Maxim Gorki Theater

Since its founding in 1952, the Maxim Gorki Theatre has defined itself as a contemporary public theatre in Berlin's historical centre. The first drafts were made for the neoclassical building in 1827 and soon after, Berlin's first public concert hall for the Singakademie (choral society) was received enthusiastically by the public. The hall by the moat, however, was not only the first port of call for music in Berlin. In 1827 Alexander von Humboldt read from his Cosmos lectures here, and in 1848 the Prussian National Assembly met in the Singakademie's auditorium. In the World War II the Singakademie was severely damaged during an air raid. In May 1945, however, the Soviet military administration in Germany already began reconstructing the building, which was reopened with a programmatic mission as the Maxim Gorki Theatre in 1952. Russian and Soviet drama shaped the programme; East German authors were also premiered here in the following decades. After almost forty years as a leading theatre of the GDR's capital, the Maxim Gorki Theatre and its ensemble are now the smallest of Berlin's five large public theatres. At the beginning of the 2013/14 season, Shermin Langhoff and her co-director Jens Hillje took over the artistic direction of the theatre, now called Gorki. The theatre welcomes you to a discourse as diverse as the biographies of the people in this city.