Munich · DE
True Crime Munich
Assassins, Swindlers, Witch Hunters and the Verdicts That Shook Bavaria
What's the walk about?
Welcome to Munich, the Bavarian capital of beer gardens, baroque churches and royal splendour. But behind the elegant facades of the Altstadt lies another Munich — a city of political assassins and Cold War poisoners, of witch hunters and swindlers, of a drowned king and courtroom verdicts that divided a nation. On this walk we step off the tourist trail and follow the trail of the city's most notorious crimes, standing on the very spots where history turned dark.
What you'll see
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1
The Bayern Boss in the Dock - Justizpalast
Courthouse
Beneath the glass dome of Munich's neo-baroque Palace of Justice, the most powerful man in German football - Bayern Munich president Uli Hoeness - stood trial in March 2014 for tax evasion, and walked out sentenced to three and a half years in prison.
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2
A Heart Attack Made in Moscow - Karlstor
Square
In the stairwell of Karlsplatz 8, beside the medieval Karlstor, KGB assassin Bohdan Stashynsky sprayed cyanide gas into the face of Ukrainian exile editor Lev Rebet on 12 October 1957. The pathologist certified a heart attack, and the truth stayed buried for four years.
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3
The Call from Hinterkaifeck - Polizeipräsidium
Building
Behind the stone lions of Theodor Fischer's 1913 police headquarters, Munich's Kripo took a telephone call at a quarter past six on 4 April 1922 that opened Germany's most famous unsolved case: six people beaten to death with a mattock on the lonely farm of Hinterkaifeck, and a killer who stayed to feed the cattle.
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4
Shot in the Back - Kurt Eisner Memorial
Monument
Set into the pavement opposite the Palais Montgelas, a steel plate traces the chalk outline of Kurt Eisner, Bavaria's first prime minister, who was shot in the back and head on this spot on 21 February 1919 while carrying his own resignation speech to parliament.
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5
Burned as Witches - Marienplatz
Square
On 29 July 1600 the Pappenheimers, a family of vagrant beggars tortured into confessing witchcraft and hundreds of murders, were sentenced at Munich's town hall and led from this square to be torn with red hot pincers, broken on the wheel and burned alive, in the most notorious witch trial in Bavarian history.
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6
The King of Maximilianstrasse - Moshammer's Boutique
Shop
Behind this glass at Maximilianstrasse 14, Rudolph Moshammer, Munich's flamboyant 'Mosi' with the Ludwig II wig and the Yorkshire terrier Daisy, held court for thirty seven years in his boutique Carnaval de Venise. On the night of 14 January 2005 the 64-year-old designer was strangled with an electric cable in his Gruenwald villa, and within 48 hours a DNA trace on the cable had named his killer.
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7
The Drowned King - Residenz
Palace
Behind the bronze lions of the Kapellenhof, in the black-draped Hofkapelle of the Residenz, King Ludwig II lay in state from 16 to 18 June 1886, three days after he and his psychiatrist were found dead in the shallows of Lake Starnberg, a death officially ruled suicide and still disputed today.
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8
Shot Without Trial - Hofgarten
Park
Behind the serene Renaissance lawns of the Hofgarten, the royal Residenz became a Freikorps prison in May 1919, where the 23 year old commander of the Red Army, Rudolf Egelhofer, was beaten and shot without any trial during the bloodiest week in Munich's modern history.
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9
The Angel of the Poor - Spitzeder Bank, Schoenfeldstrasse 9
building
On this quiet corner near the Englischer Garten, failed actress Adele Spitzeder ran her 'Dachauer Bank' from 1871, paying ten percent interest a month out of new deposits in one of history's first documented Ponzi schemes, until a crowd besieged the house on 12 November 1872 and she was arrested that night.
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