Because of the Nazi past: streets in Munich are being renamed - city council only has to agree

The city council is working on two new street names next Thursday.

Hilblestrasse is to be renamed Maria-Luiko-Strasse, the northern part of Thalkirchner Platz is to be renamed Kurt-Lichtwitz-Platz.

Munich - Hilblestraße is now to be finally renamed Maria-Luiko-Straße.

The city council will decide on Thursday.

A positive vote is certain, as the council of elders had already approved the measure (we reported).

It is the first renaming based on an investigation into debatable street names.

Name giver Friedrich Hilble (1881 - 1937) was an administrative officer and professional city councilor.

In 1956, the administration attested to him that he had done a great job as head of the welfare and youth welfare office and suggested that a street on the site of a former barracks in Neuhausen be named after him.

Hilble he arranged for deportations to the Dachau concentration camp.

Years later, the Neuhausen history workshop found out that Hilble was an admirer of the Nazis. As head of the welfare office, he arranged for the unemployed and welfare recipients to be deported to the Dachau concentration camp. The association and the district committee asked the city to rename the street. In 2015, however, the city council initially wanted to wait for the results of a study that has been investigating the role of the city administration in the Nazi era since 2010. During this examination, a list of names worth discussing was created, which in turn is discussed by a panel of experts. Ultimately, however, the city council has to decide. Hilblestrasse is the first street to be renamed based on this process.

The new namesake is the artist Maria Luiko, whose real name was Marie-Luise Kohn.

She was born on January 25, 1904 in Munich.

Among other things, she illustrated Ernst Toller's “Hinkemann” and Schalom Ben-Chorin's book of poems “The Songs of the Fountain”.

After the Nazis came to power, Luiko was banned from exhibiting.

On November 20, 1941, she was deported and murdered in "Fort IX" near Kaunas in Lithuania.

Munich physician Kurt Lichtwitz (1881 to 1933) is to have his own space

The city council will also decide on Thursday whether the Munich physician Kurt Lichtwitz (1881 to 1933) will get his own seat. The originally planned street had been criticized by citizens as unworthy and unadorned (we reported). At the initially selected section in Sendling “Am Isarkanal” there are only parking spaces on gravel and recycling containers, but no buildings. A dirty corner, exclaimed the Munich medical professor Sigmund Silber, who had suggested a street for Kurt Lichtwitz in the city. Like other citizens, he would have liked the southern part of the street "Am Isarkanal" to be renamed. Where the former place of activity of the clinic founder Kurt Lichtwitz was.

Now, at the suggestion of the municipal department, the northern part of Thalkirchner Platz at the Tierpark underground station is to be named after Kurt Lichtwitz.

This part is located between Pognerstrasse, Tierparkstrasse and Schäftlarnstrasse, the larger southern part below the intersection of Schäftlarnstrasse and Tierparkstrasse will continue to be called Thalkirchner Platz.

Lichtwitz carried out meals on the clinic premises

In 1920 Kurt Lichtwitz acquired the former “Bad Thalkirchen hydropathic hospital” on the site of today's Surgical Clinic Munich-South and converted it into a modern clinic for internal, neurological and gynecological diseases.

In order to help the needy population in the economic crisis, he carried out meals on the clinic premises.

After they came to power in 1933, the National Socialists boycotted the Lichtwitz clinic as a “Jewish company”.

The doctor finally died on May 27, 1933 under mysterious circumstances; his widow sold the clinic in 1935 to Franz Rinecker and Heinrich Müller.