Before Two Wars: Munich, In and Out of Shadow
- Abigail Leali
- Jun 24
- 4 min read
It’s hard to talk about German history and culture in the century before the world wars. The shadow of WWII looms so large that its darkness seems to stretch both ways, staining everything that came after and everything that went before. There are endless historical debates surrounding which 19th-century policies may have primed the German state to embrace radical fascist influences after the loss of the Great War. But unless we are speculating blame to avoid making the same mistakes, such a conversation is hardly fair to the people of that time, most of whom were working hard to find a way forward for their fledgling country. They were as blind to the future as we are today, ignorant of the atrocities many of their children and grandchildren would go on to perpetrate. For them, the newly unified German Empire was as much a place of possibility and promise as the United States of America had been to the Founding Fathers not even a century before. It would be fatalistic to insist that things had to go as horribly wrong as they did.
I would even go so far as to say that it is dangerous to think of the German Empire as a thoroughly rotten endeavor. Labels like “nationalism” or “groupthink” can be helpful shorthands to wrap our minds around social machinations we can hardly begin to understand. But to reduce the experience of any group of people to such labels is to ignore the complex patchwork of ideas, thoughts, emotions, and experiences that formed their perceptions of the world – and what exactly in it they deemed worth fighting for.
Participating in a shared cultural identity has been an integral part of the human experience for thousands upon thousands of years. An unhealthy sense of pride in that identity was not unique to Germany. Many other countries at the time were undergoing a surge in nationalist attitudes and racist ideologies. The Nazis themselves were reliant on research from American eugenics programs, such as California’s forced sterilization laws or certain clinics’ targeted abuse of birth control. Conversely, we have the Japanese; their Nanjing Massacre against the Chinese marked one of the worst war crimes of the entire conflict, while in Unit 731, they engaged in human experimentation so horrific that not a single “patient” survived to blow the whistle. Still, our collective retelling of the Meiji and Taisho eras remains nostalgic, almost content, with little of the shadow that stifles Germany.
Maybe the answer is to treat every country with an equal dose of disdain. But that could be a recipe for disaster. Thinking we have nothing to fight for is no better than believing we have everything to protect. While everyone seems to focus on how “culture” can be hijacked and corrupted, far fewer seem to reflect on what about it is be good or beautiful enough to be worth mourning. Even today, cries of “authoritarianism,” “tyranny,” or “propaganda” mean little if we don’t appreciate what we really have to lose.
These ideas have been floating around in my mind for quite a while now, and I’ll be the first to admit they are far from complete. This spring, I spent over a month and a half in Bavaria, wandering through Munich, Augsburg, Nuremberg, and some smaller towns in the Alps. Maybe it has something to do with our society’s isolated, fragmentary lifestyle, but while there, I found myself wrestling with a strange longing for the echoes I caught of the pre-war past. Despite the dangers evident in hindsight, there is something alluring about the luminous art, bombastic music, and optimistic architecture that marked Europe during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. I could ignore it – and for a long time, I did. But with radical ideologies, left and right, increasingly on the rise in the Western world, I’d say it’s time we start considering what, exactly, it is that keeps us coming back to pick again at this old wound.
When I decided to go to Europe, I picked Munich as my starting point for several reasons. Some were more personal: lots of Catholic influence, beautiful architecture, access to historical records, good public transit (though Germans might debate it). But having a professional interest in the history of the Second World War, I was also aware that the Nazis considered Munich the “capital of the movement.” Thankfully, it’s a label the city has since more than thoroughly rejected. But before it was bombed to pieces during WWII, before it unwillingly hosted the Beer-Hall Putsch, before it gained notoriety as Hitler’s purported favorite city, München was a beloved center of Renaissance and Baroque art and architecture, a bastion for Bavarian culture amid the tumult of war between German states, a Catholic stronghold during the whirlwind changes of the Protestant Reformation, and a medieval trade center surrounded by the vestiges of Roman occupation.
All these things it still is, and many more besides. Over the course of this small series, I hope you’ll join me as I share a few of the things Munich has taught me about how art can bring a culture and a people to life – and how much we stand to lose when it is stolen away.
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