Career
In 1911, at just 30 years of age, he was a deputy of the Center Party in the second chamber of the Bavarian Parliament. In 1919, Scharnagl was elected to the city council of Munich, 1925 vice mayor and in 1926 he was elected mayor of the city. As mayor, his attention was given to the expansion of the transport network as well as to housing.
After the seizure of power by the Nazi Party in 1933, and after several clashes he resigned in office and returned to his learned profession as a baker.
Although he was not involved in the failed assassination attempt of 20 July 1944, Scharnagl was arrested and detained in the Dachau concentration camp. After the liberation of the camp and the subsequent surrender of the German Wehrmacht, Scharnagl was placed by the United States armed forces in May 1945 in the position as mayor of Munich.
Together with Karl Meitinger he played an important role in the historicist reconstruction of the city center ("Scharnagl Plan") and was the initiator of the "Kulturbaufonds" Munich. To commemorate his plans for a traffic circle, a section of Altstadtring was named after him.
On June 6, 1946 Karl Scharnagl was officially voted in as mayor in his office, but two years later he was defeated by Thomas Wimmer (Social Democratic Party of Germany).
He served one year as the second mayor, and then went into retirement in 1949. On May 22, 1945 Scharnagl received the allowance from the American military government the authority to re-establish the organization of the Red Cross for Bavaria. He called upon Adalbert Prince of Bavaria to become its president
On 1 June 1946 he was elected honorary president of the Bavarian Red Cross (BRK) and on 12 April 1947 he was elected president
1948 Scharnagl co-founded the Society for Christian-Jewish Cooperation. On April 6, 1963 Karl Scharnagl died.
He was buried in the Ostfriedhof in Munich.