New build - GWG München

From hostels to a workers’ neighbourhood
to an urban oasis
Those searching for stories of Munich's
past should look no further than places
like Schwabing and Bogenhausen, or
Sendling and Nymphenburg. But the Au,
located in the heart of the Bavarian state
capital, is in many ways the opposite of
the gleaming city propagated by the
likes of Thomas Mann: the flood plain of
the Isar, tradesmen’s quarter and working
class district. It may have something
to do with the poverty of the neighbourhood
that Lena Christ masterfully yet
harrowingly described in her “Rumpelhanni”.
Or it may be because the Au
has always lived with change, with mass
migration. Its history embodies the
constant rise of a quarter from a hostel
district to a working class neighbourhood
to an oasis in the middle of the
city.
In his “History of the City of Munich”,
published in 1796, Joseph Burgholzer
described the location on the river that
was regularly plagued with floods as a
bustling place: “in that very place,
houses are built or raised every year.”
The Au was not suitable for agriculture
and was therefore a place for the working
population even before industrialisation.
As Burgholzer wrote, “in the
evenings, on the way home, it is as if the
whole Au had been in the city.” The
bourgeois Munich was on the other side
of the Isar. But here, on the right bank
of the river, lived millers and fishermen,
and all the day labourers, messenger
boys and workers without whom the
“city” would not have been able to
function. The Au was always the
“other” Munich, a satellite whose independence
took a whole generation to
achieve. It was bestowed city rights in
1818 while another 36 years later it
finally became a part of Munich itself.
In the mid-eighteenth century, the already
heavily populated Au began to
grow in density, particularly around the
Lilienstrasse, the old country road leading
to Tölz, and the Isar bridge. The very
low-price accommodation comprised a
single house shared by several tenants, a
Site map “The Au 1858” (top)
Overview map of Munich from
1760 (bottom)
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