The Girls of Munich

Beautiful women are heading for Munich today much as they journeyed to Hollywood during its golden era. Unlike their California predecessors, however, the girls of Munich aren't seeking fame or wealth; they simply want to be part of the action. Contemplating this state of affairs, a city official recently observed, with a mixture of pride and exasperation: "Every venturesome girl, once she's sampled Katmandu, New York, Tangier, Rome and Hong Kong, now decides to try Munich--at least for a while."

The city's growth has outpaced its reputation. Since the end of the war in 1945, the world at large has remained relatively unaware of Munich's emergence; but the former Bavarian capital has been largely rebuilt and its population has doubled. The resultant city is a complex blend of the medieval and the modern, a marriage of plate glass and gingerbread that produces a curious unpredictability best described as civic schizophrenia. One day, perhaps, Munich may revert to its origins as a dull commercial center on a par with Frankfurt, Manchester, Antwerp or Zurich. But for 1972 and some years beyond, no such destiny seems in store.

The special flavor of Munich reaches back to the year 1158, when it was founded--as its name should reveal to readers with a smattering of German--by monks. No hair-shirted ascetics these: The youthful frater depicted (text continued on page 180) Girls of Munich (continued from page 133) in the city's coat of arms holds neither cross nor sword but a foaming mug of beer. The core of Munich--now known as the Old City--developed as a tight community forced to grow skyward by a tower-studded brick wall that surrounded and compressed it, as 18th Century poet-chronologist Martin Huber wrote, "like a corset around a voluptuous wench." It prospered through its geopolitically advantageous position on the Isar River, growing fat from tolls collected from trade routes that passed through town. In addition, the river brought abundant food and building materials from the rich hinterland along the rim of the Alps. By the 18th Century, with the ascendancy of the pleasure-loving ducal house of Wittelsbach, Munich had been coated with baroque ornamentation--as if some irrepressible pastry maker had adorned his favorite cake with ever more complex curlicues. The city's unabashed sensuality expressed itself even then: Walls were covered with frescoes of Biblical scenes, but their artists were obviously more intrigued with glorifying the nude body than with upholding the faith.

Physically, downtown Munich looks almost the same today as it did 450 years ago, but much of this well-preserved treasure of historical architecture is essentially fraudulent. The heart of Munich was annihilated during the bombing raids of World War Two. In monumental tribute to the stubbornness of its city fathers, who refused all truck with modernization, the Old City was rebuilt in its own image. Those winding streets, gabled roofs, church towers, palace fronts, even the three medieval gates--all are ersatz. Local satirist Wolfram Siebeck wrote: "What the authorities created was a genuine predecessor of Disneyland. A sort of instant, but improved, past. Medieval patina and high-speed elevators within."

Architecture is the only area in which Munich can justly be labeled conservative. Otherwise, it's a freewheeling metropolis that accommodates--indeed, welcomes--diversity in all forms, especially female. It always has. For graphic proof, visit sprawling Nymphenburg Castle, a royal pleasure preserve during the reign of the Wittelsbachs. Upon entering the towering reception hall, turn left past a long row of ornate chambers into a spacious corner room. There the walls are covered with 36 masterful portraits of 36 beautiful girls--the mistresses of King Louis I of Bavaria, collected over four decades of outstanding potency. Louis' tastes were both democratic and eclectic, and in his Schönheitsgalerie (gallery of female beauty), a dimple-cheeked München baker's daughter hangs next to a Viennese countess of doubtful ancestry, a fresh-complexioned Berchtesgaden farm girl beside an aristocratic British lady. A short while ago, a well-heeled Munich bachelor, an expert on his city's amorous history, bet friends three bottles of Dom Perignon that, with the aid of a catalog of the Schönheitsgalerie, he could find on any Thursday evening at Ebsch Privée, a chic night spot, the modern epitome of each of the types portrayed in the paintings. But he succeeded in only 35 instances. The one he couldn't duplicate--the portrait high in the upper-left corner, in the worst possible light--was that of raven-haired adventuress Lola Montez, a dancer whose financial demands supposedly cost poor Louis his throne. Lola subsequently recouped her fortunes on the San Francisco stage at the height of the gold rush. If her like doesn't exist in Munich today, it's because none of the city's girls are so mercenary.

While his girl-collecting operation was in full swing, Louis dispatched minions throughout Europe to search out talent. But around the beginning of the 20th Century, young women began rushing into town on their own. They came from everywhere--dark-eyed Russian revolutionaries preaching free love, British suffragettes precursing today's feminists, French chanteuses reciting erotic prose in library cellars, dreamy-eyed Viennese artistes steeped in art nouveau, a stream of Prussian bluestockings sampling unaccustomed license, and Isadora Duncan, baring her breasts on the table-tops of the Simplissimus cabaret, always managing to cover herself a split second before the police arrived. It was a new, uninhibited bohemia, but its splendor began to dim during World War One--and by 1918 had faded out completely, as the city's creative forces were sapped by Berlin. Such former Munich residents as Bertolt Brecht settled in the northern capital, and the emancipated girls followed. Had an article on The Girls of Munich been attempted in the post-Versailles era, it could have been compressed into a single paragraph accompanied by no more than three photographs, none of them very revealing.

But just as Berlin's new importance drew attention from Munich at the end of the First World War, so did its political isolation after the Second thrust the Bavarian capital back into the limelight. Germany's resurging energies sought new business centers, and Munich, having survived the wildest dramas of the Nazi era with relative indifference, caught on. Germany's renascent economic prosperity looked kindly on Munich's bucolic surroundings and its proximity to Austria, Italy and Switzerland. First came the movie business, then the ready-to-wear industry, cosmetics producers, high-class retailers, photographic, electronic and automotive concerns, public-relations firms, TV, model agencies, publishers; in short, scores of enterprises, all needing skilled secretaries and attractive receptionists. Here--long before they became the rage in London and New York--boutiques and discothèques proliferated. The pace was self-generating and the word spread: In Munich there were jobs, money and lots of people having good times. The girls poured in, and they've been arriving ever since. You can see them alighting from planes at Riem International Airport, carrying their bags from trains pulling into the Hauptbanhof, driving their own cars or climbing out of someone else's.

Given this sizable influx of outside talent, native girls are relatively hard to find, though easy to recognize. The homegrown Münchnerin boasts finely chiseled features, a snub nose and a penchant for dirndls. Her outspoken independence and her lusty appetite for life bespeak the Celtic ancestry she shares with her French and Irish cousins. Her joie de vivre outweighs whatever remorse she might feel, as a not overzealous Catholic, toward sin; after all, what's the confessional for? Her inbred curiosity makes meeting and dating her easy, and the competition she's lately endured, from long-legged northern invaders, makes her even more agreeable than she might have been a few years ago.

The newcomers from the north, for whom the word Fräuleinwunder was coined by a Munich journalist, are for the most part blue-eyed, blonde-maned, high-cheekboned and narrow-waisted. In the past ten years, they have descended on Munich in enormous numbers, from Schleswig-Holstein, Hamburg, Berlin, Westphalia, Lower Saxony and East Germany. You see them everywhere, striding braless down the street in tight jeans and boots.

Munich is foremost a party town, and at any of the better festivities--where, since the number present is always triple the guest list, gate crashing is not only simple but expected--there is likely to be a circle of eager admirers gathered around a single foreign girl. Until a few years ago, she was almost invariably Viennese. Munich holds a great attraction for these coy and erotic charmers from the imperial city on the Danube. One such redhead was heard to complain: "Back home, all we have are three restaurants, one bar and the Opera Ball each year, until boredom and lack of opportunity force us to team up with the man our parents picked out in the first place." This particular Viennese self-exile, still single, is happily working in the classical-records department of Munich's largest bookstore. "Just call me another victim of Vienna's girl drain," she says. "By now, most of my girlfriends have moved here. In Munich, we feel appreciated, wanted, close to the good things of life and--above all--free to do what we want. Besides, if things get too wild, I can always drive back to Vienna in four hours." Then a suggestive smile. "Two and a half, if somebody gives me a ride in his Ferrari."

Today the Viennese is being challenged by growing numbers of Asian girls, lithe, proudly sensitive women from the new African states, U. S. coeds seeking mail (and males) at the American Express office on Promenadeplatz and, more rarely, the British birds, who, like their sisters from Scandinavia, usually land in Munich as airline hostesses. The city's openness makes it a marvelous place for striking up casual acquaintances with French or Italian beauties who, back home in Paris or Rome, would remain depressingly inaccessible. Munich also boasts a remarkable array of worldly eastern European girls: Czechs, Poles, Hungarians, Yugoslavs, Balts--even a growing community of Russians. (Be cautioned, however, that the ease of an encounter with a Soviet-bloc girl may be misleading. Spying is a major business in Munich. Many a good-time companion appeases her appetite for luxury by taking copious notes in invisible ink after what has seemed to her date an innocent social evening.)

In Munich's society, girls inhabit two overlapping cultures--the underground and the aristocracy. In the Schwabing district, Munich's equivalent of Greenwich Village, liberated tradition antedates the time when Lenin lived there, and the rules of deportment, dress and grooming extend the carnival mood of Fasching and Oktoberfest throughout the year. An onslaught of hippies in the Sixties was taken as a matter of course; and even now that the Woodstock generation has come of age, its youth have lingered on in this area of Munich--a place where life is free from the disapproval of judgmental neighbors. (Given its proximity to Turkey, drugs were an accepted part of the Munich demimonde long before they gained popularity in the West.) When you explore the Schwabing district, some of the girls you meet may turn out to be the descendants of rich (or once-rich) noblemen who established a foothold in Munich centuries ago, and who periodically descend from castles and palaces to attend society gatherings. The presence of such families as Hapsburg and Hohenzollern in Munich results in a notable surplus of princesses, duchesses, marquesas, contessas, baronesses and all the other tall, cool, tweedy, light-complexioned women whose matched-pearl necklaces and earrings betray the von prefixed to their names. Living the good life in Munich constitutes their one short chance at freedom before they are forced into the responsibilities that are the price of noble blood. Cognizant of the unspoken time limit on their liberation, they become determined, almost strident hedonists.

A first-time visitor to Munich could begin his stay practically anywhere, but there are three particularly fruitful points of departure. Above all, there is the wide, poplar-lined Leopoldstrasse, the boulevard that begins at the Siegestor--the war-damaged victory gate intentionally maintained as a ruin. The sidewalks of this mainstream are lined with cafés, ice-cream shops and pizza parlors, which, from early spring to late November, create the only German equivalent of an Italian corso. Single girls abound here, alone or in pairs, not only not minding but expecting to be approached. An accepted method is to strike up a conversation in front of one of the many paintings displayed along the boulevard. If the girls refuse, they'll do so apologetically. During the day, the street fills with coeds from the nearby university and art academy. Toward sunset, the subway brings more strollers from other quarters.

During rainy days--and the chill months of the year--the action moves to the Citta 2000. This three-story entertainment and shopping conglomerate is an indoor promenade that houses, in addition to its various dining and wining facilities, two dozen boutiques, an art-movie house, a gambling palace, hairdresser and wig salons, a travel agency, jewelers, perfumers--and a well-stocked sex shop. The third stop on your Munich social itinerary should be the Bayerischer Hof, a luxury hotel ranking with the posh Continental or the gracious Vier Jahreszeiten. But the Bayerischer Hof, located on a quaint square just beneath the twin towers of the Frauenkirche, is unique. Owner Falk Volkhardt, a crafty entrepreneur, has transformed and greatly expanded what was a slightly dusty family business into his own vision of an establishment totally dedicated to the pursuit of splendid leisure. Here, one makes friends in the large foyers and bars with the same ease one expects at a resort on the Riviera. Atop the building, a swimming pool, protected from inclement weather by a sliding roof, teems with bikinied sun bathers. The hotel's restaurants include a grill specializing in Argentine steaks and the largest branch of Trader Vic's east of New York. Name bands playing in the barn-size night club downstairs draw single girls by the dozens, and each carnival season the four-story ballroom becomes the setting for some of the holiday's most audacious costume parties. There's a 600-seat theater, a luxury shopping center whose tenants range from Dior and Pucci to specialists in pre-Columbian art. Volkhardt has also converted the adjoining Montgelas Palais into an annex furnished with rococo suites that look as if they've been there for centuries.

For the most part, Munich's great restaurants are not spots for finding acquaintances so much as places to take them to. Of course, there are exceptions; for an unattached out-of-towner, luncheon at Käfer's will probably prove profitable. This erstwhile food shop has grown into a popular luncheon hangout, located atop three stories of the best delicatessen fare outside of Fortnum and Mason's. The newly opened branch of Zurich's Mövenpick, in the ornate Künstlerhaus, draws equally chic crowds; but Böttner's, a quiet back room on the Theatinerstrasse, is still relatively undiscovered. Abundant pulchritude, though more in the form of the matronly Frauenwunder than of the maidenly Fräuleinwunder, abounds at elegant Humplmayr's. And for the past few years, female radiance at its brightest has also been found--and approached--at La Cave, a candlelit cellar on the Maximilianstrasse, whose kitchen stays open until three A.M.

While the list of Munich's restaurants is staggering, the number of night clubs, discothèques, stripperies and mere bars in which to make contact is even larger--but less dependable. Naturally, there are many potluck discos, of which Tiffany's, Subway, Cin-Cin and Crash are presently the best known; but they might be forgotten tomorrow, then redecorated and reopened under a new name next week. Not unlike Paris, Munich also has a limited number of more enduring spots, exclusive rather than advertised, where it's not easy to gain status as a regular. Most noteworthy is the Anyway, a hidden, ill-lit but ornate and incredibly noisy cubicle in the Old City. It's a must for the Beautiful People and for artists and movie directors seeking new faces. Ebsch Privée assembles the blue blood; Simpl attracts the intellectuals; and since Munich's veteran raconteur, James Graser, resumed its management, the St. James Club again maintains a precarious balance between a friendly haven for fun-seeking innocents and a place where ladies of considerable experience can meet strangers discreetly. If you don't mind rubbing shoulders with some authentic weirdos, go to the Piper Club at the Kurfürstenplatz, decorated in a Hindu-style, gold-papier-mâché scheme that may well have been inspired by a Thirties Hollywood horror movie. (One dollar here for a well-rolled joint.) Kinki, a late-hour watering spot on the Oskar von Miller Ring, provides thrills of a different sort. It's headquarters for the local mafiosi--filled with swarthy, sated-looking young men quite ready to part with their stunning companions for a time--and a fee.

Most of Munich's strip joints are fossils from an age of puritanism. The one exception is the Eve Cabaret, which presents a well-staged, quick-paced erotic show and has some "temporarily out of work" models on hand to help reduce the stock of vintage champagne. Prostitution in Munich isn't a major industry; too much of the competition is free. Except for a short beat along the Briennerstrasse (where for $40 or so you can pick up--or be picked up by--the poules de luxe in their new Mercedes), the police have exiled ordinary streetwalkers to main arteries beyond the city limits, where they can be found waiting for passing motorists. But this sort of encounter isn't recommended and volume is shrinking every year.

During two anything-goes periods each year--Fasching and Oktoberfest--the need to resort to love for hire is even less likely. The motivations of the pre-Lenten Fasching weeks are similar to those of the 18th Century Venetian carnival, during which the inhabitants of Venice customarily donned masks to assume new identities and pursue new adventures. New Orleans' Mardi Gras had a parallel genesis. In modern Munich, for a period that lasts, depending on the irregularities of the Gregorian calendar, from four to seven weeks, nearly 1000 public costume parties permit the enterprising male--and female--to wear disguises in which clownery and sex are the dominating factors. Some of the entertainments, such as the Grosse Glocke at the Regina Palace Hotel, attract thousands of pretty girls in every state of undress. And the only adjective to describe the early-morning hours of James Graser's annual "Hippodrom" at the Bayerischer Hof is--orgiastic. Fasching veterans, however, prefer to flock to artists' private parties, which compete with one another in their level of sensuousness and in the intensity of the hangover they're apt to produce.

The Oktoberfest, 16 days of beer-drinking debauchery, started 160 years ago as an innocuous celebration honoring the wedding of an obscure Wittelsbach. The idea caught on so well with the burghers that they decided to repeat it annually. It now resembles a giant fair where an especially potent beer, brewed only for this occasion, is dispensed from huge tents.

Since the number of annual visitors to Oktoberfest roughly equals the crowd that it is estimated will gather here for the 1972 Summer Olympics, Munich is facing the games with relative equanimity, particularly since it has spent the past year improving its mass-transit system and expanding its hotel facilities. Still, the period between August 26, when the games begin, and October 8, when Oktoberfest ends, is expected to be the most hectic, probably the most memorable and perhaps even the most pleasurable in the city's history. Münchner generally agree with Siegfried Sommer, erudite writer on the city: "Munich has withstood the Prussians, Hitler, the bombs, and will revert to itself once the Olympics are over." Who could ask for more?