  4. ↑ quoted from Gribl 2004, page 184
  5. ↑ Gribl 1999, page 153
  6. ↑ Gribl 2004, page 186f.
  7. ↑ Gribl 1999, page 19
  8. ↑ quoted from Gribl 2004, page 188
  9. ↑ Gribl 2004, page 187
  10. ↑ Unless otherwise stated, this chapter is based on: Gribl 2004. Pages 189–210
  11. ^ Manfred Treml : History of Modern Bavaria . Bavarian State Center for Political Education, 2006, pages 217–221; 219
  12. ↑ State theater on Gärtnerplatz: technical data
  13. ^ Staatstheater am Gärtnerplatz: The Gärtnerplatztheater is being renovated
  14. ↑ Gribl 2004, pp. 150–155
  15. ↑ Different delimitations sometimes occur with the same author. So lets z. B. Hans Dollinger in his book Die Münchner Straßenennamen (6th, updated edition, Südwest Verlag, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-517-08370-4 ) in the listing of the districts that go from Menterschwaige to Menterschwaigstrasse, but counts in the List of the streets whose three northern parallel streets up to Faistenbergerstraße also to Menterschwaige.
  16. ↑ quoted from Gribl 2004, page 206
  17. ↑ Helga Pfoertner: Living with history. Vol. 3, Literareron, Munich 2005, ISBN 3-8316-1026-6 , pp. 150–151 ( PDF; 6.0 MB ( memento from June 26, 2008 in the Internet Archive )).

Coordinates: 48 ° 5 ′ 1.8 ″  N , 11 ° 32 ′ 54.9 ″  E