Oberpollinger

The Oberpollinger is a well-known upscale department store on Neuhauser Straße in Munich. It is run by KaDeWe Group GmbH (formerly Karstadt Premium GmbH) and is the largest department store in Southern Germany. The building was built in 1905 by Max Littmann in the style of Historicism in the form of the Neo-Renaissance and is a listed building. In the floor plan of today's building there were originally five narrow medieval town houses and on the eastern corner the building of the princely customs office, as can be seen from the Sandtner city model from 1570. In 1837 the customs office was converted into the ducal salt office. The neighboring house had been a brewery since 1556, changing hands several times until it was taken over by the brewer Christoph Pollinger in 1584. His family, a long-established brewery dynasty, owned property near Angerkloster, near Sendlinger Straße, a second brewery. The people of Munich soon differentiated between the “lower” and the “upper” Pollinger. This is how the name “Oberpollinger” came about. In 1850, a master brewer from Kulmbach named Heiss acquired the brewery, which had also been a bar since 1842, and in 1853 he bought the Salzamt to the west.