Drunks lying on the street, bouncers the size of Buicks chucking out violent fighters, the stink of urine and blood everywhere. That’s what a lot of my American tourists expect when I bring them to the most famous brew house in the world. None of it is true. And, by the way, the beer is chilled.
The Hofbräuhaus in Munich, Germany, sits like a giant white mushroom on upscale and drunkard-free Orlando Platz only 4 blocks from the city center, no bouncers in sight. Across the street is the Hard Rock Cafe and around the corner, the elegant 5 star Platzl Hotel. The neighborhood is not what they expect. With its 3 story high white walls topped with an even higher gabled roof, countless huge arched and latticed windows and a giant turret, the Hofbräuhaus dominates the square. The most famous beer hall in the world is raucous, busy, crowded, friendly and safe. It’s no different from when I was a student in Munich in the late 1960s and probably was just as raucous and busy for centuries before, though perhaps not as respectable. Any late afternoon, any season, the place is filled with Münchners eating, drinking, celebrating or drowning their woes in lager. The oom-pah band pumps out classic Bavarian songs while the locals sing along. Someone pays the band to play the Prosit (‘cheers’) Song and the whole hall sings along ending in ‘Eins Zwei Drei G’Suffa’, ‘one – two – three, drink up!’ and they raise liters of beer to their lips.
Just inside the huge swinging glass and brass doors are the Stammtische, the tables where the regulars drink, mostly white bearded old guys, wearing Bavarian felt caps, a beer belly and Lederhosen, they come to this cathedral of beer nearly every day to visit their mugs. These ‘private’ mugs are numbered and displayed on tall dark wooden cases off to the left. On the arched ceiling corners in bright golds, oranges and reds, are painted Medieval symbols of the devil, pitchers of lager, jesters and playing cards alongside the blue and white diamond pattern of the Bavarian flag. Dangling from the ceiling is a horizontal, 12 foot long, winged, chubby, mustachioed, white-smocked, red-capped effigy of Aloisius. The legend goes, Aloisius, a Hofbräu regular, one day worked so hard as a train porter he died and went to heaven. The heavenly life was not for him so God sent him back to earth to advise the Bavarian government. On the way down, he stopped off at Hofbräuhaus for a quick beer……..and never left.
As a student, I rarely came to the Hofbräuhaus and only when someone else paid. The reason was simple. The even bigger and livelier Mathäser had cheaper beer. Mathäser, by the train station in a downscale neighborhood, was for the poorer working class drinkers and students. Liters of lager at Mathäser in the late 1960s were only 2 or 3 German Marks, 50 to 75 cents, half the cost of a liter in Hofbräu. My Uncle Helmut, who lived near the university and often took me to dinner, refused to eat at either of the brew houses. Mathäser was too rowdy and, he said, dangerous (liters of beer would fly across the room during fights, and he found that less entertaining than I did), and Hofbräuhaus had a Nazi past he hated.
For Uncle Helmut, the past was not yet past. In 1920 in the huge hall upstairs in Hofbräu, 2000 Nazis met to listen to a 31 year old Adolph Hitler spout his 25 points of ‘philosophy’, racism, and white supremacy. He denounced Jews, minorities and ‘others’ whom he blamed for Germany’s losing World War I. At 18, I figured that was too long ago to matter. In my mind, Hofbräuhaus had merely rented the space to the Nazis. It wasn’t as if they agreed with Hitler. In 1920, no one, other than a member of the group, even knew what the Nationalist Socialists, the Nazis, stood for. After all, in 1920, Germany was in a deep economic post WWI depression, the nation was near civil war, millions were unemployed and everyone needed money. Nevertheless, Helmut still blamed Hofbräu so we never ate dinner there.
But the tour groups I lead want to experience the place because it had become so famous. American GIs returned to the US after WWII carrying ceramic beer mugs, HBH, ‘Hofbräuhaus’, stenciled on the sides. The brand name spread across the USA and soon was familiar from coast to coast, a must see for anyone visiting Central Europe. The liters are now glass and the brand has been franchised throughout the world, but the beer is the same.
My group and I push through the swinging doors like the first patrons in 1589 when Hofbräu opened. ‘Hofbräu’ means ‘court beer’ and was started by the Duke of Bavaria to provide brew for the nearby Bavarian royal palace in Munich, capital of Bavaria. Several German cities have beer called ‘Hofbräu’ that serve their own royal houses but there is only one ‘Munich Hofbräu’. Following the Reinheitsgebot, the ‘purity law’, brewers could use only water, barley, hops and yeast in their brew. No other ingredients were allowed. Most brewers in Germany still follow this purity law today. Once inside, we stroll past the Stammtische with the regulars, the mini stage with the Oom-pah band, to the back of the hall with long polished plank tables and benches. The green vested, white-shirted waiter slaps down some menus and we all order Hofbräu Original, the lager that helped make the place famous. The pretzel lady waltzes by holding up a one-foot-wide salted pretzel that will go well with the beer and we get 4 of the delicacies for the table. The waiter returns with 10 liters of beer skillfully gripped in 2 hands. He shuffleboards them across the table to each of us, never spilling a drop of the liquid gold. We balance the heavy mugs on the backs of our hands, lift, yell PROSIT, ‘cheers’, and take our first sip. Excellent! Munich has been famous for beer since it was founded in 1158 by beer-brewing monks. In fact, the symbol of the city is a boy, dressed as a monk, holding a liter of beer in each hand.
I take a couple of my people on a short tour of the place. In many restaurants in Munich, a patron is expected to pay the Putzfrau, the cleaning lady at the bathroom entrance, a small amount, usually less than $1. But here at Hofbräuhaus, fortunately, the toilets are free and still clean. The men’s room is necessarily large and has one unique addition: a vomitoria. It is chest high, made of stainless steel, has several water faucets and, I imagine, is quite useful, especially during Oktoberfest when a patron might, just might, overindulge.
We stroll through the acre-sized outdoor beer garden with its massive, shading sycamore trees and trestle tables, and upstairs to the Festsaal, the giant meeting hall, where, in 1920, the Nazis attended the rally headlined by Adolph Hitler. Judging by the displayed photos, 100 years ago the hall was done up in ‘Medieval chic’ style with circular hanging lamps, lots of dark wood, and long, rough hewn tables. Brunhilde could have begun singing and it wouldn’t have surprised anyone. It looks much the same today, just lighter, with comfier chairs and a bit more modern. We return to our beers downstairs and to another round of PROSIT.
After the end of WWII, some, including my Uncle Helmut, argued that Nazi associated buildings like Hofbräuhaus in Munich should not be rebuilt. For him, renting a space to the Nazis a couple of times was reason enough to condemn it. Thankfully, the owner of the place, the Bavarian state government, thought otherwise, and rebuilt it quickly, making a lot of American GIs very happy. Visitors today know little or nothing of Hofbräu’s dark moments, and even when I explain its history, judge it on what they experience today: a spot with great chilled beer, a party atmosphere and a happy oompah band.
