New build - GWG München

situation that continued into the nineteenth
century. These so-called hostels,
with their own entrance steps, occasionally
consisted of an entire storey, but
could also only comprise a single room.
In 1911, Rosa Kempf described the poor
housing in her study “The Life of the
Young Factory Girl in Munich” as “low,
stifling, cramped and damp and full of
people.” The sociologist painted a harrowing
picture of life among the lower
classes. One family had 19 children, the
father had consumption, the children
were anaemic and the wife was completely
exhausted and sapped of en-
Top: Zeppelinstrasse (1905)
Bottom: Franz-Prüller-Strasse 11 (1905)
ergy.” A modern-day visitor to the lively
Auer Dult today might have a drink at
the Nockherberg or enjoy a walk along
the Isar, but they would be hard-pressed
to imagine the conditions under which
people used to live here. And yet the
blunt descriptions of misery written by
Karl Valentin, born in the Au in 1882 as
Valentin Fey, were also regarded as scandalous.
Tiny apartments and untenable hygienic
conditions are long since a thing of the
past. The Au is becoming a location of
choice for higher wage earners, as they
move in droves into the centre of the
city, changing as they do the old mixture
of the neighbourhood. The typical blend
102
From top to bottom: Franz-Prüller-Strasse
(1905), Lilienstrasse (1905), Mariahilfplatz
View of the inner city (1808)