In 1929, Hitler moved into a luxury eight-room apartment at Prinzregentenplatz 16. The apartment was on the second floor (according to
European convention; third floor by American convention) and included two kitchens and two bathrooms. His publisher initially paid for it; a decade later Hitler paid for it outright. Hitler filled the apartment with works of art he had collected, particularly nineteenth-century German paintings as well as German Old Masters. In 1925, Hitler brought his widowed half-sister
Angela Raubal from Austria to serve as housekeeper for both his Munich apartment and his rented villa
The Berghof. She brought along her two daughters, Geli and Friedl. Hitler became very close to his niece
Geli Raubal, and she moved into his apartment in 1929, when she was 20. Their relationship is shrouded in mystery but was widely rumored to be romantic. On 18 September 1931, she died of a gunshot wound in the apartment; the coroner proclaimed her death a suicide. Hitler was on his way to
Erlangen to give a speech, but he returned immediately to Munich on hearing the news. He took her death very hard and went into a depression. He mourned her for years, maintaining her rooms exactly as they had been. Hitler continued to live in the apartment until 1934, when he became
Führer und Reichskanzler of Germany. After that, Hitler kept the apartment, but spent most of his time either in
Berlin or in his Berghof residence. Hitler sometimes used the Munich apartment for high-level diplomatic meetings. On 25 September 1937, he met there with
Benito Mussolini when he was trying to get Mussolini to agree to his plan to
annex Austria to Germany; the leaders agreed to a strengthening of their Axis pact. He also met with British Prime Minister
Neville Chamberlain in the apartment
Vogue photographer
Lee Miller caught the public imagination by being photographed taking a bath in Hitler's tub on 30 April 1945, coincidentally the same day that
Hitler committed suicide. The building served as the headquarters of the American Section during the immediate postwar period.
Today The building still stands and is occupied by the Munich Financing Office for the state of Bavaria. The second floor, Hitler's former apartment, houses the headquarters of the regional police of Munich and is not open to the public. ==See also==