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In Munich, the Marienkirche's the Limit

DW Staff (dre)November 22, 2004

Munich's citizens will continue to be able to look fondly from the center of their fair city to the Alps rising around it. A referendum calling for a ban on skyscrapers won a slim majority on Sunday.

This high, and no furtherImage: AP

When it comes to building in the Bavarian capital, the famous onion domes of the Marienkirche -- not the sky -- will be the limit in the future.


A referendum that passed with a 50.8 percent margin set the 100 meter high (328-foot) towers of the church as the highest a building can rise in the picturesque city. The immediate victims of the referendum are a planned 148 meter high building by Siemens and the Süddeutsche publishing house's 145-meter high planned high-rise in the east of the city.

Both the Social Democratic and Green party city government and opposition parties had approved the construction of the two buildings -- to the horror of former Mayor Georg Kronawitter.

Against the will of his party colleague and successor, Kronawitter -- under whose watch a 114-meter high-rise was built -- began a referendum against the tall buildings. Critics rolled their eyes, and one newspaper called him the "Don Quixote of Urbanism."

"Kronawitter should follow his high-rise attack with a similar proposal. All cars that drive faster than 18 km/h (11 mph) should leave the city," wrote Gerhard Matzig in the Süddeutsche Zeitung, owned by the Süddeutsche publishing house. "Streets could be replaced by mud roads, cars through horse coaches and high-rises through mud huts."

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