In the summer of 1920, Ödön von Horváth and his family got to know Murnau. They liked the tourist resort so much that they spent several summers here and had a country house built in August 1924.
The son of a diplomat, who was well-versed in languages and culture, experienced the country and its people up close in Murnau, which has a population of barely 3000. Here he found the material for his plays "Zur schönen Aussicht" (1927), "Die Bergbahn" (1929), "Italienische Nacht" (1931), for his "Sportmärchen" (1924) and the novel "Jugend ohne Gott" (1937).
After tensions with local Nazis, he was forced to flee Murnau in February 1933. In December 1933, his parents sold the country house.
The permanent exhibition in the Murnau Castle Museum is the only publicly shown documentation dedicated to the life and work of Ödön von Horváth (1901–1938).
