Remembrance work

Our university explicitly promotes and supports cultural remembrance work and sees it as part of its democratic mission. It acknowledges its special historical responsibility – not least through the use of its main building at Arcisstraße 12 in Munich, the former so-called »Führerbau«, a representative building of National Socialism where, among other things, the Munich Agreement was signed in 1938.

The biographies of more than 100 members of our university alone – former students, teachers and other employees – are inextricably linked to the Nazi past: They were either persecuted by the Nazi regime because of their origins and political convictions or put their activities in the service of National Socialism. The eminently political and social dimension that music always possesses is particularly evident here.

Against this background, our university initiates research projects that deal with musicians persecuted by the Nazis or with Jewish musical life in southern Germany. The results of this research are incorporated into the education of our students in musicology seminars or in the development of concert repertoire in artistic and artistic-pedagogical lessons. Through networking and cooperation, through discussion events, conferences and concerts, our university promotes discourse and creates connections in society.

Our university wants to be a place of multi-perspective dialogue, also beyond the examination of Nazi history. We want to take into account not only the diverse significance of music in our society, but also the diversity of our university family. Remembrance culture is therefore not to be understood in the sense of a conservational practice. Rather, it serves the conscious visualisation of historical events and the critical examination of the historical, social and political dimensions of artistic activity. In the interaction of art and science, spaces for remembering and reflection are to be created in order to develop constructive perspectives for the present and the future.