Haus der Kunst

Listen for a moment. Behind you, traffic hums along Prinzregentenstraße. Somewhere close, water rushes hard and fast, and there may be a shout from a surfer. In front of you stands a long wall of pale stone columns. They are heavy, square-edged and very orderly. The light falls flat across them, and the shadows between the pillars line up as neatly as soldiers. This is the Haus der Kunst, the House of Art, and its calm surface hides one of the most uneasy stories in Munich.

Start with where you are. The building sits on the southern edge of the English Garden, the huge public park that runs north through the city. The park's lawns and old trees come almost to the back door. Out front, a wide avenue runs east toward the river Isar. It is a grand location, picked on purpose. Whoever built here wanted to be seen by everyone travelling along one of Munich's most important roads.

The people who built it were the Nazis. Construction began in 1933, the same year Hitler came to power. The architect was Paul Ludwig Troost, one of Hitler's favourite designers. Troost died the following year, before the building was finished, and his office completed the work. The original name was the House of German Art. It was the first major building of the new regime, and it was meant to be a manifesto in stone.

Here is a small story that visitors often miss. At the foundation stone ceremony in 1933, Hitler struck the stone with a ceremonial hammer, and the hammer broke. Some people in the crowd saw this as a bad omen. Whether they really whispered about it at the time, or only told the story later, is hard to know. But the broken hammer became part of the building's legend in Munich.

Look again at the columns. The style is often called stripped classicism. That means the architects took the idea of an ancient Greek temple and removed almost every decoration. What remains is pure repetition: column, gap, column, gap. There are no playful details here. The stone is light limestone, and the effect is severe. The design asks you to feel small. Many historians see the building as a clear example of how the regime used architecture to project order and power.

The building opened in July 1937 with the first Great German Art Exhibition. The paintings and sculptures showed what the regime called proper art: heroic farmers, idealised bodies, peaceful landscapes. The same summer, only a short walk away in the arcades of the Hofgarten, the regime opened another show called Degenerate Art. It mocked modern artists, many of them Jewish or politically unwanted. The two exhibitions were designed as a pair. One praised, the other humiliated. Munich became a stage for this cultural war.

Then came the war, and then the defeat. When American forces arrived in 1945, they took over the building. For years it served as an officers' club for the United States Army. Soldiers relaxed in halls built for propaganda. Locals say there was even a basketball court inside, and jazz played in rooms meant for heroic statues. It is a strange picture... a temple to one ideology, filled with the music and games of the enemy.

Now comes the second surprise. In 1955, this same building hosted a large exhibition of works by Pablo Picasso. Among them was Guernica, his enormous painting about the bombing of a Basque town during the Spanish Civil War. That bombing was carried out by German aircraft. So a painting about German violence hung in a hall built by the regime that sent those planes. Many people see that moment as the start of the building's new life.

Since then, the Haus der Kunst has worked as an exhibition hall rather than a classic museum. It does not keep a large permanent collection. Instead, it hosts changing shows of modern and contemporary art from around the world. Under the Nigerian-born curator Okwui Enwezor, who led the institution in the 2010s, its programme looked far beyond Europe. That choice matters here. A building made to define one narrow idea of German art now shows artists from every continent.

The building has also learned to talk about itself. Over the years, the institution has opened its archive and displayed material about its own past. Instead of hiding the history, it puts it in view. You may find documents, photographs or small displays inside that explain the 1930s. This openness is part of a wider German approach to difficult history. The idea is simple: remember clearly, so the past is not repeated.

Notice the trees along the front. After the war, a row of trees was planted along the avenue, and many people understood them as a screen in front of the columns. In more recent years, there has been public debate about the façade. Renovation plans from the office of the British architect David Chipperfield discussed the trees and how open the front should be. Some people want the building fully visible, as a warning. Others prefer the softer view.

The building is not only serious. At the western end, a well-known nightclub called P1 has operated for decades. Inside the main building, there is also a bar and a café, popular with Munich locals. And just beside the building, at the bridge over a fast canal called the Eisbach, surfers ride a standing river wave. They wait in line on the bank in wetsuits, then drop onto the water one by one. On a busy day, people stand three deep to watch.

That contrast is the heart of this place. Behind you, young people play on the water in full daylight. In front of you, a building designed for a dictatorship now shows art that the dictatorship would have hated. The stone has not changed. What happens inside it has changed completely. Few buildings in Europe hold both sides of a century in such a small space.

Before you walk on, stand still for a moment between two of the columns. Feel the cool stone. Look up at the long, flat roof line, then turn toward the green of the English Garden. Listen once more for the rushing water of the Eisbach. As you leave, the columns will repeat behind you, one after another... and the city will carry on around them, ordinary and alive.