Marcel Krueger explores the cultural and literary history of his adopted district…
Pankow feels like a place apart. Perhaps because in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, most Berliners only ever saw it as visitors. Or maybe because, following the founding of the GDR, access to certain parts of the district were restricted to a privileged few. Either way, it remains a relatively quiet part of the city today—the clubs and rowdy bars are elsewhere—but offers a fascinating history and a distinctive creative legacy to anyone who cares to come and look around.
In 2001, the district became Berlin’s second-largest (after Treptow–Köpenick) due to a merger with the better-known districts of Prenzlauer Berg and Weißensee. But all three are still often referred to by their original names, i.e. according to their previous boundaries, and it’s this original, pre-assimilated Pankow that will be covered in this guide since the other two districts are covered elsewhere on the website.
The first references to a settlement here go back impressively far, to a margrave’s charter dating from 1311. The foundations of the old parish church ‘Zu den Vier Evangelisten’, widely known as Pankow Kirche (Pankow Church) date from 1320, though there’s an even older village that dates from the mid-13th century in Karow, which was formerly part of Weißensee and is now part of the wider Pankow borough.
Like many of the outlier Berlin districts that lay outside the city gates, this older Pankow retained its rural character for many centuries. The population only really began to grow from 1692 onwards, as a result of a settlement policy pursued by the Prussian kings Frederick I and Frederick II. This was the era in which Pankow’s most famous building was created: the grand, three-winged Baroque Schloss Schönhausen palace.
Schloss Schönhausen & Bürgerpark
The palace, modest as it may be compared to the much larger Schloss Charlottenburg or the former City Palace (now the Humboldt Forum), played a significant role in German history. Built in 1680 by Grand Marshal Joachim Ernst von Grumbkow, it was acquired by Elector Frederick III of Brandenburg in 1691 and in 1700 became the venue for the negotiations during which Emperor Leopold I agreed to recognise the Protestant Elector as king. In 1701, the Elector became King in Prussia, setting the country on the trajectory of empire.
From 1704 onwards, Frederick had the palace remodelled by Johann Friedrich Eosander von Göthe, who had also overhauled Berlin’s Royal Palace. From 1740 to 1797, it served as the summer residence of Queen Elisabeth Christine, wife of Frederick the Great, before passing into the hands of the Hohenzollerns—who let it fall into disrepair. In 1925, the palace became state property, serving as the HQ of the Pankow-Schönhausen Artists’ Association from 1931 to 1934 before the National Socialists got their filthy paws on it and turned it into an exhibition venue, storing the confiscated artworks for their Entartete Kunst (Degenerate Art) exhibition here. The works were later offered to buyers from foreign museums and international art dealers to generate foreign exchange.
During the Battle of Berlin in the spring of 1945, the palace suffered only slight damage and was subsequently requisitioned by the Soviet military administration. Until the end of 1949, it served as a school and boarding house for Soviet pupils, and afterwards became the official residence of Wilhelm Pieck, President of the GDR. That particular title was abolished following Pieck’s death in 1960, and replaced by the State Council, which was modelled on the Soviet system; under State Council Chairman Walter Ulbricht, Pieck’s successor, Schloss Schönhausen remained the GDR’s highest government building until 1964.
Following its conversion into the state guest house, the palace accommodated high-profile guests of the GDR such as Leonid Brezhnev, Fidel Castro and Mikhail Gorbachev. After the Peaceful Revolution, the GDR’s Central Round Table met at the palace, and in June 1990 one of the ‘Two-plus-Four’ rounds of negotiations took place here between the GDR, West Germany and the four allied powers. After reunification there were plans to convert the palace into a temporary residence for the President of Germany but due to the anticipated high costs, the State of Berlin instead handed Schloss Schönhausen over to the Prussian Palaces and Gardens Foundation Berlin-Brandenburg in 2005.
Exhibitions are once again held here today, alongside cultural events such as readings and lectures. In one of the former gate lodges on Ossietzkystraße is a free permanent exhibition about the history of the palace in the GDR. To the west of the palace’s park grounds lies another popular green space: the Bürgerpark or People’s Park. Originally the private landscaped gardens of Hermann Killisch von Horn, founder of the Berliner Börsen-Zeitung, it was purchased by the Pankow council in 1907 and opened up to the public. Visitors can find free classical and pop concerts in the rose garden, a free lending library and some public art.
The Panke—Berlin’s third longest river and the source of the district’s name—winds charismatically through the park, where visitors can also find a bust of Heinrich Mann and an impressive communist-era memorial to Czech writer and antifascist Julius Fučík (1903-1943), who was killed by the Nazis. There’s also a goat enclosure and, at the western end close to the former East-West border, the Pinke Panke children’s farm, where kids can learn about animals and tinker with tools and toys.
Artists & Poets
In the nineteenth century, some of Berlin’s more affluent citizens followed Queen Elisabeth Christine’s example, not only spending their summer holidays in Pankow but also establishing permanent homes there. The first artists also arrived during this period. The children’s author and poet Paula Dehmel (1862–1918) moved to Parkstraße 25 in 1893 with her husband Richard and their children. Polish author Stanisław Przybyszewski (1868–1927), a friend of the family and wrote about their Pankow home in “Ferne komm ich her … Memories of Berlin and Kraków”, published posthumously in 1985:
“The house seemed to stand at the highest point in Berlin, for from the Dehmels’ flat an incomparable view unfolded over the vast sea of rooftops, domes and factory chimneys. It was the first time that, in that hot twilight … Berlin had seemed almost beautiful to me.”
“Almost beautiful” is a phrase one could still use about the city—and Pankow—today, given both have retained some of their scruffy proletarian character despite influxes of cosmopolitan culture and wealth. The working classes moved here en masse in the nineteenth century to work in the local factories and breweries, perhaps lured by how the district was less cramped than neighbouring Prenzlauer Berg and Wedding.
Picnic spots and beer gardens sprang up alongside the workplaces. Travel writer August Trinius (1851–1919) noted in his book “Die Umgebungen der Kaiserstadt Berlin in Wort und Bild” in 1889, that:
“Pankow was always regarded by Berliners as a Sunday paradise of harmless pleasures. People would head out here to play skittles, make coffee, shake off May beetles, and play hide-and-seek and ring-a-ring-a-rosy in the woods, before returning home in the evening in groups, singing, with empty flasks and full hearts.”
Lest we assume Herr Trinius was a little too merry after those “empty flasks”, this romantic impression is mirrored elsewhere, including in the song “Komm Karlineken komm”, written in 1888 by Emil Ascher. Known originally as the “Hamburger Juxmarsch”, Berliners transformed it into a Pankow version, published in 1898. GDR rock band Pankow—yep—used the song in 1983 as the intro to their debut album, Kille Kille:
Komm, Karlineken, komm, Karlineken
Komm, wir wolln nach Pankow gehen,
Da ist es wunderschön.
Come on, Karlineken, come on, Karlineken
Come on, let’s go to Pankow,
It’s absolutely lovely there.
An even better-known song named “Bolle reiste jüngst zu Pfingsten”, written around 1900, humorously describes a failed Whitsun outing to Pankow by “Bolle”—an invented Berlin character who, despite all his failings, tends to have a thoroughly delightful time of things.
In Pankow jab’s keen Essen,
In Pankow jab’s keen Bier,
War allet uffjefressen
Von fremden Leuten hier.
Nich’ ma’ ’ne Butterstulle
Hat man ihm reserviert!
Aber dennoch hat sich Bolle
Janz köstlich amüsiert.
In Pankow there’s no food,
In Pankow there’s no beer,
It’s all been eaten up
By the strangers here.
Not even a buttered sandwich
Was set aside for him!
But still, Bolle
Had a marvellous time.
Josef Garbáty-Rosenthal
The abundance of open space in Pankow made it ideal for industrial development. By 1910, it could boast 45,000 inhabitants and a connection to the railway network. The Pankow S-Bahn station opened in 1880, with one of the city’s largest marshalling yards built to its north. In 1874, the Schultheiss Brewery set up a malt house on Mühlenstraße; in 1898, the City of Berlin acquired the Buch estate and built sanatoriums and hospitals there. In 1920, the district—by then already expanded to include not only the older Pankow but Niederschönhausen, Rosenthal, Buchholz, Blankenfelde and Buch—was incorporated into Greater Berlin.
Amidst the interesting industrial heritage of this era is Josef Garbáty-Rosenthal’s cigarette factory, built in 1906 and the area’s largest employer until the 1930s. Garbáty-Rosenthal’s sons emigrated to the United States in 1939, after the company had been forcibly sold in 1938 under the Nazi government’s “Decree on the Exclusion of Jews from German Economic Life”. Josef himself did not go into exile, but lived in the Villa Garbáty—locatef on the factory premises—until his death in June 1939 and is buried in the Jewish Cemetery in Berlin-Weißensee.
Following the establishment of the GDR, the cigarette factory became VEB Garbáty and continued to produce cigarettes with a workforce of around 500, right up until German reunification. After 1990, the company was wound up by the Treuhand concern, and the factory was finally closed in 1995. In 2012, the handsome factory building was converted into a residential block, whilst the former tobacco warehouse on Hadlichstraße now houses a school; a reproduction of the original company sign hangs outside and a passerby might be forgiven for thinking the school is sponsored by Big Tobacco.
The square in front of Pankow S-Bahn station—whose ornate dark-brick facade is well worth admiring—is also named after Josef Garbáty-Rosenthal and a public artwork by sculptor Susanne Ahner also displays the brand name in large aluminium letters. Right next to the factory site, meanwhile (Berliner Straße 120–121) was a Jewish Orphanage that dates back to 1882 and was originally founded to house Russian refugees fleeing the pogroms there. It was later opened to Jewish orphans from Germany and across Eastern Europe.
The original building’s impressive four-storey Neo-Baroque successor stands here today. Constructed between 1912–13 by Alexander Beer it still provided shelter for children—around 100 in total—with Garbáty-Rosenthal financing the imposing prayer hall on the second floor. The building was also run as a boarding school, with an elementary school added for the Jewish children of the district in 1936 since they had been barred from state schools by the Nazis.
Following the November pogroms of 1938, director Kurt Crohn—himself a former pupil of the orphanage—succeeded in bringing several children to safety in Great Britain with one of the Kindertransports. In 1942, the remaining pupils and carers had already been deported to extermination camps. The Crohn family were arrested in 1943 and deported to Theresienstadt; though Susanne Crohn and her daughter Renate managed to survive the Holocaust, Kurt Crohn was murdered in Auschwitz in 1944.
The Pankow District Office took over the building after the Second World War, turning it into the seat of the Polish Embassy in 1952, and then the seat of the Cuban Embassy between 1971 and the end of the GDR. In 1993, the building was transferred to the Jewish Claims Conference, turned over to the State of Israel, then sold to the Dr Walter and Margarete Cajewitz Foundation in 1999. Since 2001, the former orphanage has housed one of Pankow’s public libraries, named after the Polish-Jewish educator and paediatrician Janusz Korczak (1879–1942). Visitors can find a permanent exhibition on the history of the Jewish orphanage on the second floor.
Majakowskiring
Along Breite Straße and Florastraße, to the north and south of the library, visitors can find a slew of pleasant cafes to enjoy a break. The coffee bar Blaffke and neighbouring book store Buchdisko at Florastraße 37 are well worth a visit, as are the charmingly eccentric Roderich at Number 39b Breite Straße, which brings together second-hand furniture, a chalk-board menu and a pleasant beer garden out back that serves Helles on tap; and the elegant Café Eden at number 43, whish is set inside a nineteenth-century villa and also has a generous garden. It forms part of the former GDR-era Kulturhaus with Dock 11, an outpost of the ccontemporary dance school and collective.
A 15-minute walk from here lies Majakowskiring, where much of the political and cultural elite of the GDR lived between 1949 and 1960. Many of the villas here, on the former Viktoriastraße and Kronprinzenstraße, date back to the German Empire and survived the war unscathed. From 1945, they were occupied by Soviet officers who named the neighbourhood Gorodok, or “little town”. Some of the engineers living here were also involved in constructing the Soviet War Memorial in nearby Schönholzer Heide between 1947 and 1949, where over 13,000 officers and soldiers of the Red Army—mostly killed during the Battles of Berlin in 1945—are buried, including 120 women. It’s one of the quieter Soviet memorials, smaller than the large one at Treptower Park but in a similar style, complete with Stalin quotes on the granite walls.
Majakowskiweg, a small street that connects the Ring in the centre, was the final address of Hans Fallada, who had been brought back to Berlin from Mecklenburg by GDR culture minister Johannes R. Becher in 1945. It was at his home here that he worked on books such as the famous “Alone in Berlin” and the heavily autobiographical “Nightmare in Berlin”. Following his death at the Pankow Auxiliary Hospital in 1947, Fallada was buried at Pankow III Cemetery until 1981, when his remains were reinterred in Mecklenburg. Majakowskiweg was renamed Rudolf-Ditzen-Weg in 1994, after the author’s real name and a plaque at number 19 commemorates him and his former home.
Otto Grotewohl (1894–1962), Prime Minister of the GDR from 1949 until his death, lived at Majakowskiring 46/48. Subsequently, the villa—whose Jewish owners had been expropriated during the Nazi era—hosted guests of the GDR Writers’ Association. After reunification in 1990, it was occupied by civil rights activists who preserved the venue as a meeting place for discussions and readings, creating the Literaturwerkstatt / Haus für Poesie, which existed here until 2004, when it moved to Prenzlauer Berg. The villa was purchased by actress Jasmin Tabatabai in 2006.
Following the popular uprising in the GDR in June 1953, the SED party leadership felt that the distance between Pankow and the inner-city districts was not great enough, moving the entire entourage to a purpose-built housing estate in the woods at Wandlitz in 1960. The “little town” remained a restricted area until 1973, and the houses were taken over by second-tier party cadres or Stasi staff.
Until reunification, the name “Pankow” therefore remained synonymous with the GDR’s top brass, in particular their relatively lavish lifestyles. This was immortalised by West German crooner and enfant terrible Udo Lindenberg in his 1983 song “Sonderzug nach Pankow” (“Special Train to Pankow”)—a humorous ditty, based on the “Chattanooga Choo Choo”, released after the GDR refused to let him perform there.
GDR leader Erich Honecker allegedly hated the song but it became a hit in both West and East Germany, despite being banned from any official airplay in the latter. Later in 1983, Lindenberg was finally allowed to perform for 15 minutes in East Berlin’s Palace of the Republic.
Epilogue: The Dichterviertel
Another neighbourhood, intended to bolster Pankow’s reputation as a cultural hub of the GDR, began to take shape from 1950 onwards between Hermann-Hesse-Straße, Heinrich-Mann-Straße, Leonard-Frank-Straße and Homeyerstraße: the so-called Dichterviertel or “Poets’ Quarter”.
Among those who moved into nice, modern apartments here were the graphic artist Herbert Sandberg, writer and SED official Fritz Erpenbeck (grandfather of writer Jenny Erpenbeck), the sculptor Heinrich Dracke, writers Stephan Hermlin and Ludwig Renn, and actors Horst Drinda and Manfred Krug, in whose apartment the famous 1976 protest letter against the forced expatriation of singer/songwriter and poet Wolf Biermann was drafted.
Another literary site in Pankow is the housing estate by Amalienpark. The house at Amalienpark 7 was the last home of Christa Wolf and her husband, the writer, editor and publisher Gerhard Wolf (1928–2023). Wolf lived here from 1988 until her death in 2011. In 1997, on the initiative of Gerhard Wolf and a group of artists from Pankow, the Forum Amalienpark gallery was established in the basement of the neighbouring building at Amalienpark 8.
This morphed into the Amalienpark Art and Literature Forum in 2001, which has hosted a wide variety of art and literary events over the years but moved to Breite Straße 23 under a new name (Galerie Amalienpark | Raum für Kunst) in 2020. An official Berlin commemorative plaque on the Wolfs’ former home reminds visitors of their time there.