Joseph-Joachim-Konzertsaal

Joseph-Joachim-Konzertsaal is a 392-seat concert room in Berlin-Wilmersdorf, inside the University of the Arts complex on Bundesallee. Its distinction begins with the setting: concerts unfold in the former Joachimsthal Gymnasium, a protected late-19th-century school building, while the hall itself grew from its aula. Fixed seating combines 352 seats in rows with 40 tucked into niches, giving chamber-scale programs a formal, attentive frame. The stage can rise in three sections, a useful feature for student ensembles and orchestral setups.

A school aula becomes a concert hall

The building arrived first: Ludwig Giersberg and Johann Eduard Jacobsthal erected it between 1875 and 1880, drawing on plans by Heinrich Strack, for the Joachimsthalsches Gymnasium. The school occupied its new Kaiserallee home in 1880, then moved to Templin in 1912. Wilmersdorf used the property as a Stadthaus from 1920; wartime damage led to a simplified restoration in 1955. These changes explain the hall’s unusually civic, academic setting.

Concert life took its present architectural form in 1995, when Berlin practice Nalbach + Nalbach transformed the former aula into a concert hall for UdK’s music faculty. The name points to violinist, composer and conductor Joseph Joachim, founder of the Berliner Musikhochschule, an institutional predecessor of today’s UdK. That conversion turned a historic school assembly space into a working conservatoire room for public performance.

The listening experience

UdK’s programming centers on intimate chamber music, alongside recital evenings, competitions, master classes, symposia and public examinations; university activity shapes the booking policy, while the room is also rented performance-ready for outside concerts and events. Expect fixed, focused listening: the 380-square-metre room has a 12.6-by-7.4-metre stage, an adjustable orchestra podium, two Steinway D grand pianos, a harpsichord and an attached recording studio. A 200-square-metre foyer with terrace supports interval receptions.