Leonhard Moll (company)

In 1894 Leonhard Moll was just 24 when he founded his own construction business in Munich’s Schönstraße. Trained as a bricklayer, he had already developed a whole series of innovations for mechanizing the work processes on site while working in the Munich City Building Department. In the following years he was able to successfully implement these with his company in numerous municipal and state contracts for building and civil engineering projects. Using some machinery he designed himself, Leonhard Moll did pioneering work in the construction of apartments, industrial plants, roads and waterways, and also built prestigious projects in Munich, including the atrium of the Ludwig Maximilian University, Schwabing Hospital, and the Central Customs Office on the Donnersberger Bridge, as well as the subterranean water reservoirs for the city of Munich. In the 1920s, the company built a modern construction yard with a rail connection to the Munich-Laim station, it included numerous ancillary businesses, warehouses, workshops, a sawmill and a concrete and gravel plant.

During the Third Reich, the Leonhard Moll company profited enormously from state-subsidized construction projects such as the Reichsautobahn (Reich highway), the House of German Art, Munich-Riem airport and the construction and remodeling of the Munich Nazi Party headquarters in the vicinity of Königsplatz. In June 1938 the company was awarded the contract ordered by Hitler to demolish the Main Synagogue in Munich on Maxburgstraße. The company was also involved in the construction of military installations such as the Siegfried Line and in 1942 on Hansastraße, a POW and forced labor camp, in which over 1,000 people were housed. After the destruction of the Munich streetcar system in 1944, the ‘Bockerlbahn’ (narrow-gage railway) using construction locomotives and modified tipper wagons also came from the Moll company.

The ‘Moll-Kommando’ is particularly dark chapter in the company’s history. It was a detachment of concentration camp inmates who from 1944 were deployed according to the principle of ‘extermination through labor’ in the construction of the bunkers for the subterranean aircraft production of the Messerschmitt company near Landsberg. Between 700 and 800 inmates worked initially in two 12-hour shifts and from the end of 1944, in three 8-hour shifts each day; almost half of the workers deployed died through work accidents, malnutrition and acts of violence.

After the war, the company was placed under a trusteeship by the military government. Leonhard Moll died shortly after. Early 1949, his successor received the license to continue the company. With large and prestigious construction projects in Munich like the Olympic Stadium and the Neue Pinakothek (art museum) the company was able to build upon its former business success.

After decades of refusing to pay compensation to survivors, in 2000 the company owners took part in the German business foundation initiative “Remembrance, Responsibility and Future”. Against the background of the role of the company in the Third Reich, which only became known at this time, on December 9, 2014 Munich City Council decided to rename the street ‘Leonhard Moll-Bogen’ in Sendling, which was only given this name in 1990, to Landaubogen.