Villa Irmgard, Museum in Heringsdorf, Germany

Villa Irmgard is a two-story residential house in Heringsdorf featuring neoclassical lines combined with Art Nouveau details on its exterior. Inside are multiple rooms with original furnishings and a garden surrounding the building.

Built in 1906 as a guesthouse in the Bäderarchitektur style, the villa was purchased in 1907 by Berlin physician Julius Becher, who named it Pension Irmgard after his wife. In 1922 Maxim Gorky rented rooms under his birth name Alexei Peschkow and stayed from June to September, working on My Universities. In 1947 the ground floor opened as the Maxim Gorki memorial site.

The villa is named after Irmgard, wife of Berlin physician Julius Becher, who bought it in 1907 and ran it as Pension Irmgard. The ground floor keeps the Arab Room, the Tolstoy Room and the veranda with their original furnishings, including Gorky's desk, armchair, coat, slouch hat and walking stick.

The building sits on Maxim-Gorki-Straße in central Heringsdorf and is easy to reach on foot. Visitors find exhibits from different periods displayed throughout the rooms.

The bronze statue beside the veranda, placed there in 2012, is a 1961 portrait by sculptor Karl Lemke showing Gorky in the 1920s: standing upright in a tight long coat, right hand cramped open, left hand hidden in a deep pocket. Another cast stands in the Plastik-Park Leuna.