Munich miscellany.

Written in the same spirit as a recent post on New Orleans and following up on my St. Ignatius' Day post, this post is a sort of photo-essay on the Sunday I spent in Munich at the end of July. Starting things off, the above photo was taken at the end of the Hochamt (High Mass) celebrating St. Ignatius' Day at the Jesuitenkirche St. Michael. As you can see, the Mass was a standing-room-only event; befitting the feast, the liturgy featured about a dozen servers in red cassocks and white surplices, lots of incense, and a Monteverdi Mass setting performed by a professional orchestra and choir.

At Neuhauser Straße 14, just down the street from St. Michael's, one finds the Bürgersaalkirche, longtime base of Jesuit Father Rupert Mayer (1876-1945). As a military chaplain during World War I, Father Mayer lost his left leg in a grenade attack and became the first Catholic priest to be awarded the Iron Cross. In the interwar years, he achieved great renown as a preacher, retreat director, and leader of the Marianische Männerkongregation, a men's sodality that served as a forerunner of today's Christian Life Communities. Already a foe of the Nazis in the 1920s, Father Mayer endured regular harassment and imprisonment under the Third Reich and spent most of World War II under house arrest at Ettal Abbey. Living just long enough to witness the defeat of Nazism and to regain his freedom, Father Mayer died of a stroke on All Saints' Day of 1945. In 1987, Rupert Mayer was beatified by Pope John Paul II.

Here is the crypt of the Bürgersaalkirche, where Blessed Rupert Mayer is buried. Though things were relatively quiet when I stopped in on a Sunday morning, I could tell that Father Mayer receives many visitors. During the time I was in the crypt, a steady stream of locals came in, knelt for a brief prayer before the grave, and then went on their way. The few tourists who came in maintained a respectful silence, helping to keep the crypt a place of prayer.

The grave of Blessed Rupert Mayer.

A bust of Father Mayer in the crypt of the Bürgersaalkirche, rubbed to a shine by the hands of countless pilgrims.

A manhole cover in Munich's central Altstadt bearing the city's coat of arms. The stylized representation of a young monk (the Münchner Kindl) is a reminder that Munich was founded by Benedictines.

The main building of the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (LMU), a place that I visited on account of its connection to the anti-Nazi resistance group known as Weiße Rose (White Rose), which was largely made up of LMU students.

The plaza in front of the LMU main building is named Geschwister-Scholl-Platz in honor of siblings Hans and Sophie Scholl, Weiße Rose members who were arrested and executed by guillotine in February 1943 for distributing leaflets urging resistance to the Nazi regime.

Set into the stones of Geschwister-Scholl-Platz, this memorial to the members of Weiße Rose reproduces the group's anti-Nazi leaflets.

Directly across the street from Geschwister-Scholl-Platz, Professor-Huber-Platz is named for Kurt Huber, a professor of musicology and Weiße Rose member who was arrested shortly after the execution of the Scholl siblings and was killed a few months later.

On the door of a university building overlooking Professor-Huber-Platz, I noticed the traditional Epiphany inscription seen above. This was the only 'C+M+B' that I spotted during my brief visit to Munich, but I suspect that the tradition is still widely observed in heavily Roman Catholic Bavaria; having spent comparatively more time at both ends of Austria, I am happy to report that 'C+M+B' is chalked on many doors in Innsbruck and Vienna.

Continuing my pilgrimage, I traveled to the outskirts of Munch to visit the Friedhof am Perlacher Forst, where several Weiße Rose members are buried together with their families. The cemetery plot seen above contains the graves of Hans and Sophie Scholl as well as their parents Robert and Magdalena, together with their friend and fellow Weiße Rose member Christoph Probst (executed with the Scholls in February 1943) and his mother Katharina.

The graves of Hans and Sophie Scholl. Though Weiße Rose was not an explicitly religious group, its leading members were guided by shared Christian convictions. Lifelong Lutherans, Hans and Sophie Scholl also drew inspiration from the writings of Augustine, Aquinas and John Henry Newman.

The graves of Christoph Probst and his mother, Katharina Kleeblatt. Christoph Probst grew up in a secular and free-thinking household, which ensured that he would always be deeply skeptical of National Socialism but also deprived him of any religious roots. Partly thanks to his association with Weiße Rose and his reading and discussion of the Christian classics with the Scholls, Christoph Probst felt a growing attraction to Catholicism and was received into the Church shortly before his death in Munich's Stadelheim Prison.

Not far from the final resting place of Christoph Probst and the Scholl siblings lies the grave of the man who brought Probst and the Scholls together: Alexander Schmorell was a high school classmate and close friend of Christoph Probst and met Hans Scholl during compulsory military service. Schmorell later introduced Probst to the Scholls, and eventually all four became active members of Weiße Rose. Arrested shortly after the execution of the Scholls, Schmorell was guillotined alongside Professor Karl Huber in July 1943. Alexander Schmorell is buried with his father and stepmother, Hugo and Elisabeth Schmorell.

This three-bar cross appears at the base of Alexander Schmorell's headstone. The son of a German father and a Russian mother, Alexander Schmorell always remained faithful to the Orthodox faith of his mother (who died of typhus while he was still an infant) even though his father was a Protestant and his stepmother and siblings were Catholic. As Jim Forest notes in a fine article about Schmorell and his ties to Weiße Rose, efforts are underway to have Alexander Schmorell recognized as a saint of the Russian Orthodox Church.

Not directly related to Weiße Rose but in the same cemetery, here is a memorial ground containing the remains of 4092 victims of the Nazi regime; the dead whose ashes are buried here include people who were imprisoned at the nearby concentration camp in Dachau as well as victims of Nazi euthanasia policies. The inscription written around the pool in the center of this photo reads, Den Toten zur Ehre, den Lebenden zur Mahnung, which may be translated, "To honor the dead, [and] to always warn the living."

Another inscription, this one noting who is buried in the above space. My translation: "Here are 4092 victims of Nazi despotism laid to final rest." To this I can only add: may their memory be eternal.

The above photos capture much of what I saw during an exceedingly brief visit to Munich. I only spent about six hours in the Bavarian capital, but I was sufficiently captivated, intrigued, and moved by what I saw that I hope to return. Please say a prayer for me that I may make it there again. AMDG.