Prinz-Georg-Palais: A Neoclassical Palace in Munich
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.5
- Popularity
- Very Low
- Country
- Germany
- Primary era
- Modern
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Modern
- Civilizations
- German
- Site type
- Domestic
- Remains
- Palace
On this page7 sections
History
Prinz-Georg-Palais is a Neoclassical palace in Munich, Germany, commissioned in 1810 by Franz Wilhelm von Asbeck, the head of the royal tax and domain administration under Maximilian I Joseph, the first king of Bavaria. Karl von Fischer designed the building for the plot at Karolinenplatz 5, as development was being planned around the square. The neighboring plot at Karolinenplatz 4 was acquired for Crown Prince Ludwig, who later became King Ludwig I, and was used for the Palais Toerring-Seefeld.
From private palace to diplomatic residence
In 1821, the palace passed to Ferdinand Ludwig Joseph Anton von Hompesch-Bollheim, a lieutenant general in the British royal service. Leo von Klenze assessed proposed alterations in 1825. The work raised the main building by one storey and enlarged it with additions at the sides, changing the scale of Fischer’s original composition.
During the reign of Alexander III, emperor of Russia from 1881 to 1894, the palace housed the Russian legation, a diplomatic mission below the rank of an embassy, from 1881 to 1894. In 1896, Ludwig Deiglmayr & Co. acquired the property. The firm subdivided the land toward Barer Straße and Brienner Straße, added two more storeys, and sold the property to Georg of Bavaria, a member of the Bavarian royal family.
The building continued to accommodate public and diplomatic institutions. Max Bullinger used it as the Portuguese consulate from 1901 to 1904. In 1906, it housed the arbitration court for workers’ insurance, an institution that brought together all such arbitration courts.
The Salon Bruckmann and political connections
From late 1908 until 1931, the publishers Elsa and Hugo Bruckmann lived on the palace’s second floor and held their Friday Salon Bruckmann there. A salon was a private social and intellectual gathering. The Bruckmanns had previously held these meetings at Nymphenburger Straße 86, beginning in January 1899.
The salon connected the palace with Munich’s intellectual and political circles. In February 1908, Norbert von Hellingrath met Karl Wolfskehl at Elsa Bruckmann’s salon. During the First World War, Elsa Bruckmann supported aid for members of the intellectual professions. After Adolf Hitler was released from Landsberg Prison on 21 December 1924, he attended the salon on 23 December and was introduced there to the architect Paul Ludwig Troost. The Bruckmanns helped finance the Nazi Party’s acquisition of the neighboring Brown House before moving to Leopoldstraße in 1931.
The 1919 Munich journeymen’s murder
From 6 to 7 May 1919, the palace was the scene of the Munich journeymen’s murder. The massacre was carried out by the Bayreuth Freikorps under Wolff von Stutterheim. A Freikorps was a volunteer paramilitary formation active in Germany during the revolutionary and postwar upheavals that followed the First World War. A patrol led by Vice-Sergeant Konstantin Makowski abused and murdered 21 members of the Catholic St. Joseph Journeymen’s Association from Augustenstraße 71.
The events involved several people living or quartered in the palace. Sergeant Ernst Poller, who lived on the first floor, entered the courtyard in civilian clothing, was threatened, and hid. When shots were being fired, Elsa Bruckmann asked Captain Brinkmann, who was quartered on the third floor, to enter the courtyard. Brinkmann replied that the arrests had apparently been ordered by an undercover agent or a similar authority and that he could do nothing.
Colonel Hans Kundt, commander of the 2nd Guard Division of the Imperial Alexander Guards Grenadier Regiment No. 1, later entered the courtyard with his adjutant, Botho von Hülsen. He found numerous soldiers from different units and part of the brigade staff from the neighboring Palais Toerring-Seefeld.
On 25 October 1919, Jakob Müller and Vice-Sergeant Konstantin Makowski were sentenced to 14 years’ imprisonment for manslaughter. Otto Grabasch received a one-year prison sentence. No proceedings were initiated against the responsible officers, and the case against Wolff von Stutterheim was discontinued. In a separate proceeding, the former hussar Stefan Latosi was acquitted of manslaughter but sentenced to 10 years’ imprisonment for aggravated theft.
Prinz-Georg-Palais is entered as a protected architectural monument in Bavaria’s monument list. This status preserves a building whose history spans royal development, diplomatic use, public administration, private intellectual life, and the violence of Munich’s revolutionary aftermath.
Remains
Original palace design
Prinz-Georg-Palais stands as a freestanding building at Karolinenplatz 5 in Munich. Fischer based the original plan on a four-by-four grid. Along the sides, pairs of squares were combined to form individual rooms, giving the interior a regular geometric organization. The composition originally included two subsidiary buildings toward Barer Straße and Brienner Straße, whose outlines varied the design of the main facade.
A rotunda, or circular central space, occupied the center of both storeys and penetrated the hipped roof, a roof sloping on all four sides, to provide a skylight. Fischer drew on Andrea Palladio’s sixteenth-century villa La Rotonda, which he had studied and recorded in sketches during a two-year journey through Italy. Fischer adapted that model rather than reproducing it directly. Instead of Palladio’s cylindrical form and elliptical curves rising through the roof, he enclosed the central space with a square wall carried above the roof and covered it with a barrel vault, a continuous curved vault. The resulting intersections produced straight horizontal roof edges that suited Neoclassical design and simplified the meeting of the roof elements.
Facades and later enlargement
On the side facing Karolinenplatz, Fischer placed an Ionic entrance projection, using the classical Ionic order, to create a carriage entrance. The principal facade was organized around a tripartite opening, giving the front a strongly centered composition.
The alterations of 1825 raised the main building by one storey and added side sections. In 1896, two further storeys were built, while the land toward Barer Straße and Brienner Straße was subdivided. These successive changes left the palace with a form that combines Fischer’s centrally organized original design with substantial nineteenth-century enlargement.
