Art – Memory – Democracy
The University of Music and Theatre Munich (HMTM) is one of the most significant and diverse training centres for careers in music, dance and theatre in Europe, with five sites in the heart of the international cultural metropolis of Munich. The HMTM’s main site is the Arcisstraße campus, where important historical, social and urban political threads, as well as countless personal stories, intersect. The main building at Arcisstraße 12 is one of the key symbolic structures of the Nazi regime, a building from which unimaginable suffering was unleashed upon the world. As such, the structure now serves as a focal point for commemorating the crimes of National Socialism. Since 1957, after the building was partially refurbished for use by the HMTM, it has primarily been a place of music, diversity and international exchange. For the HMTM, this campus is a space that carries with it a sense of duty: its location at Arcisstraße 12 entails a comprehensive educational mandate as well as a fundamental responsibility for the art and culture of tomorrow in a democratic society.
We stand for art – remembrance – democracy.
Art
Music, dance and theatre are time-based arts. They come into being directly in the moment, through interaction with the audience. That is why the HMTM’s stages – at Arcisstr. 12, but also at Luisenstraße 37a and at the Gasteig HP8 – are an essential learning space for the next generation of artists. Public events form an integral part of the degree programmes: through up to 900 events per academic year (including concerts, musical theatre productions, competitions, dance performances, sound installations, conferences and much more), students gain the necessary stage experience for their future careers. These events also constitute the students’ examinations. The HMTM places particular emphasis on promoting interdisciplinary and innovative artistic formats.
Remembrance
Remembrance work is an explicit part of the HMTM’s self-conception and its educational and research mission. The Arcisstraße campus in particular is a vibrant, forward-looking site for music. Engaging with the crimes of the National Socialist regime, as well as with persecution, discrimination and anti-democratic developments, is practiced in all areas of the HMTM. Artistic practice, scholarship and research go hand in hand and the interdisciplinary impact of art and scholarship can be experienced at concerts, competitions, performances and conferences. Remembrance work also informs the HMTM’s educational and media projects.
Democracy
As an internationally oriented and globally networked university of the arts, the HMTM is a place for democracy. It is a centre of education, a home for scholarship and research, and for highly talented young artists as well aseducators and scholars. Here, experimentation and the avant-garde thrive, alongside new impulses, discourse and dialogue. Particularly in times of change and multiple crises, the HMTM is thus a place where the future is being shaped. Here, art emerges as the most fundamental form of human interaction, and music is practised as a form of social communication. By transferring these developments into society, the HMTM promotes the future of art and culture and, with it, democratic coexistence.
A place for music
students
teaching staff
nations
The HMTM ranks among the most significant and diverse training institutions for careers in music, dance and theatre in Europe. In an international environment across five different campuses in the heart of the cultural metropolis of Munich, with around 1,400 students from some 65 nations.– Degree programmes range from support programmes for highly gifted children and young people right through to doctoral studies. Around 500 teaching staff guide the students – primarily through one-to-one and small-group lessons – on their individual journeys towards becoming self-assured, attentive and creative artists, educators and researchers. Career services, programmes in the fields of art and health, and start-up support round off the HMTM’s profile.
Remembrance in the Arts
Musiktheater im Reaktor: »The Emperor of Atlantis« by Viktor Ullmann Death no longer wishes to take lives. And in doing so, it strips Emperor Overall – who had proclaimed the »great, blessed war of all against all« – of his power in one fell swoop. Who is left to fear the Emperor of Atlantis if no one can die anymore? Composed in 1943 in the Theresienstadt concentration camp, »The Emperor of Atlantis« by Viktor Ullmann and his librettist Peter Kien presents a visionary parable of resistance that is gaining fresh relevance today: a plea for peace and human autonomy in the face of the totalitarian claims to power made by unpredictable rulers.
At the »Musiktheater im Reaktor«, students from the HMTM’s vocal classes stage a significant musical theatre work from a different era every year. In 2026, they explored ‘The Emperor of Atlantis’ to examine how decisions, responsibility and compassion are put to the test for people within a dynamic system. Numerous workshops, background discussions and a trip by some students to Theresienstadt deepened the understanding of this special musical event, which took place in April and May 2026. Watch on YouTube
»Klingende Stolpersteine« – a music education project at Gröbenzell Grammar School A stumbling stone halts the indifferent stride, a »Klingende Stolperstein«– or a »sounding stumbling stone« – breaks the silence and makes the forgotten audible. Guided by this central theme, during Gröbenzell Grammar School’s Science Week from 13 to 17 April 2026, mosaics of remembrance were created that transformed history into sound. Eight pupils from the school’s Year 11 classes, accompanied by students from the Institute of Music Education and lecturers from the HMTM, first studied the functions of music in the Dachau concentration camp, using historical sources and introductory talks. In doing so, they explored the question of what it means to engage responsibly with history. The focus was on the tension that music created in the Nazi concentration camps: as a means of self-assertion and survival on the one hand, and as an instrument of control and humiliation on the other. The project combined academic and artistic engagement with musical remembrance culture in a way that created new spaces for encounter: between professional musicians, school pupils, music teachers, students and lecturers at the HMTM – and, not least, between the past and the present.
»Research Concert: Musical Exile in Italy during the Nazi Era« The concert programme featured compositions by Franz von Hoesslin, Jan Meyerowitz, Wolfgang Jacobi and Heinrich Schalit, written whilst in exile in Italy between 1933 and 1938. These are rarely performed works that reflect a variety of stylistic trends, ranging from late Romantic to neoclassical. The works were selected as part of the research project ‘Musicians in Exile in Italy’. The project focuses on Italy as a country of refuge for German and Austrian musicians during the period of Nazi rule. Their biographies are being examined with the aim of clarifying whether and to what extent they were musically active in Italy, the contexts in which these activities took place, the relationships they maintained with Italian artists and the authorities, and finally, whether and from when they were subjected to political or ‘racial’ persecution.
The concert also served as the artistic launch event for the long-term research project »Nazi Persecution and Music History«.
»Correspondences« by Francesca Berardi
In her project »Correspondences«, Francesca Berardi explores how music can function as a medium for reconciliation and dialogue. Based on an exchange of letters between Wiard Raveling and the philosopher Vladimir Jankélévitch on the Holocaust, »Correspondences« explores the themes of guilt, reconciliation and collective responsibility. This concert project invites us to ‘awaken our sense of responsibility in a world where indifference is rife’, says Francesca Berardi. The piece was awarded the Audience Prize in June 2025 as part of the university’s internal competition »XPLORE_Competition for New Concert Formats«. Watch the recording on YouTube
»Das gibt's nur einmal« by Fernanda von Sachsen
Songs such as »Ein Freund, ein guter Freund« (»A Friend, a Good Friend«) or »Irgendwo auf der Welt« (»Somewhere in the World«) are evergreens that many people can still sing along to today. But who knows who wrote them? Werner Richard Heymann (1896–1961) was a conductor and composer with an immense creative drive. As a Jewish musician, however, he was persecuted by the Nazis and went into exile in April 1933. In 1951, he returned to Germany and lived in Munich. Singer Fernanda von Sachsen, who is currently studying jazz composition at the HMTM, and jazz pianist and composer Marina Schlagintweit, an alumna of the HMTM’s Jazz Institute, are re-arranging Heymann’s classics for their quartet in their own unique way as part of their project. The programme »Das gibt’s nur einmal« (»It only happens once«) was performed, amongst other venues, at the Jazz Institute’s Workshop Concert in March 2025.
»music matters«
The university competition »music matters« focuses on artistic presentation as a reflection of current social issues, such as diversity and the culture of remembrance. Entries to the competition therefore consist of an artistic performance and a presentation. In addition to works from three different eras, participating students must also present a work by a composer who was persecuted or forced into exile during the Nazi era. Since 2025, the competition has been held annually for HMTM students, with three different categories announced each year.
»Fakt/Fake«
The camera glides through the corridors and the atrium of the HMTM’s main building at Arcisstraße 12 – yet somehow it all looks like a set: the columns support nothing, the balustrade is made of cardboard, the staircase is painted on …
From the 2024 summer semester onwards, students from Prof. Uta Graff’s Chair of Design and Form at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) and students from Prof. Jan Müller-Wieland’s composition class at the HMTM began exploring the HMTM’s main building. From the 2024/25 winter semester, students from Prof. Christian Rein’s class in the Camera Department at the HFF Munich (HFF) also joined the project. The collaborative project was supervised by the HMTM’s building officer, Dipl.-Ing. Edda Reisinger, and the director of the HMTM’s Ben-Haim Research Centre, Dr Tobias Reichard. The project culminated in five short films, which were screened at the HFF’s Audimax cinema at the end of January 2025.
»s p u r e n«
As part of the Munich Biennale for New Music Theatre in 2022, »Spuren« (»Traces«) explored the theme of »Good Friends« in the cellars of the HMTM at Arcisstrasse 12, examining its ambiguity and ambivalence: a labyrinthine network of passageways leads through the machine rooms and dilapidated storage cellars of the former »Führerbau«. Originally built to protect people, the air-raid shelter was repurposed towards the end of the Second World War as a storage space for hundreds of works of art for the »Sonderauftrag Linz«. »Traces« is a musical-theatrical exploration whose stability is constantly undermined by junctions, dead ends and changes of direction. Within the labyrinth, the supposedly helpful and protective gesture of a system that promises people a sense of belonging, prosperity and social advancement is exposed as a perfidious manoeuvre by a cruel, inhuman regime.
»The Zither Player« – Marking the 120th birthday of Hitler’s assassin, Georg Elser
On 8 November 1939, Georg Elser attempted to kill Hitler, Göring and Goebbels in Munich. The assassination attempt narrowly failed. Elser was arrested whilst fleeing and murdered on 9 April 1945 at the Dachau concentration camp. As he never spoke of his act, either in letters or in diaries, the collective memory relies on retrospective accounts from contemporary witnesses and on the Gestapo’s interrogation transcripts: sources that allow little insight into the historical figure and may contain distortions.
As in real life, Georg Elser therefore remains silent in the musical stage production »Der Zitherspieler« (»The Zither Player«). His voice is taken over by the zither, the instrument he played from 1926 until his death. Two performers appear on stage: the zither player and an actress. The text collage consists of eyewitness accounts, interrogation transcripts and other textual fragments. The music comprises two layers: the live sound of the zither, which brings composer Peter Kiesewetter’s composition »Jeshimon« to life, and recorded tracks that further enrich the scene with sounds and noises. This interdisciplinary production was staged at the HMTM in January 2022 with students.
»ODEON Concerts«
As part of the ODEON Concerts, students and lecturers from the HMTM regularly perform together at the Allerheiligenhofkirche. With the name »ODEON Concerts«, the series commemorates the ODEON building, which was destroyed during the Second World War and which not only housed a legendary concert hall with superb acoustics but also, until 1944, the HMTM’s predecessor institutions.
The aim of the series, which is organised in cooperation with EUROPAMUSICALE, is, on the one hand, to perform chamber music of the highest standard and, on the other, to bring the works of ostracised or unknown Munich composers to the fore.
Remembrance in Research
Ben-Haim Research Centre The Ben-Haim Research Centre at the HMTM’s Institute of Musicology investigates the history and music of persecuted composers, as well as Jewish musical culture in all its diversity before, during and after the Nazi era, with a focus on southern Germany. The Centre’s research work is complemented by teaching, lecturing and publishing activities. The Centre holds a wealth of source material, particularly on Paul Ben-Haim (1897–1984) and Wolfgang Jacobi (1894–1972), two musical figures whose histories are closely linked to our university. The Centre is headed by Dr Tobias Reichard.
»Nazi Persecution and Music History« What were the global consequences of the persecution of musicians by the Nazi regime? Over a period of 18 years, the long-term research project »Nazi Persecution and Music History« will examine precisely this question. The aim is to revise and supplement the historiography of 20th-century music history against the backdrop of Nazi persecution.
The project is under the overall direction of Prof. Dr Friedrich Geiger, Professor of Historical Musicology at the Institute of Musicology and Dean of Research at the HMTM, and is a long-term project of the Academy of Sciences in Hamburg, carried out in cooperation with the University of Hamburg and the HMTM. Funding totalling 7.9 million euros is available until the end of the funding period on 31 December 2042.
Jewish Musical Life in Bavaria 1930–1950 »Island«, »oasis«, »refuge«, »stronghold of resistance«, »prison«, »intellectual ghetto« … Virtually all contemporary accounts of Jewish musical and theatrical life under National Socialism are permeated by such spatial metaphors. Semantics of confinement and constriction, but also of the blurring of boundaries and withdrawal, are, in their spatial context, representative of everyday Jewish experiences under the Nazi dictatorship.
Jewish musical life under National Socialism was significantly shaped at various levels by spatial conditions that have scarcely been researched to date. The aims of this research project are to examine these conditions using Bavaria as a case study, to systematically catalogue and analyse the relevant sources, and to explore how these findings might inform a music historiography that is sensitive to spatial contexts. The project is funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) for three years until March 2028 with a total grant of 465,000 euros and is led by Dr Tobias Reichard.
Artists Persecuted by the Nazis at the HMTM and AdBK Munich The Akademie der Bildenden Künste München (AdBK) and the HMTM are conducting joint research into artists persecuted by the Nazis at their respective institutions. This is the first systematic and academic examination of the biographies of artists who were excluded, displaced or murdered as a result of the intense pressure of persecution at the Munich Academies of Fine Arts and Music.
The joint research project is structured into two sub-projects: the HMTM’s sub-project focuses on persecuted members of the Munich Academy of Music, the predecessor institution of today’s HMTM. Leon Zmelty, a research assistant at the HMTM’s Institute of Musicology, has been working on this since 2025, supervised by Dr Tobias Reichard from the Ben-Haim Research Centre.
The sub-project at the AdBK focuses on identifying and researching university staff at the Academy of Fine Arts and the School of Applied Arts in Munich who were persecuted under National Socialism, as well as persecuted artists from their circles. The sub-project is being carried out by Beo Tomek, a research assistant at the Chair of Philosophy | Aesthetic Theory held by Prof. Dr Maria Muhle since 2023.
Research into the Nazi persecution of musicians is being placed on an entirely new footing with the project Nazi Persecution and Music History. The collaboration between the university and the conservatoire ensures a productive exchange between academia and artistic practice. For both fields, a more precise understanding of the scale of the destruction and its long-term global consequences is more necessary than ever – particularly in light of the growing threat posed by authoritarian regimes.
Prof. Dr. Friedrich Geiger, project leader and head of the research unit at the HMTM
A campus in a unique neighbourhood
A key partner in the Kunstareal
The HMTM’s main site on the Arcisstraße campus enjoys a superb location between Königsplatz and Karolinenplatz, in the heart of the Munich Kunstareal, one of the largest cultural clusters in Europe. With 18 museums, 6 universities and 15 cultural institutions and galleries within an area of just 500 x 500 metres, it uniquely brings together art, culture and science – making it a diverse source of collaborations and joint projects for the HMTM. To date, projects in areas such as composition and new music, concert design, music and dictatorship, and AI and new technologies have been carried out in the Kunstareal. The highlight of this collaboration is the biennial Kunstarealfest, at which HMTM students also showcase their work.
In 2023, the Kunstareal launched the »Open Kunstareal« ideas competition to make the public open spaces more attractive for local residents, students and visitors. In April 2024, a panel of experts recommended the implementation of the »Kunstgarten« concept by the Paris-based landscape architecture firm Atelier Roberta. The »Kunstgarten« aims to enhance the park-like qualities of the site and create a new, identity-forming urban space through targeted densification of vegetation, accentuation of the entrance areas, flexible street furniture and pavilions. A promising development – also for the HMTM’s Arcisstraße campus.
A place steeped in history
1889: Palais Pringsheim | Home to the Pringsheim family of academics. This is where Katharina Pringsheim, who later became Thomas Mann’s wife, grew up. Under pressure from the National Socialists, the family was forced to sell the building in 1933. |
1933: Demolition and start of construction | The Palais Pringsheim was demolished as early as November 1933. Between 1933 and 1937, the so-called »Führerbau« was erected in its place at Arcisstraße 12, based on plans by the architect Paul Ludwig Troost, as a representative building for the dictator Adolf Hitler. |
1937: Inauguration of the so-called »Führerbau« | Adolf Hitler reviewing parades, the signing of the Munich Agreement (29 September 1938), cultural receptions hosted by the National Socialists, and the storage of hundreds of paintings (mostly looted art). |
From May 1945: Central Collecting Point | Used by the US Military Government (together with the administrative building) as a Central Collecting Point for looted art plundered by the National Socialists throughout Europe during the Second World War. |
1948: Amerikahaus | In July, the Amerikahaus moved in: this marked the beginning of the building’s cultural repurposing for the purposes of democratic education. The facilities included a library with 36,000 volumes, a periodicals reading room, a children’s library, and a records and film section. In addition, there was a concert hall, several lecture and teaching rooms, and spacious exhibition areas. |
1957: The HMTM moves in | The Amerikahaus moved to a new building on Karolinenplatz, and the University of Music (now the Munich University of Music and Theatre) moved in; since then, thousands of musicians have studied here, made their stage debuts and cultivated international relationships. For the people of Munich, the building at Arcisstraße 12 is a hub for music, hosting numerous concerts, most of which are free to attend. |
2011: Opening of the Consulate General of the State of Israel | In 2011, alongside the existing embassy in Berlin, the Consulate General of the State of Israel opened in Munich, right in the heart of the Arcisstraße campus. It is the only Israeli Consulate-General in the European Union. |
2015: Opening of the Munich Documentation Center
for the History of National Socialism | Opening of the Munich Documentation Center for the History of National Socialism in the immediate vicinity of the Arcisstraße campus |
2016: Opening of the acatech Forum on Karolinenplatz | acatech – National Academy of Science and Engineering opens its Forum on the Arcisstraße campus |
From 2019: Arcisstraße Campus | Use of the other buildings on the Arcisstraße Campus for practice, learning and rehearsals, as well as offices for the Wavelab – the innovation lab and entrepreneurship center of the HMTM (from 2022) – and the university administration (from 2021). |