Pankower Anger
Pankow Meadow
In the center of town in Pankow there is a meadow village typical of Mark Brandenburg: it consists of a village square, surrounding streets and a church.
On Pankow Meadow (German: "Anger"), the village square, there was, apart from the church, a cemetery, a village pond that in 1870 was filled in, and some community buildings, such as Pankow's only community schoolhouse, which existed from 1837 to 1911 (and was dismantled in 1938), and up to 1893, the Fire Department's Fire Hall next door with five prison cells and some smaller buildings that were torn down around 1906. Around the meadow were the dwellings of land-owning peasants, smallholders without land (Kossäten) and day laborers (Büdner). The meadow sustained a hit during a bombing attack in November of 1943. Restaurant Linder and the other structures were so badly damaged that they had to be dismantled after the war. Pankow was first mentioned in official records in 1311, and was later purchased in 1370 by the City of Berlin/Kölln and acquired in 1691 by Frederick III Elector of Brandenburg. Immigrating Huguenots founded the 1688 colony "French Buchholz" in one of Pankow's neighboring villages. In the 19th Century, the village of Pankow developed into a popular destination for excursions. Well-to-do Berliners seeking summer resorts had villas erected that are still part of Pankow's cityscape to this day. The former village of Pankow is today one of 13 neighborhoods within the larger district of Pankow in Berlin and gives the district its name. The name "Pankow" is derived from "Panke" (West Slavic for "river with maelstroms". The meadow village of Pankow was incorporated in to Berlin in 1920 and, along with other rural communities and estate district of Blankenburg, Blankenfelde, Buch, Französisch Buchholz, Heinersdorf, Karow, Niederschönhausen and Rosenthal as well as the colonies of Wilhelmsruh/Schönholz, formed the independent city district of Pankow. In 2001 the city district of Pankow was merged with the city districts of Prenzlauer Berg and Weißensee into one large district of Pankow, which also includes the neighborhood of suburban community of Malchow. With a population of 350,000, Pankow is the most heavily-populated city district in Germany's capital. It is also the second largest in terms of area, totaling some 10,000 hectares.