An Interlude in Munich: 1-14 September, 2025

1 September:

My two week stay in Munich is a period I have to myself between two Hayllar Music Tours tours. I decided to stay in Europe rather than enduring two further bouts of jetlag by returning home then coming back. I have no plans, just a few thoughts on things I might do, plus I want to rest, and I also have work to do on talks for future tours.

Given the focus of my tour work - music - I'm pretty sure my focus here will be visual as I have no desire to attend performances. I plan to spend a lot of time in galleries. I'll share things here as and when they arise.

I arrived back in Munich on Monday afternoon and reluctantly said goodbye to our tour guests from the Salzburg/Schwarzenberg tour. I'm staying in a hotel near the main railway station so this morning I braved the light drizzle to explore a bit of the Old Town centre.

I eventually found myself exploring three churches. St Michael's is a beautiful 16th century church, severely damaged in WW2 but restored gloriously in the years since.

I then went to the Frauenkirche, Munich's Cathedral. This magnificent 15th century edifice (also damaged during the war but beautifully rebuilt) boasts two 98m high towers which are important local landmarks.

Then quite by accident I stumbled on the smaller but also lovely Heilig-Geist-Kirche (Church of the Holy Spirit), originally built in the 14th century but remodelled in the 18th century.

While in the Cathedral I went into the crypt to discover that many members of the Bavarian ruling family were buried there. My curiosity was piqued, though, by the absence of King Ludwig II, well known to music lovers as the supporter (and financial underwriter) of Richard Wagner.

A quick online search revealed that he and many others of the dynasty were buried in the crypt of St Michael's, something I'd missed when I was there just prior. So on my way back to the hotel I stopped in to St Michael's and happily paid the three euros to enter the crypt. There I discovered a large number of sarcophagi, arranged around the floor, each with its own plaque. Here there were many princes, princesses and other nobles, but only two kings: Ludwig II and his successor, Otto.

Ludwig's sarcophagus is the largest of them all and is given pride of place. I was touched to find a small envelope placed on it, marked, "Für Ludwig" (For Ludwig). I'd love to know what message it contained; the musical romantic in me imagines an expression of thanks for making some of the greatest music for the operatic stage possible by virtue of his obsessive devotion to Wagner and his music.

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3 September:

Today in Munich I spent several hours - as my feet are still reminding me - in one of the great traditional art galleries of Europe: Munich's Alte Pinakothek.

This glorious collection of old masters paintings from the Middle Ages to the 19th century is one of the oldest collections in the world. It started as the private collection of the Bavarian nobility in the 16th century and has expanded into one of the most significant collections of its type. The building in which it's now housed dates from the 19th century but it has undergone almost constant renovation ever since.

The minute I walked in I realised there was no way I could share pictures of things in the collection which impressed me; everything impressed me. But one little painting I stumbled upon (not literally) I will share.

In Schwarzenberg, the concert venue for the Schubertiade last week was called the Angelika Kauffmann Hall. Angelika Kauffmann (1741-1807) was a painter who had family ties to Schwarzenberg and quite unexpectedly I saw one of her paintings today in the Alte Pinakothek, a self portrait dating from 1784. It's so beautiful I thought I'd share it below. (I took the picture at a slightly weird angle in an attempt to reduce the reflection of the lights on the glass.)

You can read more about the Alte Pinakothek here.

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5 September:

Today in a drizzly, wet Munich I continued my exploration of the city's art institutions by taking in two specialist galleries.

The first was the Lenbachhaus, a gallery in a restored faux-Florentine mansion (built in the 19th century) to which has been added a modern extension (opened in 2013). It houses modern art (almost exclusively paintings), in particular a comprehensive collection of the Blue Rider school (Der Blaue Reiter) which included such luminaries as Kandinsky and Klee.

Other movements important to Munich are represented, such as the Munich Jugendstil and the New Objectivity. My years of studying art history in high school all started coming back to me!

There was also a temporary exhibition of works by Auguste Herbin (1882-1960), who was new to me. I loved his work, especially his early forays into Cubism.

In the main collection my eye was caught by a beguiling portrait (see below) of a person I initially thought was a woman but which turned out to be a man who was "notorious" for dressing in a feminine manner. The artist was Alexej von Jawlensky (to give the German transliteration of his Russian name), who had strong connections with Munich and the Blue Rider movement.

The subject was a dancer, Alexander Sacharoff, painted in 1909. Those eyes grabbed be from across the room.

After a restorative double espresso I headed across the road for something completely different. The Glyptothek is Munich's museum of ancient Greek and Roman sculpture, spanning 700BCE to 550CE. This started as King Ludwig I's private collection of antiquities and it's housed in a neo-classical building the king commissioned to contain it all.

It really is the most enormous collection, beautifully presented. I just wandered for an hour or more through the various rooms, marvelling at the state of preservation of these hundreds of works (and having uncomfortable thoughts about the looting of antiquities). I took a few photos, but they don't do the place justice.

Both of these institutions have excellent Wikipedia pages if you're keen to learn more.

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7 September:

Sunday in Munich and it was another day for museums and galleries. I started today in the ancient world by visiting the State Museum of Egyptian Art. Like the Glyptothek, the state collection of classical Greek and Roman sculpture, this incredible collection had its origins in the private collections of the Bavarian nobility. The Egyptian collection began in the 19th century under King Ludwig I. I had my usual reservations about cultural looting but couldn't help but admire the scope of what was on display. It's housed in a monolithic modern building, itself resembling the essence of an Egyptian temple, which was opened in 2013.

The collection is laid out in such a way as the visitor need only follow a golden line on the floor to be taken through the various rooms and galleries. It's really brilliantly designed and the descriptions and labels are all in German and English. The few photos I took don't do it justice.

I was particularly impressed with the presentation of a massive papyrus copy of the Egyptian Book of the Dead. It had a digital screen that could be moved along under the display case. This enables the visitor to read a translation and commentary on the entire thing.

Then it was across the road to - yet again - something completely different, the Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich's main modern art museum. Again, this is housed in a stunning modern building (opened in 2002) and is vast, covering some 22,000 square metres. Unlike the Egyptian museum there's no one way to take in all this building has to offer. In fact it was impossible to take it all in in one visit. I just wandered for an hour or more and saw so many wonderful and intriguing and disturbing and odd and beautiful things. Kandinsky seems to be following me on this trip and I took a picture of one of his famous works.

There were whole galleries devoted to design - furniture, cars, bikes - quite apart from those devoted to painting and sculpture.

And as it was Sunday, admission to each of these galleries today was only 1 Euro. (Full price is never more than 10, and old people like me get concessions at some places.)

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9 September:

I am currently at the NS-Dokumentatsionszentrum München, the Munich Documentation Centre for the History of National Socialism. This is a museum documenting the history of the NSDAP, colloquially known as the Nazi Party.

I was well aware before coming to Munich of this city's role as the birthplace of the Nazi Party, and as a committed Socialist have always felt uneasy about the abuse of the word "socialism" in the title of Hitler's political outfit. (Such lies are not unique to Germany though; North Korea's official title calls itself "democratic".)

That said, this museum - built on the site of the Nazi Party's headquarters - is a brilliant way to learn about how Hitler rose to power, and the complicity of those who aided this rise in the judiciary and government. The story starts in 1919 and goes up to the present day. Munich is not saying right wing thuggery ended in 1945, and the post-war story is important and perhaps more timely now than at any other moment in my lifetime.

I was impressed, too, that a number of school groups were present, and there was a guided tour group consisting entirely of younger men. Munich is doing much to address its past and to educate in an attempt to prevent it happening again.

This is a very different place to the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin. The focus there is on personal stories within the context of an international horror of mind-boggling proportions. Here the story is political. It doesn't downplay the Nazi persecution of Jews and other minorities (including my own). It tells the broader story of how a nation could be manipulated and ultimately destroyed by myths of conformity, hatred of the other, and self-interest. It's superbly documented and entirely in both German and English.

I wish I could be confident that it won't happen again, but I can't. Reading much of what's on display here felt like reading the daily news.

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My second museum visit in Munich today (Tuesday) was Museum Brandhorst. This is a modern art museum right next to the Pinakothek der Moderne, mentioned in a previous post.

The building is amazing, a box-like structure covered in 36,000 multicoloured ceramic louvres. Sadly the inside was less inspiring as two of the museum's three levels are currently closed in preparation for a new exhibition.

Still, with the admission price appropriately reduced, I took in what was on offer. Some monumental multi-painting installations by Cy Twombly (new to me) took up the majority of the floor. There were also two rooms devoted to [yawn] Andy Warhol. I'm sorry but I'm not one of those people who find Warhol in the slightest bit interesting. If that means I have to hand in my gay card then so be it...

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11 September:

My Thursday Munich excursion saw me hike through to beyond the other side of the Old Town to visit the Deutsches Museum.

Located on an island in the middle of the River Isar, this is the world's largest science and technology museum. It's beautifully laid out, and while many of the displays were outside my Fach, so to speak, it was a pleasure to walk around.

Some areas, such as the extensive musical instruments collection, were definitely within my Fach, but one that hit me with a tinge of nostalgia was the massive display of aircraft. Spread over two floors, this was super impressive. My dad, a RAAF veteran, would have loved it (even if the planes were German!).

The enormous display documenting the history of photography and image creation was another beautifully laid out area. I'm no camera buff, but as pure art it was a delight.

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13 September:

Well my Saturday in Munich didn't quite turn out as planned! I found a listing online for a museum of modern design called Die Neue Sammlung. I knew where it was because the map showed it was on the same block as the Pinakothek der Moderne, which I visited a few days ago. But when I got there I couldn't find it. Until I realised it was actually part of the Pinakothek der Moderne and I'd already been there. Doh!

Nothing else for it. I had a coffee at a nearby cafe to mentally regroup. Looking at my map I decided to hike down to the Munich Residenz, the largest palace in Germany and the former residence of the Bavarian monarchs.

Except that on this particular weekend the entire palace grounds, including the courtyards - along with streets all around it - were taken over by IAA Mobility 2025, a huge car show, with enormous stands displaying the latest cars from a host of makers. In fact much of central Munich has been taken over by this event, so I couldn't actually get in to the palace at all. (Maybe there was a way in but I couldn't find one.) The city is crawling with car enthusiasts.

Nothing else for it. At least the northern side of the palace, which faces the beautiful Hofgarten, a 17th century garden in the Italian Renaissance style, was car free. I sat there for a while, took a few photos, and walked back to my hotel. Thankfully it's a beautiful day here today and the walk was lovely, if long!

First posted on Facebook

Angelika Kauffmann: Self Portrait (1784)

Alexej von Jawlensky: Portrait of Alexander Sacharoff (1909)