all of which were privately financed by the king. In their design and contents, purpose and reception they convey an artistic and political harmony unique in Germany, despite their inner contradictions. Ludwig, who acceded to the throne upon the death of his father in 1825, felt a spiritual closeness to Greece, was an enthusiastic admirer of Ancient Greece, and wanted to turn his capital city of Munich into an “Athens on the Isar River”. Ludwig's second born son Otto was proclaimed King of Greece in 1832. Construction Already as crown prince Ludwig had the plan to erect a patriotic monument in his royal capital of Munich. He consequently had lists drawn up of “great” Bavarians from all walks of life. In 1833 he launched a competition which was intended to collect preliminary ideas for the design of a hall of fame and thus only specified the project's key features: the hall was to be erected above the Theresienwiese and provide space for about 200 busts. The only requirement was, “... that the building should not duplicate the Walhalla; as many Doric temples as there were, none of them was a copy of the Parthenon ....” The regulations did not exclude a building in the style of the Classicists as in the Walhalla, a parallel construction project, but it can be assumed that the architects were free to submit other architectural styles. Since the proposals of all four participants have survived to a large extent, they provide an interesting glimpse at the construction history of the Hall of Fame at a time of ideological artistic disputes between the Classicists on the one side, who were inspired by the aesthetics of Antique Greece and Rome, and the Romanticists on the other side, whose artistic manifestations were expressed in Medieval terms. Thus the proposals submitted for the design of the Hall of Fame reflected not only artistic and architectural differences, but these ideological disputes as well. Ludwig finally decided in March 1834, primarily for reasons of expense, against the proposals of Friedrich von Gärtner, Joseph Daniel Ohlmüller and Friedrich Ziebland, and commissioned Leo von Klenze to construct the Hall of Fame. He was undoubtedly influenced by the colossal statue in Klenze's design, since such a huge statue had not been erected since Classical Antiquity. Flattered by the idea of erecting a statue which would be as imposing as those commissioned by the rulers