A Walk Through Schwabing

Schwabing is not a place, but a state...

... said Franziska zu Reventlow already around the turn of the century and "In Schwabing gibt's a Kneip'n, die muss ganz was B'sonders sei" is a song of the Munich band Spider Murphy Gang. What is it about this certainly best-known Munich district?

Schwabing - the ancient lady

Schwabing is much older than Munich itself, but for centuries it had a rather insignificant, village-like existence. Only the 19th century brought the upswing. The newly developed Maxvorstadt was simply too expensive, land could still be purchased here at realistic prices. The small village grew rapidly and was elevated to the status of a city only four years before it was incorporated into Munich.

Schwabing - always in...

It is that time around the turn of the century that goes down in history as "Schwabing Bohemia". 1180 painters and sculptors live in Schwabing at the turn of the century, even though many of the important residential addresses, cafés and artists' meeting places were, strictly speaking, in neighboring Maxvorstadt, but were necessarily associated with Schwabing, that new, cultural-spiritual "state". They come from all over to settle in Schwabing and to behave here in a deliberately "unbourgeois" manner, and to finally be counted among the "Schwabinger Schlawinern" by the people of Munich.

Schwabing - Munich's answer to Paris

Even Moscow, Paris or Berlin had to get in line behind Munich as the art metropolis of Europe at the turn of the century. Here they broke out of the ossified bourgeoisie of the Empire, the artists, writers and poets. Personalities such as the playwright Frank Wedekind, the "Simplicissimus" publisher Albert Langen, the famous "Alter-Simpl" landlady Kathi Kobus, the poet Joachim Ringelnatz, the writers Heinrich and Thomas Mann, Stefan George, Rainer Maria Rilke, the painters of the "Blaue Reiter": Alfred Kubin, Lovis Corinth and Paul Klee, to name but a few.

The Schwabing myth is alive!

The time of the "Schwabing Bohemians" ends abruptly with the outbreak of the First World War. After the destruction of the Second World War, almost frantic attempts are made to revive the "Schwabing myth", but this is no longer really successful. Although a real nightlife takes place here during the American occupation and Munich gets one of its most famous restaurants with the "Schwabinger Gisela", the great Schwabing times could never be revived in this form. The riots of the 1960s almost had to take their course here in Schwabing, since as an anti-authoritarian movement they referred to the anti-bourgeois tendencies of the bohemians at the turn of the century.

But the "Schwabing myth" still lives on somehow, and every generation that once lived here almost has to say about Schwabing: "That's not my neighborhood anymore.