Hofbräuhaus, the court brewery

Look at the two crowned letters above the door: HB, Hofbräu, “court brewery”. The story begins in 1589, when Duke William V, tired of depending on the expensive beer brought in from elsewhere, founded his own brewery in the Alter Hof and hired a master brewer.

1From the duke to the people

In 1607 a second brewery went up on this site, for wheat beer, which was fashionable at the time. In 1612 a master brewer arrived from Einbeck, in northern Germany, to imitate its famous strong beer; in Munich dialect “Ainpöck” eventually became “Bock”, and so the name of Bock beer was born. For two centuries the output went to the court, until in 1828 King Ludwig I allowed it to be served to the public.

2A hall for everyone

In 1896 Prince Regent Luitpold moved the brewery out of the centre, and the building was rebuilt as a great beer hall, opened in 1897. The ground floor, the Schwemme, has tables for about a thousand people, and regulars keep their own steins locked away on shelves. Lenin lived in Munich, and his wife, Nadezhda Krupskaya, recalled in her memoirs that the letters HB looked like the Cyrillic initials of a Russian revolutionary group.

On 24 February 1920, in the banqueting hall upstairs, Hitler presented to some two thousand people the 25-point programme of the party that was then renamed the NSDAP.

The building was almost destroyed in 1945; only the Schwemme survived. It was rebuilt, and in 1958, for the city’s 800th anniversary, the banqueting hall reopened.

3What to look for

• The crowned HB emblem, above the entrance and on the steins.
• The painted vaults of the Schwemme, if you peek inside.
• The stein lockers of the regulars.