Prenzlauer Berg Museum

The Prenzlauer Berg Museum stood in the Sebastian Haffner cultural centre on Prenzlauer Allee, where it told the story of Berlin’s Prenzlauer Berg district. The building itself was a former municipal double school built between 1884 and 1886, designed to educate boys and girls together. Inside, the museum shared space with a public library and adult education classrooms. In 2001 it joined the Pankow museum network alongside the Panke Museum, the Pankow chronicle and the Weißensee local history museum. By 2012 the network had adopted the single name Museum Pankow. Its main exhibition, “Counter-designs: Prenzlauer Berg before, during and after the fall of the Wall,” filled two lower floors and a second-storey room. Panels traced every church, welfare building and school in the district, along with its markets, factories and squares. The display also explained recent political and economic changes that reshaped daily life. Temporary shows added further layers to the permanent collection, covering topics from street art to housing policy. Visitors could explore the ground-floor corridors lined with photographs and maps, then climb to the upper room for a focused look at key turning points. The museum’s archive offered deeper research into local records and personal papers. After the merger, its holdings moved into the new Museum Pankow, where they remain accessible.