Richard Carter visits the former homes of East Berlin’s leading politicians…

“Entschuldigen Sie, ist das der Sonderzug nach Pankow?” (excuse me, is that the special train to Pankow) sang West German rocker Udo Lindenberg in his 1983 hit Sonderzug nach Pankow.

In it, he suggested he’d sit down with East German leader Erich Honecker to ask, over a bottle of Cognac, to be allowed to perform in East Germany. He suggested that Honecker was really a closet rocker who’d don a leather jacket, lock himself in the toilet and listen to western radio, an image which, once you’ve got it in your head is hard to let go of.

Pankow was, in the early days of the GDR, where many of the top officials of the ruling party, the SED (Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands – Socialist Unity Party of Germany), lived and so the name Pankow became synonymous with the East German government itself.

Anyone taking a Sonderzug (or even a normal S- or U-Bahn train) to Pankow will arrive at Pankow Station. The S-Bahn station building is from 1911 and is, if you ask me, quite an impressive piece of work.

It’s not what I’ve come to look at, though. I’m headed for the Majakowskiring, home to many of the most important SED party members, before they decided they needed more security and moved to a new, specially built development in Wandlitz in 1960. Built for wealthy Berliners in the first three decades of the 20th century, the large houses on Majakowskiring were first requisitioned for official use by the Soviets following WWII.

The imposing neoclassical villa at Number 2 (pictu…