Alpspitzstraße

This Garmisch street, named in 1891 for the Alpspitze Mountain — the pyramid-shaped North face of the peak dominating the Alpine skyline in town — starts in the touristy walking street at the Marienplatz, runs across St. Martin-Straße, and ends in Hausberg.

According to the Bavarian State Office for the Preservation of Historic Monuments, the building now located at Alpspitzestraße 1 was originally built in 1604.¹

Although its lüftlmalerei are brand new, a plaque on the side of the building explains — in both German and English — the time lapse of the place over the last four hundred years: from farmhouse, to blacksmith’s shop, to coppersmith’s, to a bakery that existed on the site for more than 150 years.²

As testament to its century and a half as a bakery, the lüftlmalerei on the building’s front also includes the bakers’ guild’s coat of arms.

The oldest known coat of arms for German bakers dates back to 1111 AD, with pretzels already appearing as the symbol of their occupation.

Their name, “Bretzel” in German, derives from the Latin word “brachiatellium” — translated as “little arms” — because the pretzel symbolizes arms folded to pray. This was the bread Christ supposedly offered to his followers at the Last Supper. The twists create three holes which came to represent the Christian Trinity –- the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Thus, the pretzel took on religious connotations for good luck and prosperity.

No wonder, then, that the pretzel has been the symbol for bakers in Germany for a thousand years.

Legend has it, that in 1323, Emperor Ludwig of Bavaria awarded bakers an official coat of arms for their participation in the Battle of Mühldorf. At the center of their banner, the image of a pretzel.

In 1348, the pretzel on the crest was overlaid with the Bohemian royal crown above it. Here, rather than a crown, the artist has placed the Garmisch-Partenkirchen coat of arms.

For their services during the first Turkish siege of Vienna in 1529, two lions on either side were added.

As the story goes, during the siege, the Ottoman Turks dug a tunnel under the city wall at night. The bakers — who were awake and busy baking when the wall was breeched — are said to have heard the sound of digging first, and, when the Turks broke through, they fought “like lions.” For saving the city, they were awarded the two lions on their guild’s coat of arms.

In 1690, in recognition of their services during the second Turkish siege, Emperor Leopold gave the bakers’ guild permission to arm the lions with swords. However, in the coat of arms painted here, the lions are unarmed.

Since 2000, though, this building has been home to the Promenade Apotheke pharmacy.

Above the first floor window, a banner with the pharmacy’s name and a cartouche noting that the building was first built (“erbaut“) in 1604.

Above a door, a Bavarian greeting — „Grüass Gott” — while the putti on either side hold pharmacy-related items — a mortar and pestle and the Caduceus, the staff of the Greek messenger deity Hermes.

The lüftlmalerei here were originally painted by Isidor Winterholler in 1957 and restored by Otto Ertl in 2000.³

At Alpspitzstraße 5a, just above the sign for the sales office of the local paper, the Garmisch-Partenkirchner Tagblatt, one finds a rectangular mural of Saint Peter standing in front of the Peterskirche in Rome painted by Heinrich Bickel some time after 1945.⁴

In the scene, Saint Peter is in the foreground wearing a golden robe, holding a golden key in his outstretched right hand and an open book in his outstretched left. He appears to be reading from the book he’s facing to a young boy, with the domes of St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome in the background.

A medallion at the bottom of the mural reads “I Petrus III Vers 9-17”, referencing the third chapter of the First Epistle of Peter in the New Testament of the Christian Bible, verses 9 through 17.

Saint Peter, who was born “Simon,” was a fisherman from Bethsaida of Galilee and met Jesus with brother, Andrew. Jesus called him to be his follower, promising to make him a “fisher of men,” and from that moment on, Peter was always by Jesus’ side. After the crucifixion of Jesus, Peter took on a leadership position among Jesus’ followers and was of great importance in the founding of the early Christian Church. His preaching brought him to Rome, where he, himself, was crucified by Emperor Nero, sometime between A.D. 64 and 67. He was supposedly crucified upside down because he considered himself unworthy of dying in the same manner as Jesus.

In religious iconography, Peter is usually shown as an older man with a short beard and usually white hair. (Contrasting with Paul the Apostle, who is often depicted with a longer beard and black hair.) But by the 8th century, artists began to attribute one or two large keys — either in his hand or hanging from his belt — as a symbol to specifically identify Saint Peter in art.

Catholics believe that the bishop of Rome, the Pope, inherits the mantle of Peter, who was entrusted with the administration of Christ’s church on Earth. Thus the symbol for the Papacy are two crossed keys. This key symbolism is so pervasive, that St. Peter’s Basilica — the dome at the Vatican named after Peter — has an almost key-shaped layout.

This key symbolism, as well as the Saint’s name change from “Simon” to “Peter,” comes from a specific passage in the Bible, Matthew 16:13–19:

“And I tell you that you are Kephas (Aramaic for “rock”), and on this kephas (Aramaic for rock), I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.”

Therefore, our name for him in English, “Peter,” comes from”Petrus” in Latin and “Petros” in Greek, itself deriving from the Greek word “petra” which means “stone” or “rock,” and is the literal translation of the “Kepha” in Aramaic — which is what Jesus spoke — the nickname given to Simon by Jesus in that passage. And this is also where the Catholic Church derives the idea of the Pope’s special position and authority, as the heir to Saint Peter. When Saint Peter is painted or sculpted with keys, they represent the “keys of the kingdom of heaven” that Jesus spoke of.

The other symbol we see in this particular lüftlmalerei, the open book in Peter’s left hand, contains only a single letter on each page — the Greek letter “Alpha” on his left, and “Omega” on the right — the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet, signifying the the phrase “I am Alpha and Omega” (“ἐγώ εἰμι τὸ Ἄλφα καὶ τὸ Ὦ”), from the Bible, The Book of Revelation verse 1:8, a text which had been originally written in Greek.

The letters Alpha and Omega in juxtaposition are often used as a Christian visual symbol. The symbols were used in early Christianity and appear in the Roman catacombs. In fact, despite always being shown as Greek letters, the symbol of Alpha and Omega became more common in Western than Eastern Orthodox Christian art. They are often shown to the left and right of Christ’s head, sometimes within his halo, where they take the place of the Christogram used in Orthodox art.

Hotel “Haus Hohenzollern” at Alpspitzstraße 6, have two oriel windows protruding out from the corners covered in paintings of recurrent patterns and floral scrolls. At the very top of both, an intricately detailed coat of arms, partially displaying the black and white quartered shield of the Hohenzollern dynasty from Swabia, for which the building most likely gets its name. On the corner underneath the window at the very top beside the coat of arms, “1919 Erbaut v. Josef Jocher,” and “A.D. 1979,” lets us know that the building was built by (“erbaut von“) Josef Jocher in 1919, with the artwork added by artist Christa Burges in 1979.

Although it’s done in red and white, rather than blue and white, the checkered pattern used here on the tops of the window around the coat of arms is reminiscent of the Bavarian flag.

At Alpspitzstraße 8, a narrative lüftlmalerei depicting a rustic scene: a moustachioed man in traditional Bavarian attire, wearing lederhosen and a Tyrolean hat, reclines on a chair and a barrel, a chalice in one hand and a pipe in the other, as a woman behind him serves him from a pitcher. In the center on the wall behind them, a sign is painted that reads “ERBAUT 1960” — or, “built in 1960”.

Next to a hat and a coat lying on a bench off to the left, there is the artist’s signature and a date, showing that this lüftlmalerei was painted in 1978 by Franz Winterholler.

There is a scroll painted underneath that has the corner of a single letter poking through what has clearly been painted over in white, so what it used to say beneath the scene has since been lost.

At Alpspitzstraße 29, there is a large narrative lüftlmalerei spread across two walls of the corner of the building painted by Heinrich Bickel in 1949.

Here, the entire scene is a “Trompe-l’œil,” an art technique that uses realistic imagery and a forced perspective to create the optical illusion that the depicted objects exist in three dimensions, enhanced by the fact that the lüftlmalerei is spread across a 90° corner.

Bickel used the same motif — a rich, story-telling representation of construction workers doing their jobs — here at the Baumer family’s home, as he did at their business at Zugspitzstraße 124. Here, as there, Bickel’s workers do not use modern machines such as cranes or concrete mixers, but instead work with traditional tools from pre-industrial times, such as wheelbarrows, pulleys, and trowels.

Above left, a Bavarian Mary, Joseph, and infant Jesus oversee the construction of the building. Although they are saints in Heaven, Bickel painted them as still separate, but also of the same space and time as the men toiling below.

The author of Heinrich Bickel – Der Freskenmaler von Werdenfels described Bickel’s composition here as an expression of the religious attitude of the traditional Bavarian population. Like one of the Baroque masters, he wrote, the artist conveys naively experienced religious attitudes with the real by juxtaposing this world with the hereafter, placing as he does what is Holy in the local (albeit pre-modern) here-and-now.⁵

The words at the top right are a verse from a poem by Gottlob Wilhelm Burmann circa 1774, Hanna and Hans:

Arbeit macht den Lebenslauf
Noch einmal, so munter;
Froher geht die Sonne Auf,
Froher geht Sie unter!

Which translates (very roughly) to something like: “Once more, work makes the day go by so cheerfully; happily the sun rises, and she sets even happier”.⁶

The words at the very bottom, well below the lüftlmalerei say in German: “Please don’t lean your bicycle here”.

Coat of arms at Alpspitzstraße 32, “Landhaus Metsch.”

Painted by Otto Ertl, it was the owner’s wish to have his family’s coat of arms on the outside of the house.

The two letters entwined at the bottom of the shield, “K” and “L,” are the first names of the Metsches — Karin and Luggi.⁷

According to Ertl’s son, Michael, after consulting historians and heraldists, Otto Ertl found that the Metsch coat of arms dated back to to 1605 — hence the note “1605” on the banner underneath the lüftlmalerei.⁸

Most likely, the coat of arms he found came from the Siebmachers Wappenbuch — a collection of heraldic images compiled by Johann Ambrosius Siebmacher (1561 – 1611), a German heraldic artist, copperplate engraver, etcher and publisher from Nuremberg — first published in 1605. (A copy of which can be found online at commons.wikimedia.org.)

Now, while the Wappenbuch was first published in 1605, Siebmacher had actually collected some 200 hundred years of heraldic images from the Holy Roman Empire. Hence, the Metsch family coat of arms may be considerably older than the Wappenbuch.

Alpspitzstraße 34, checkered sgraffiti with animals and flowers.

Alpspitzstraße 40.

On the front, a banner reads: “German house in German Land, God protect you with Mighty Hand”⁹ and the date, 1934.

Variations of the phrase on the banner seem to have been most popular during the First and Second World Wars, used not only on building facades, but in quite a bit of propaganda during that time.

On one wall, a rustic Bavarian man and a woman, presumably depictions of the original occupants of the house.

On the opposite, depictions of Mary, patron saint of Bavaria, the Patrona Bavaria, and Saint Florian, patron Saint of Partenkirchen.

Alpspitzstraße 49.

The mural on the the wall of Alpspitzstraße 52, master painter Günter Pieper’s home, stands out from all the other lüftlmalerei in town. Unique, abstract, and distinctly more modern, at just the right angle it appears that the actual Alpsitzstraße mountain is exposed by a zipper opening through the side of the building.

This particular facade was done over the course of a week in April 2009 by Pieper’s then journeyman painter, Marcel Francke. Franke had painted a Caribbean sunset on a beach poking through the same zipper motif on the bare walls of his bedroom. When his boss, Pieper, saw it, he asked for a similar picture of his own. While at first they intended to paint a view of Tuscany here emerging from the zipper, given its already less traditional style, they chose instead to go with an image of the local skyline rather than a foreign countryside.¹⁰

Bayerisches Landesamt für Denkmalpflege. Denkmalliste, Markt Garmisch-Partenkirchen. 4 August 2020, www.geodaten.bayern.de/denkmal_static_data/externe_denkmalliste/pdf/denkmalliste_merge_180117.pdf, p. 5: "D-1-80-117-1 Alpspitzstraße 1. Ehem. Bauernhaus, zweigeschossiger Preisdachbau mit Lauben und Balkon, im Kern 1604, südseitiger Zierbund 18. Jh., Eisenbalkon 2. Hälfte 19. Jh., Bemalung modern."
Historischer Ortstundgang: Haus „zum Kainzen Bäck" / Historic Town Tour: The "zum Kainzen Bäck" House (Plaque on the wall of Alpspitzstraße 1). Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany, Fremdenverkehrsverein und Verein für Geschicte, Kunst- und Kulturgeschichte.
Bierl, Hermann. "Garmisch-Partenkirchen und seine Lüftlmalereien." Mohr, Löwe, Raute. Beiträge zur Geschichte des Landkreises Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Band 18, Verein für Geschichte, Kunst- und Kulturgeschichte im Landkreis Garmisch-Partenkirchen, 2020, p. 13: "018 Alpspitzstraße 1 Isi 57 Rest. Otto-Ertl 2000 erbaut 1604".
Härtl, Rudolf. Heinrich Bickel - Der Freskenmaler von Werdenfels. Adam Verlag, 1990, p. 121: "A 135 Alpspitzstraße 5a, Haus Gerda: Hl. Petrus vor der Peterskirche in Rom; nach 1945."
Härtl, Rudolf. Heinrich Bickel - Der Freskenmaler von Werdenfels. Adam Verlag, 1990, pp. 58-59: "Vor allem die Mauern, das Arbeitsgerüst und die Leitern werden in augentäuschender Perspektivmalerei wiedergegeben, der „trope-l’oeil”-Eindruck wird noch durch die Tatsache verstärkt, daß sich das Fresko über eine Kante im Winkel von 90º einander gegenüberstehender Mauern erstreckt, wodurch die Malerei noch mehr an augentäuschender „Natürlichkeit” gewinnt.
Während die Bauarbeiter in ihren handwerklichen Verrichtungen realistisch und höchstens in vorsichtiger Idealisierung dargestellt werden, thront über ihnen die Heilige Familie im Stil barocker Sakralmalerei.
Bickel versteht es, diese stistischen Widersprüche durch eine unmittelbare, beinahe selbstverständliche naive „Gegenüberstellung von Himmel und Erde” elegant zu überspielen. Er vereint das scheinbar Unvereinbare, wie es schon die großen Barockmeister in ihren Deckenfresken und Altarblättern getan haben.
Diese Schöpfungen des Malers sind Ausdruck einer echten, naiven Volksfrömmigkeit, die seit jeher das Überirdische wie selbstverständlich in den irdischen Alltag eingreifen ließ, unbekümmert um jegliche Logik und Ratio.
Bickel verstand es, mit diesen Fresken der religiösen Einstellung der altbayerischen Bevölkerung einen kongenialen Ausdruck zu verleihen, einer Frömmigkeit, an der nichts unwahr und verlogen ist. Sie werden damit zu Denkmälern einer ungebrochenen Volkskultur, die einen Bogen von unserer Gegenwart zurück ins Zeitalter des Barock schlägt. Sie übermitteln uns die Empfindung naiv erlebter religiöser Wahrheiten in einer ebenso direkten Darstellungsweise, die allgemein verständlich und nachvollziehbar bleibt, die das Diesses mit dem Jenseits wie selbstverständlich miteinander verbindet.
Daneben schildern sie bodenständiges Brauchtum, bewahren es im Bild in unserer technisierten Welt; sie überbrücken den Anachronismus zwischen den Bildern und unserer gänzlich andersgearteten alltäglichen Umwelt, in der Produktionsmethoden bestimmend geworden sind, die mit denen in Bickels Fresken geschilderten nichts mehr gemeinsam haben.
Besides this particular verse, which has since become a common phrase and inscription, Burmann's works are almost completely unknown today. He was renowned in his own time, however, and otherwise best known for his curious refusal to use the letter "R." In 1788 he published an entire book of poems without once using the letter "R", and is said to have eliminated it from his daily speech, refusing to even say his own last name for some seventeen years.
Ertl, Michael. “Re: Lueftlmalerei Landhaus Metsch.” Message to the author. 30 September 2020. E-mail.
Ertl, Michael. “Re: Lueftlmalerei Landhaus Metsch.” Message to the author. 30 September 2020. E-mail.
"Deutsches Haus in Deutschem Land schirm dich Gott mit starker Hand".
Rohleder, Franz. Soviel Kreativität ist erlaubt. Merkur.de, 26 June 2009, www.merkur.de/lokales/regionen/soviel-kreativitaet-erlaubt-317515.html. Accessed 29 September 2020: "Urheber des extravaganten Kunstwerks ist Piepers Geselle Marcel Francke. Fast 72 Arbeitsstunden hat der 26-Jährige da rein gesteckt. […] Wie Francke erzählt, habe ein ähnliches Bild in seinen eigenen vier Wänden den Chef inspiriert, auch seine Hauswand mit dem Reißverschluss-Motiv zu dekorieren. "In meinem Schlafzimmer habe ich in diesem Stil schon einen karibischen Sonnenuntergang mit Meer und Palmen gemalt." Davon sei der Meister beeindruckt gewesen und habe auch für seine Hauswand um ein Reißverschluss-Bild gebeten. "Zuerst hatten wir geplant, einen Zypressenweg wie in der Toskana zu malen", sagt Francke. "Aber das hätte wohl nicht ins Ortsbild gepasst." So entschieden sie sich für die Alpspitze."