Munich: Where the Good Times Are

This month an estimated 500,000 tourists and sport lovers will descend upon Munich for the 20th Olympic Games. What they will find, reports TIME Correspondent Jesse Birnbaum, is an overgrown village that likes to think of itself as Germany's secret capital, a city of museums (25) and music (three symphony orchestras, a 48-week opera season), with memories of Richard Strauss and Wagner, Bavaria's mad King Ludwig II--and Adolf Hitler. Vignettes from Birnbaum's recent visit there:

STRADDLING the historic trade routes of Southern Europe, drinking in the influence of other cultures, Munich has always been chiefly absorbed with the manufacture and enjoyment of Bavarian Gemuetlichkeit (some of which is identified by its sudsy head). It's all very apparent today, this spirit of "leben und leben lassen"--a cheery apathy and beery tolerance combined with a benign condescension toward anything German that is not also old Bavarian. The ambience of the cities to the north--those pompous Prussians--can be described in straight lines and right angles. Munich gives you embroidered corners and fanciful curlicues.

Munich of the '70s has sometimes been compared with Berlin of the '20s. In fact, Munich lacks the intellectual electricity of those brilliant Berlin days. It is also much too innocent. Still, it is the place where most Germans prefer to live, and candid Muenchner concede that it is the "other" Germans who >>JJJ lend the city much of its style. Only one out of three Muenchner is Bavarian-born, while about 15% of the city's population is non-German. It is this cultural blend that finally gives the city its lustig if somewhat spurious cosmopolitanism, an odd chemistry of the provincial and the sophisticated.

A sky of uncommon blue--Italian blue, insist the proud Muenchner--canopies the 890-acre expanse of wood, trail, meadow and stream known as the Englischer Garten. From their benches, the forgotten aged stare across the little lake into the sun or watch in silence the absurd parade of ducks and drakes or the wheeling Frisbees in the sky. Lazing in a field are clusters of young longhairs, some of them students, some wanderers from other nations. They all speak the same language: guitar and hash. Elector Karl Theodor designed this park in 1789. It was not Karl Theodor who inscribed the familiar four-letter Anglo-Saxon words on the sober columns of the Greek temple in the garden.

The city's postwar population was 480,000; today it is 1,350,000 and is growing at the rate of 30,000 to 40,000 a year. The economy, once bound to beer and tourism, is now worth about $17 billion a year. Biggest contributors: electronics (notably Siemens) and automobiles (notably BMW, with new headquarters that resemble a cluster of three engine cylinders). No business is hard-pressed, whether it be publishing (every seventh German book title is printed in Munich) or the clothing and fashion industries, where earnings have outstripped the beer business threefold.

Allied bombs destroyed 45% of Munich during World War II. With a characteristic sense of their own history, Muenchner rebuilt their town, stone for stone, gargoyle for gargoyle, in the likeness of the past. Thus the 119-sq.-mi. city today appears totally untouched by the war, and in many respects still maintains its ancient flavor, though it is often hard to distinguish the genuinely ancient from the cleverly restored. Spired churches look down upon the broad boulevards and narrow, cobblestone streets. Statuary and fountains command every plaza. Flat pastel fac,ades are relieved by mullioned windows. Cheek by jowl are Greek and Roman, Baroque and Gothic, a prince's palace and a peasant's pushcart. Smart shops like Cartier's occupy centuries-old buildings that might once have housed nobility. Rakishly modern department stores abut on 16th century inns. Munich is an 800-year-old village with direct dialing to the outside world.

The biggest pop hits on Munich radio are invariably sung with English lyrics. German somehow doesn't blend with rock rhythms. Try: Ja-ja, ich Hebe dich, Liebchen.

At the favored discotheques--Anyway, Kinki, Tiffany, Ebsch Privee--neither the slim, braless girls nor their Marcello-mod escorts appear to have yet got the hang of today's sensuous pop dancing. They are scarcely more animated than the 15th century turntable figures in the new city hall clock.

An ill wind that blows from the mountains occasionally befalls Munich. It is called the Foehn, and the citizens conveniently blame it for all their afflictions--migraines, auto accidents, suicides, lovers' quarrels. The Foehn low-pressure character adversely affects patients with certain ailments, and some surgeons postpone operating till the wind blows over. Similarly, traffic court magistrates accept the Foehn as evidence of mitigating circumstances. What horrible mishaps are in store if the Foehn should waft this month into the Olympics grounds? A 200-meter racer will play out at the crack of the starting pistol. A javelin will soar 20 ft. and plop to earth. And one athlete will get a hernia putting his shot.

A small mark of Munich's changing character: per capita beer consumption is down from 150 liters to 144, while wine drinking has risen from 15.5 liters to 16. Still, seven local breweries keep the city afloat, and in the gardens and Stuben, multitudes of quaffing faces swim in a sea of foam. Not far from the Marienplatz--a stroller's feast, stretching for several blocks of shops, fruit stalls and cafes --stands the famous Hofbraeuhaus. It is a huge hall clouded with smoke and heavy with hops, all the long tables filled with chattering workers and tourists, and honking with the redundant tunes of a flatulent Bavarian band. Drinking begins at 9 o'clock. In the morning.

Munich's outgoing lord mayor, Dr. Hans-Jochen Vogel, 46, complains that his city is growing too fast. Prices are high, rents are up 400% to 500% over 1960, housing is short, traffic in heroin is blossoming, and thousands of "guest workers" (foreign laborers) are jammed into hovels. If there is anything wrong with the Munchner, says Vogel, it is that "he is indifferent to such developments. The rise of Hitler resulted from this kind of apathy."

Vogel was the force behind the successful efforts to bring the Olympics to Munich. What particularly appeals to him about the Games is not the expected influx of tourist dollars but the aftermath. When the dust has died down, Mu nich will take over the 6,000 new apartments that were built to house the athletes, officials and press (most of the flats have already been sold). Six years of frantic labor also created a fine, efficient subway system and rapid-transit network and 275,000 square meters of new roads, including three peripheral highways that already are thinning out the tangle of Munich's 400,000 cars. As for himself, Herr Dr. Vogel takes the streetcar to work.

With no small sense of irony, Muenchner chose as their Olympics site the airfield where Neville Chamberlain landed in 1938 to meet with Hitler. Later, millions of tons of rubble from bombed-out Munich were dumped there. Then, using the rubble and garbage for fill, 5,000 workmen turned this ugly heap into a vast park of graceful hills and verdant meadows, planted 5,000 trees and added a lake and playgrounds. The sport facilities are graceful, expansive and functional. The main stadium seats 80,000. The swimming hall contains two pools for warmup, two for competition. There is a cycling stadium with a canted track, a wrestling hall, shooting range, basketball courts, equestrian grounds, everything. The total cost: $750 million, half of which was paid by the Federal Republic of Germany, the remainder split between Munich and the state of Bavaria. Curiously, Muenchner are ambivalent about all the Olympics fuss. A sizable number of citizens plan to be out of town till it all blows over.

How to woo and win a Munich girl in one easy lesson: tell her she looks Parisian.

Yes, Munich was the scene of Hitler's abortive 1923 putsch, and Dachau is only eleven miles away. At that model concentration camp today stands a painfully explicit museum: photographs, mementos, documents--the detritus of uncounted thousands of innocents who suffered and died there for twelve years. Of the 20,000 or so people who visit Dachau every year--arriving respectful and curious, departing grim and incredulous--only a handful are Germans. Either that, or they don't bother to sign the visitors' book.

At the baggage-retrieval area of Munich's Riem airport, the luggage is placed flat on the conveyor belt with all handles pointing in the same direction.

Munich abounds in restaurants--good and bad, plain and fancy, most of them featuring the local favorites: suckling pig with potato dumpling and Weisswurst (a gently spiced veal sausage). La Cave is a small, chic, dark grotto where the beautiful people go (count the Maseratis at the curb). The Brasserie is lively and unpretentious, run by the elderly Baroness Maria von der Osten-Sacken, a slim, warmhearted lady who likes to see her friends have a good time. Kafer's is currently the best restaurant in town, always busy, never a table. A combined delicatessen, gourmet grocery and bistro, it keeps a frantic pace and an expensive menu. Specialty: saddle of venison. One of the best places in the old bohemian quarter of Schwabing (which is not all that bohemian any more) is the Occam Bistro. Brightly lit, good plain cooking, lots of students, artists, writers and girls.

A local joke:

Q. Characterize a Muenchner.

A. A Muenchner is someone who combines the punctuality of the Austrian with the charm of the Prussian.

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