From the S&S archives: Gas lamps' last stand

THE OLD LAMPLIGHTER is going the way of the five-cent beer. In Munich, where there are still 741 gas lamps, only eight lamplighters are left.

The first gas lamps for street lighting — replacing tallow and oil lamps — were installed in Munich in the late fall of 1850, the last of the large cities in Germany to get them.

Although electric lights began taking over in 1893 there were still thousands of the gas variety before World War II.

Allied bombers snuffed out approximately 80 per cent of all street lamps — electric and gas — during the war. By 1946 there were only 1,000 electric lights left, so the city decided to get as many gas lamps as possible restored.

The gas lights went on again in areas of Schwabing, Nymphenburg, Harlaching, Neuhausen, Au, Gern and on Moehlstrasse and Wienerstrasse out to Oberfoehring.

Many of the gas lamps in each district are turned on automatically. But the eight lamplighters have an average 60 lamps each to turn on and off.

While five of the lamplighters make their rounds by car, motorcycle or motor-scooter, three still give the visitors to Munich a glance at a bit of the 19th Century — they tour their districts via bicycles.

One of the three is David Kuenzl, a mild-mannered 60-year-old man from the East Zone, whose province is Schwabing. Each evening just before the sun sets, Kuenzl arrives riding a green bicycle and carrying a hooked pole.

He criss-crosses the street, yanking levers of the lamps, which are spaced about 50 feet apart. Here and there Kuenzl doffs his cap to the fraus coming home from their evening-meal shopping or pats the heads of curious small fry watching him make the rounds. Occasionally he has to nudge the pilot light to the left or right to ignite a stubborn mantle.

Then, as he has been doing daily for 11 years, Kuenzl reverses the procedure as dawn lights the Bavarian skies.