Brotfabrik
Bread Factory
The Art and Culture Center is named after the bakery (named bread factory) that was housed in the building until 1952.
The Berlin-Weissensee School of Art and Design (at Bühringstrasse 20 - accessible via Gustav-Adolf-Strasse) established a youth club in the old „Weissensee Point" bakery in 1986. However, two months after the opening of the youth club the GDR authorities shut it down for political reasons. In 1987 the youth club reopened in the bakery with joint venture art groups, a café and an off-theater. Today it is home to exhibitions, cinema, theater, cabaret, as well as jazz and literature events.
The name Caligariplatz (named after the world-famous 1919 expressionist film classic - “The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari” - which was directed by Robert Wiene) reminds us that Weissensee was the film city (Filmstadt Weißensee) that existed until the end of the 1920s Opposite to it is the“Theater im Delphi” (Gustav-Adolf-Str. 2), a former silent movie cinema which opened in 1929, and where you can feel the film history.
Other attractions of the district of Pankow in the vicinity of Caligariplatz (Caligari Square) include: Residential City Carl Legien (in Erich-Weinert-Strasse and easily reached via Prenzlauer Allee in the direction of the city center) and the artist's self-help initiative, “culturalAVALANCHE Art and Communication” (culturLAWINE Kunst und Kommunikation in the Streustrasse 42 - reachable via Gustav-Adolf-Strasse) featuring art studios, rehearsal rooms and apartment buildings covering an area of 640 square meters and are only a short distance away from the center of Berlin.
Locals still refer to Caligariplatz as Weissensee Point. The name originates from a pointed strip of land that extended into the Pankow territory. A supermarket in the Talstrasse is now situated in the area of this strip of land. After 1870 the land that had traditionally been used for farming was converted into mixed residential and commercial use in a style that was typical to the outskirts of Berlin at that time. Bookbinders, turners, artisan woodcarvers, bricklayers, fettlers, saddlers, machinists, tailors, and joiners, for whom the rents in the capital city of Berlin were too high settled in these new estates . These new estates were later incorporated into Greater Berlin (in 1920) and today are the neighborhoods of Weissensee, Prenzlauer Berg and Pankow.