Culture & History
The foundation of Munich dates back to 1158, although some of the districts of the city like Schwabing, Sendling or Giesing are said to be much older than this. In 1506 Munich became the capital of Bavaria. The city had to suffer a lot during the 30-years’ war and then became an important center of arts and politics in the 16 th and 17 th century.
In the 19 th century the city prospered and some of its best architecture and arts date from that period. Due to the industrialization, the city also grew very fast at that time and became more and more important as a center of arts, culture and economy. Between the end of the 19 th century and the first half of the 20 th century famous artists, politicians and scientists like Thomas Mann, Bertolt Brecht, Ernst Mach, Albert Einstein, Lenin, Franz Marc and Richard Strauss lived and worked in Munich.
In the 1920s Munich became a very important place for the growing Nazi-movement in Germany and when the Nazis got to power in 1933 the city was a strongholdfor the dictatorship of Adolf Hitler and his followers. It was in Dachau, close to Munich, where the first concentration camp in Germany was installed. There, more than 30.000 Jews, members of other ethnical minorities and political opponents were killed in the time between 1933 and 1945, when the Second World War ended with about 60 Million dead persons and more than 6 Million Jews murdered in concentration camps all over Europe. Munich got heavily destroyed during the Second World War and still today old bombs from the war are often found on construction sitesin the city.
In 1972 Munich hosted the Olympic Summer Games and the Olympic sites like the Olympic Stadium and the Park are seen as masterpieces of the architecture of the 1970s. During the Games a group of Palestinian Terrorists kidnapped members of the Israeli National Team and when police tried to free the hostages 11 Israelis, 5 Palestinians and 1 police officer got killed.