Ehrentempel

The Honor Temples (German: Ehrentempel) were two structures in Munich, erected by the Nazis in 1935, housing the sarcophagi of the sixteen members of the Party who had been killed in the failed Beer Hall Putsch (the Blutzeugen, "blood witnesses"). On 9 January 1947, the main architectural features of the temples were destroyed by the U.S. Army as part of denazification.

First memorial

On 8 November 1933, Hitler addressed the party’s old guard at the Bürgerbräukeller (where the putsch had begun) and the next day unveiled a small memorial with a plaque underneath at the east side of the Feldherrnhalle. Two policemen or the SS stood guard on either side of the memorial’s base and passers-by were required to give the Hitler salute.

The memorial could be circumvented, and the salute avoided, by choosing a small nearby side street, which came to be known as Drückebergergasse ("Shirker's Alley").

Inauguration

In 1934, no commemorative march was made on the anniversary because of Hitler’s purge of the SA’s ranks in the Night of the Long Knives. The next year, on 8 November, the putschists were exhumed from their graves and taken to the Feldherrnhalle, where they were placed beneath sixteen large pylons bearing their names. The next day, after Hitler had solemnly walked past from one to the next, they were taken down the monument’s steps and taken on carts, draped in flags to Paul Ludwig Troost’s new Ehrentempel monuments at the Königsplatz, through streets lined with spectators bustling between 400 columns with eternal flames atop. Flags were lowered as veterans slowly placed the heavy sarcophagi into place. In each of the structures eight of the martyrs were interred in a sarcophagus bearing their name.