Housed in a building steeped in tradition and history, the Maxim Gorki Theater is one of Berlin’s largest theaters. Designed by Carl Friedrich Schinkel and built as the Berlin Singing Academy, it is the city’s oldest concert hall. While the building was almost completely destroyed during the war, the Soviet military administration used it as a theater. With Russian author and founder of the socialist realism literary movement Maxim Gorki lending his name, the focus was on Russian and Soviet drama. Then and now, the theater was conceived as one of its actors, putting emphasis on the ensemble and the discovery of new talents. Literary adaptations, contemporary stagings of classical and modern drama and subject matter from Berlin and Brandenburg make up Maxim’s program today. Historians and scholars will delight at the tour of the building and its history every first Saturday of the month.