It is the oldest concert hall building in Berlin. The building was built on behalf of the
Sing-Akademie zu Berlin, which was founded by
Carl Friedrich Christian Fasch in 1791. In the years between 1825 and 1827, under its former director
Carl Friedrich Zelter, he set up his own concert hall and his own home. Design and execution were done by junior architect
Carl Theodor Ottmer, using plans of the architect
Karl Friedrich Schinkel in the classical style. Between 1827 and 1828,
Alexander von Humboldt gave his
Cosmos lectures here. On March 11, 1829, the first performance of a revival of
St Matthew Passion by
JS Bach performed by the Sing Academy under the direction of
Felix Mendelssohn. In the summer of 1848, the building was used as the venue of the
Prussian National Assembly. During the
Second World War, the building was badly damaged stopping performances of Sing-Akademie. After that, the Soviet occupying forces confiscated the building and used it in 1947 as a theater house of the neighboring "House(s) of the culture of the Soviet Union" (the present
Palais am Festungsgraben). In response to
Brecht's
Epic Theater in
Berlin Ensemble Theater in 1949. Sing-Akademie in 1952 was renamed the
Maxim Gorki Theater, "as a place for the care of Russian and Soviet theater art". As a
sozialistisches Modelltheater (a socialist model theatre). It was founded under its first director, a
Stanislavsky student Maxim Vallentin, a committed
socialist realist. The originally planned opening of the theater with Maxim Gorky's Night Asylum (also known as
The Lower Depths) was stopped by the State Art Commission. The 1980s also had performances by Thomas Langhoff's (
Chekhov's
Three Sisters) and
Shakespeare's ''
A Midsummer Night's Dream''. After the
reunification, between 1990 and 2012, a very complex legal dispute was fought between the Sing-Akademie and the
Land Berlin, both on administrative (
restitution) and civil law (correction of the land register entry) around the building and its parcels. After the administrative court of Berlin had decided in favor of the choir in 2004. However, the dispute was not settled. On 7 July 2011, contrary to the previous opinion of the Administrative Court and the
Landgericht, the Berlin
Court of Appeal ruled that the land was effectively expropriated, leaving the house initially owned by the State of Berlin. The Landgericht had expressly left open whether the Land of Berlin would have to return the land to the Sing-Akademie by way of restitution under
Property Law, as it had nothing to decide about it. On 7 December 2012, its judgment decided Bundesgerichtshof that the building with the property was not effectively expropriated and thus still owned by the Sing-Akademie, so that the defendant country Berlin has to contribute to the correction of the Land Register and must agree that the Sing-Akademie zu Berlin is the owner in the land register as registered. As a result, the state of Berlin, the building official for the Maxim Gorki Theater and signed a ground lease agreement for 25 years, which provides for annual rent of each €315,000
euros. ===
Intendants (general directors)=== ==Awards==