The outline of Kurt Eisner

Look down. That outline lying on the pavement remembers Kurt Eisner, a journalist and socialist politician, who was murdered on this exact spot on the morning of 21 February 1919. To understand what comes later on this route, you have to start here.

1The revolution that came before Berlin’s

In November 1918, with Germany defeated in the First World War, Munich got ahead of the capital. On 7 November, after a rally on the Theresienwiese, Eisner led a march to the barracks that met almost no resistance. That same night, in the Mathäser beer hall, he proclaimed Bavaria a “Free State” and declared the Wittelsbach dynasty, which had ruled since 1180, deposed. King Ludwig III had already left the city.

2A February morning

Eisner became the first Bavarian prime minister, but his party suffered a heavy defeat in the elections of January 1919. He was on his way to parliament to hand in his resignation when Lieutenant Anton Graf von Arco auf Valley shot him twice in the back. His secretary, Felix Fechenbach, had advised him to take another route. According to Fechenbach’s account, Eisner replied:

“In the long run you cannot dodge an assassination; and besides, they can only kill me once.”

The murder unleashed months of violence: the short-lived Bavarian Soviet Republic, crushed in May 1919 by troops and Freikorps units, with hundreds dead. Arco was sentenced to death, pardoned the next day and released in 1924. In that climate of radicalisation and resentment grew the far right you will meet at the next stops.

3What to look for

• The outline, by Erika Maria Lankes, laid in 1989 after years of political controversy.
• The inscription, which calls him the man who proclaimed the Bavarian Republic.
• The Palais Montgelas, opposite, on the corner with Promenadeplatz.