16

Café Sibylle

It is not recorded who came up with the idea of naming the café, which opened in 1953 at Stalinallee 72, “Milk Drinking Hal”. A strangely bland name for an establishment on the new grand boulevard, but at least a few years later, someone saw sense. The popular meeting place was now called „Sibylle“, after the innovative women’s magazine which was so exciting and sought-after by the public that it quickly earned the unofficial title of “East German Vogue”. Whether editors, photographers and models met at the milk bar before the renaming is no longer important today, but the magazine and café were linked by flair and history.

The fall of the Berlin Wall affected both institutions equally: Café „Sibylle“ closed and the magazine also had to give up after a few very successful years. Some of its best-known photographers, such as Sibylle Bergemann and Ute and Werner Mahler, co-founded the Ostkreuz photo agency in 1990. And the café under the striking yellow lettering is once again an established address in Friedrichshain. Besides an exhibition on Stalinallee, it offers readings and other cultural events, and the once-popular Swedish Ice Cream Sundae is available again.