CENSATIONAL PROPOSAL 1 MAY 2012 | Page 5

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 .