Central Ministry

The Regional Leader (Gauleiter) for Munich and Upper Bavaria, Paul Giesler was in charge of all remaining Bavarian ministries from November 1942 onwards and sought to consolidate them as ministerial departments under the umbrella of a Central Ministry, but he failed to bring this idea to fruition.

Built between 1938 and 1940 and situated on the corner of Ludwigstraße and von-der-Tann-Straße, the Central Ministry was due to be ready for occupancy in 1942 after the interior work had been completed. Prof. Fritz Gablonsky was in charge of the construction. The building encloses two courtyards (a southern inner courtyard, the Schmuckhof, and a service yard) which are divided by central structure. In 1943, an underground bunker extending over a surface area of some 260 meters was built under the south-eastern section to protect the Regional Leader’s command post from air raids.

It was from here that the persecution of those involved in the ‘Freedom Action Bavaria’ uprising was initiated – at the orders of Regional Leader Paul Giesler. The People’s Storm (Volkssturm) unit subordinate to the Regional Leader arrested a total of 22 suspects, four of whom were executed in the building’s service yard, while five others were taken to Perlacher Forst where they were shot. A plaque commemorating these events was installed in the Schmuckhof in 1984 – set into the wall on the left-hand side along from the entrance on Ludwigstraße.

Immediately after the end of the war, the US military government used the building to house various offices such as the headquarters of the Munich military police; it later passed into the hands of the Bavarian State Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Forestry on May 1, 1958.