The collection

The Mahlsdorf collection is still one of the most impressive collections of Gründerzeit artefacts. It consists of fully furnished rooms and a collection of mechanical music machines.
The souterrain houses the “Mulack Ritze”, the interior of a notorious Berlin Bar, home to criminals, whores and later the first gay and lesbian bar in wilhelminian Germany.

All the rooms are furnished as complete ensembles, with
furniture and accessories of the late 19th century, with the
various rooms (With the order and functions??) represen-
ting the typical living space of an upper middleclass household.
The garden room is furnished as the “Salon”: the room traditio-
nally used for representation purposes, like diners and
recept ions, with stairs leading into the park. It is now used for functions and weddings.

The living room and the neo-gothic dining room formerly belonged to wealthy Berlin merchant Carl Wienecke. The furnishing was respectively made by Hoftischlermeister Groschkus and Kimbel & Friedrichsen, both from Berlin.
With the exception of the dining room, all furniture is in the neo-renaissance style, the predominant style in Germany in that time. The interiors are complemented by cast-iron fireplaces, clocks, chandeliers and decorative accessories, many of them mass-produced. One of the highlights is the red ladies drawing room, including a sofa with an impressive mirror back, a lady’s writing desk and decorative objects.  
The living room and study formerly belonged to Charlotte’s great uncle, the engineer and car designer Josef Brauner.
The green ladies drawing room was formerly part of a Manor House in East-Prussia, which was home to Charlotte’s “Aunt” Luise and where she spent the last part of the war.

The historic technical innovations of that time are reflected in the mechanical music machines, Edison phonographs, the more modern gramophones, a mechanical piano, an orchestrion for public entertainment and many other items. Modern technical gimmicks also found there way into the kitchen, although the hard work continued nevertheless.

This kitchen with its coffee grinders, irons, mechanical potato peeler, coffee roaster, coal-fired cooker and numerous kitchen accessories might bring back some memories of the past. The bedroom once belonged to an architect and furnished his villa in Leipzig. The marble-topped chest of drawers with the water jug and bowl was the “bathroom” of that time. A child's bed and a corner with period toys complete this room. Charlotte was especially proud of the interior rescued from the “Mulack Ritze”, a famous Berlin bar which once stood in the Scheunenviertel, which was then the poorest area of the city, notoriously overcrowded and the place where many Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe started their life in Berlin.
It has seen many prominent visitors, among them Heinrich Zille (a famous Berlin artist who documented the life of the working classes), Bertold Brecht, Magnus Hirschfeld, Marlene Dietrich, Claire Waldoff, Gustaf Gründgens, to name just a few.