Books set in Munich

In the very plaza where Munich’s student‑led bonfires consumed so‑called “un‑German” books, Arnold Dreyblatt’s Die Schwarze Liste / The Blacklist now lies embedded in the pavement. Unveiled on May 6, 2021, the circular monument recalls the Nazi‑orchestrated book burnings of May 6 and 10, 1933, when the Deutsche Studentenschaft hurled hundreds of titles—ranging from philosophy and political critique to children’s stories—onto the flames in a public ritual of censorship.

Commissioned by the Munich City Council in 2016 and chosen from a 2018 design competition, Dreyblatt’s work repurposes the very blacklist compiled that spring by librarian Wolfgang Herrmann, which guided the campaign to purge libraries across Germany. Rather than isolating names, the artist engraved the final pre‑1933 publications of 310 authors into two concentric concrete plates, eight meters in diameter, set flush with the ground before the Staatliche Antikensammlungen. Over 9,600 characters spiral outward without punctuation, the words running into one another like the curling smoke captured in period photographs.
Viewed in full, the monument celebrates the intellectual ferment of the Weimar Republic—its modernist literary, scientific, and social explorations—rather than fixating on the destruction itself. By placing the spiral at the feet of today’s pedestrians, Dreyblatt invites confrontation with Munich’s dark past and rekindles curiosity for the silenced voices the Nazis sought to erase.

Key Books About Munich on the Blacklist

The full list can be viewed on the Munich Documentation Center’s website. It includes Lion Feuchtwanger’s Wartesaal‑Trilogie (Waiting‑Room Trilogy), one of the most celebrated books about Munich’s exile communities, and Erich Kästner’s satirical poem Die Ballade vom Nachahmungstrieb (Ballad of the Imitation Instinct), a work that—like many novels set in Munich—was silenced under Nazi rule. Thomas Mann’s political essay Von deutscher Republik (Of the German Republic), penned in his Herzogpark villa, reflects the fragile democracy he chronicled from within Munich’s elite salons. Beyond the city’s borders, Alfred Döblin’s modernist masterpiece Berlin Alexanderplatz and Ernest Hemingway’s In einem anderen Land (In Another Country) illustrate the municipal appetite for cosmopolitan modernism—an intellectual vibrancy the Nazis sought to extinguish.

Visit Literaturhaus Munich and you’ll find yourself in one of the city’s most vibrant literary spaces. Nestled on Salvatorplatz amid Munich’s Old Town bustle, the Literaturhaus feels more like a living museum than a mere event space. Beyond the crackle of espresso machines and shelves of new releases, two “literary gods” of the house preside over its rooms: Oskar Maria Graf and Thomas Mann.

Step into the Brasserie OskarMaria, and you’ll encounter Jenny Holzer’s avant‑garde Graf‑Monument—electronic running text from Graf’s own writings that scrolls above your table, while quotes nestle into the custom Villeroy & Boch crockery, leather banquette backs, granite terrace tables and even the beer mats. It’s a playful, immersive tribute to Graf’s stubborn Bavarian spirit and his passion for mixing local color with worldly ideas. The Oskar Maria Graf-Gesellschaft München e.V., headquartered here, keeps that flame alive with exhibitions and readings throughout the year.