Municipal politics in Munich

The revolution of November 9, 1918 left Munich’s municipal government, whose function was crucial to the existence of the population, untouched. At the initiative of the Socialist Party of Germany (SPD), a working committee was formed, which in the place of the two elected municipal positions, magistrate and local authorized representative, decided urgent questions. The acute problems of demobilization, job creation, social welfare, housing, and food supply forced party politics to take a back seat.

On January 22, 1919, Bavarian Interior Minister Erhard Auer had already aligned municipal voting law with state parliamentary voting law; the law about municipal self-government followed on May 25, 1919. Instead of two councils, the city council was the only representation of all residents. The earlier exclusivity of the right to vote associated with expensive citizenship rights was over. The first mayor was now elected directly by the residents.

In the municipal elections on June 15, 1919, no candidate for mayor won the required majority. Of the 50 city councilors (including, for the first time, six women), the Independent Social Democratic party (USPD) won 16, the SPD just 10. The Bavarian People’s Party (BVP) won 15 seats, the German Democratic Party (DDP) seven; the Liberal Citizens’ Party and the Haus- und Grundbesitzer (Home and Landowners’ Party) one apiece. Thus, the old ruling classes had suffered a massive defeat. Eduard Schmid of the SPD became mayor. The party would have been prepared to vote for the candidate of the USPD; however, it then surrendered unexpectedly and supported Schmid, since, according to the justification, given the political circumstances, a USPD mayor would not have been in a position to pursue consistently socialist politics.

In contrast to the pre-war era, politics and ideology made themselves felt increasingly in debates on the city council, for example with regard to the question of city support for the militias’ shooting competition. On the morning of November 9, 1923, after Hitler’s coup attempt in the Bürgerbräukeller, a battalion of National Socialists occupied the city council chamber. A heavily armed storm troop arrested Mayor Schmidt and a series of city councilors, who were only released again that afternoon. In 1924, the National Socialists (Greater German People's Community) entered candidates for the first time in the municipal elections of December 7. The National Socialist Freedom Movement (NSF), which was affiliated with the more conservative ethnic-chauvinist Block, was in competition. On their list was Karl Fiehler, who was later the National Socialist mayor of Munich. The bourgeois right appeared as the ‘National Electoral Community’. This was an alliance of BVP, German National People's Party (DNVP), German People’s Party (DVP), and National Liberal State Party and the interest group of the Haus- und Grundbesitzer (Home and Landowners). The SPD won thirteen seats, three more than in the 1919 elections. The National Electoral Community won 21, including 13 for the BVP. The direct election of the mayor by municipal citizens was abolished in 1924. With a majority of 32 votes, the city council elected the bakery owner Karl Scharnagl of the BVP. He was backed by the 21 city councilors of the National Electoral Community, both representatives of the DDP, the three city councilors of both National Socialist groupings, and the other three city councilors, each of whom represented a different kind of interest. The 13 SPD city councilors and the five communists opposed him. Scharnagl had remained a monarchist and did not especially admire the republic.

There was no unification of the two National Socialist groups. However, Max Amann und Karl Fiehler of the NSF subjected themselves to Hitler. According to Fiehler, the work of the municipal representatives was not supposed to be first and foremost municipal politics but rather to serve the seizure of power. Frequently, the National Socialists made applications with demands that had only a propagandistic effect.

The SPD now persevered in a position of basic opposition and rejected the state continuously. The readiness of the BVP to make more concessions to the right national associations than to the trade unions at events was clear. On individual questions, however, the SPD was still ready to compromise.

After the municipal elections on December 8, 1929, the SPD was the strongest faction with 17 votes; however, due to the strict anti-socialist position of the bourgeois parties, it remained isolated. The BVP had only twelve votes, the DNVP just three, like the liberal ‘Freie Bürgerliche Mitte’ (Free Bourgeois Middle). The Communist Party of Germany (KPD) won three, the Nazi Party eight seats on the city council. Its fraction now included the uninhibited propagandist Hermann Esser, the Reich Treasurer Franz Xaver Schwarz, Hitler’s photographer Heinrich Hoffmann, Fiehler, Amann, and Christian Weber. Esser became chair of the fraction.

Karl Scharnagl won the run-off against Eduard Schmid. The twelve city councilors of his party voted for him, as did the eight National Socialists, and the three DNVP representatives. The National Socialists, who had helped elect him, held out vain hope of a speaker post. Then Esser intensified the opposition. They disturbed the sessions several times.

Munich was, due not least to the expansion of the armaments industry during World War I, the location of some large companies. However, the city's location, given its distance from sources of raw materials, was not suitable for establishing other large companies. Dominating instead, in addition to the large breweries, were especially small and medium-sized companies, especially in the quality and finishing trade. In the 1920s, the municipal committees relied on an expansion of Munich as a place of commerce and the development of tourism; the ‘Oktoberfest’ was revived in 1925.

The municipal infrastructure was expanded significantly during the era of the Weimar Republic. An especially important institution for increasing trade was the municipal ‘Großmarkthalle’ (large market hall). The capacity of the electrical power utility had been expanded significantly since 1919. The rail network for trams was expanded. A big leap forward for the sewer system was the construction of the wastewater elimination facility in Großlappen. The water supply was also expanded, and road construction advanced. The municipal hospitals were also expanded significantly. In the inflation era, only a few homes were built. Due to the general housing shortage, it was even necessary to construct barracks. Scharnagl succeeded, thanks to massive municipal subsidies (ensured, among other things, through the procurement of foreign credits in the years 1926 and 1928) in building a lot of housing. Entire residential areas were built from scratch.

With regard to schooling, the BVP insisted on education in the spirit of the Christian world-view. It rejected freedom of instruction. Permanent compromises proved impossible given the hostile hardening of the fronts. The professional training system was expanded in particular.

In 1919, the city started an innovative active cultural policy, especially through the awarding of grants. In the Schmid era, the focus was on the promotion of ‘Volksbildung’ (People's Education), among other things through the support of the ‘Volksbibliotheke’ (People's Libraries). Cultural support through grants was also continued under Scharnagl. Just as the SPD took care to support the associations close to it, Scharnagl, for his part, was careful not to neglect the Catholic organizations and institutions in the cultural sphere. The city appointed its own art advisory board, as well as a theater committee, a literature committee, and a music advisory board. In 1924, it acquired ownership of Franz von Lenbach's villa with his gallery, so it thus had its own art collection. A municipal orchestra was still lacking. The city had a financial stake in the ‘Münchner Konzertverein’ (Munich Concert Association). The theater received the largest share of the funds for the promotion of art. The Kammerspiele was the only municipally supported theater. Its openness for modern plays was a thorn in the side of both the conservatively inclined as well as the National Socialists. The city also committed itself to the ‘Bayerische Landesfilmbühne’ (Bavarian State Film Stage), to promote high-quality films. To support painting, several associations that stood for traditional art were preferred. Furthermore, only conservative-traditional writers were presented with the literature prize, which was introduced in 1927. Lord Mayor Scharnagl rejected modern influences in art and cultural generally, an attitude that was largely responsible for the failure of the attempt to maintain Munich’s reputation as a city of art. The austerity forced by the crisis in 1932 also resulted in a severe setback for cultural politics.

The costs of the social state continued to increase, which meant that the municipal bureaucracy had to be expanded and a social welfare bureau set up. Responsible for social welfare was the municipal ‘Bezirksfürsorgeverband München-Stadt’ (Regional Welfare Association Munich-City). City councilors, welfare organizations, and welfare recipients were represented on a welfare board formed in 1924 to replace the former poor council. At the behest of the BVP, in 1924 a credit institution for craftsmen and trade was created, which was part of the Social Welfare Bureau. An important area that was also expanded was youth welfare, for which a committee was created that already called itself the Youth Welfare Office and was closely interwoven with the Social Welfare Bureau. Another area that was intensified was health care. Thanks to a Reich law, in 1927 the Ministry of Labor and its tasks were transferred to the Reich. However, the city had to make contributions for employment welfare, as it was also responsible for labor matters for recipients of welfare and emergency work. At the high point of the economic crisis, effective June 1, 1932, the rates of general welfare were reduced to an exceptionally low level. Food prices were also forced down, but this could not compensate for the difference. In the last quarter of 1932, there were more demonstrations by the unemployed and hungry. The emergency work did not have a great impact.

Given the conditions of the Depression, the increasing expenditures in the second half of the 1920s created a catastrophe for municipal finances. The ‘Erzbergersche Reichsfinanzreform’ (Erzberger's Reich Financial Reform) in 1919-1920 sharply limited municipalities’ direct tax revenue and made them dependent on state allocations. Due to inflation, the state's debts had shrunk, but almost all the assets of foundations managed by the city had been destroyed. The financial situation, which was still able to produce surpluses in 1924, became increasingly critical, not least due to the continuously rising welfare burdens and the expansion of the municipal infrastructure, as well as the costly promotion of residential construction. Since 1927, levies had increased to the maximum. Next to Cologne and Berlin, Munich was the city most heavily indebted abroad. In 1931, the ‘Bürgersteuer’ (Citizens’ Tax) had to be introduced given the crisis. The beer tax had already been increased several times. When the city deliberately left a deficit of 17 million reichsmarks in its budget estimate on April 4, 1932 because it saw no possibility of closing this gap during the economic crisis, the government of Upper Bavaria forced drastic austerity measures on it in September 1932, accompanied by a plethora of tax and fee increases.

Despite the city's precarious situation, the National Socialists did not succeed in conquering it politically through electoral successes. The ‘Machtergreifung’ (seizure of power) in the city of Munich happened instead due to a combination of violent acts and pseudo-legal measures: On the evening of March 9, 1933, the National Socialists raised the swastika flag over City Hall, and the National Socialist City Councilor Max Amann announced from the balcony the seizure of power in Bavaria by Franz von Epp, although neither his appointment as Commissioner of the Reich had been made by Berlin nor had the Bavarian government officially declared its resignation. Amann also asserted, contrary to the truth, that Lord Mayor Scharnagl had already left City Hall. This takeover maneuver was supposed to make it easier to take over City Hall. At 10:30 PM, von Epp and Regional Leader (Gauleiter) Adolf Wagner made speeches in front of the Feldherrnhalle, in which they spoke of the seizure of power in Bavaria. On March 16, Wagner, who in the meantime had become Acting Minister of the Interior, demanded that Scharnagl resign. Scharnagl relented on March 20 and declared that he was ceding to violence. On that same evening, Wagner appointed Karl Fiehler First Mayor.

Due to the Preliminary Law for the Enforced Conformity of the States with the Reich dated March 31, 1933 and the new formation of the municipal offices, Fiehler dissolved the city council as of April 3. It was reconstituted based on the Reichstag election results of March 5, 1933. The Nazi Party won the largest share, with 20 city councilors. The Social Democrats were put down violently; the BVP city councilors had to leave the city council in July.