Silencing ‘The Sound of Freedom’: Berlin’s techno scene struggles to survive in a changing city
By Sofia Mejias-Pascoe
BERLIN — As the sun rises on a typical Monday morning in Berlin, working people and families are still fast asleep, catching the last few hours of shut-eye before the alarm clock announces the arrival of a new work-week.
Meanwhile, over at Kater Blau in the Friedrichshain district, offbeat Berliners watch the light of morning rise over the river Spree, sipping beers and cocktails, chain-smoking cigarettes and letting the last of their buzz fade away with the night. Feet heavy from what is sometimes 72 straight hours of dancing and partying, ravers slowly meander home, often passing by the nine-to-five crowd on the subway ride home.
This is what is left of Berlin’s iconic techno scene — the trance-inducing, ecstasy- stoked musical dreamland where egos are checked at the door, a sense of time dissipates, and normal rules of life lose their force. The grungy, underground historical tradition behind Berlin’s ‘sound of freedom’ during the reunification era in the 1990s still reverberates in the city today. But some think the time of techno in Berlin is coming to a close, and that the music that once liberated the people of East and West Berlin has been silenced.
Techno arose in the ’80s during the time of a divided Berlin, as West Berliners experimented with musical influences from Chicago house to Detroit techno to New York hip-hop. They used groove boxes — self-contained, improvisational instruments for producing electronic music — such as the Roland MC-303, and later the Roland TR-909. DJ-driven techno music was developing into a culture of its own, alongside other musical movements floating around at the time, such as disco, punk, and breakdance.
For people in the East, access to media from the West was limited under communist rule and East Berliners experienced music, clubs, radio, cassettes and records through a lens filtered by censorship. Radio shows from West Berlin, likeMonika Dietl’s, gave listeners on the East a chance to keep up with techno innovations from the West, but the clubs in West Berlin where techno was taking shape remained cut off by the wall, and mostly out of reach for East Berliners.
Because of this, techno represented more than just a new genre for East Berliners, it was a symbol of the freedom the West side enjoyed on the other side of the wall, said Jürgen Laarmann, the former editor behind Frontpage, a culture magazine from the ’90s that documented techno’s development.
“Techno was the sound of freedom,” Laarmann said. “It was the first original music for the kids from East Berlin because they had no music at all. Maybe somebody would smuggle an old Bob Dylan tape or something, but it was really the music of liberation.”
When the Berlin wall came down in 1989 and the East and West were reunited, creatives in all parts of the city took the new freedom as an opportunity to celebrate unity and diversity through techno. Artists and musicians squatted in abundant abandoned buildings and warehouses left over from the chaos of Berlin’s division.Former soap factories and electric power stations became venues for some of the most iconic techno parties in Berlin during the ’90s. Nighttime in Berlin became a portal to the underworld of techno, when the weirdos of the city emerged to drink, dance and do drugs at clubs like Eimer, E-Werk, Planet, Ufo and Tresor. The disorder and new freedom of reunification provided the perfect storm for techno music to flourish.
Oliver Marquardt, also known by his artist name DJ Jauche, started DJing in EastBerlin in the late ’80s. After the wall fell, he said, people used techno as a way to explore the optimism that the reunification era brought, and the zeitgeist that “all was possible. East Germany was behind us, so the future was all possibilities.”
“For me, it was like ‘Wow, now I can do all, now I can travel to every place I want to, I can make music, I can DJ, I can learn a lot of things.’ All these things weren’t possible before,” Marquardt said.
In the late ’90s and early 2000s, Berlin’s techno scene started to attract tourists from all over the world, ready to experience the famed underground culture at clubs like the legendary Berghain. The club, opened by longtime techno devotees Michael Teufele and Norbet Thormann, is famous for being almost impossible to get into, with celebrities like Paris Hilton and Conan O’Brien rumored to have been turned away at the door. Dozens of online articles still promise to demystify for tourists how to get into Berghain, recommending everything from knowing theDJ to not wearing boat shoes. The club’s doors are guarded by an almost equally famous bouncer, Sven Marquardt, brother to Oliver Marquardt, who has become something of a mascot for the club’s exclusivity.
But now, some in the techno scene say Berghain’s underground authenticity, as well as that of other clubs in Berlin, has been sacrificed to the storm of tourism it attracted.
A short walk away at Kater Blau, a hushed line is forming after midnight outside the entrance to the club, beginning the next round of weekend partying. Anxious to get past the bouncer, ravers quietly talk among themselves while music shakes the wooden foundation of the building.
Kater is one of a handful of clubs in Berlin said to maintain the authenticity of the arguably long-gone musical scene. Inside, an expansive wooden deck sits just above the river where water gently ripples, almost to the beat of the club’s pumping bass. Paintings and art installations that cover the club — from a dancing skeleton strewn across a wall to a giant, blue robot cat perched on the roof — speak to the original eccentricity and creative character of the scene. In another area of the club, ravers wander through what feels like a bygone carnival funhouse: a maze-like entrance opens into a multi-level room with a DJ on one side, working skillfully from behind her table, and people swaying, stomping or spinning around to the music in the room.
The scene at Kater is a mellow echo of the previously underground culture that lives on in tall tales and passed-on stories, which spread around the world. Techno’s popularization could be seen in pivotal movements, like the famous Love Parade, which started in 1989 as a demonstration by techno revolutionaries and reached 1.5 million people in 1999. Then came the so-called “EasyJet tourism,” in which people around Europe hopped on cheap airlines like EasyJet to travel throughout the continent, swelling Berlin and its techno clubs with visitors on the weekend. Books, TV shows and documentaries detailed the inner-workings of the techno world.
Now, Marquardt still keeps up the traditions of techno’s past — he’s one of the only DJs around who still exclusively plays with vinyls — but he said that the authentic techno of the ’90s is long gone.
“There is no scene anymore, only consuming music, consuming parties and drugs, but that’s people. That’s a business,” Marquardt said. “It brings fame and power but for creative people, it’s not a good thing.”
For Marquardt, the popularization and commercialization of techno culture — which transformed it from its once authentic, celebratory form into a stale, overproduced mutation — effectively squeezed out the essence that made it unique to Berlin.
And beside the questions of techno’s authenticity is the question of whether music clubs can survive the current financial hardships that confront Berlin’s arts scene.Now that the circumstances that once incubated the rise of techno have vanished, the possibility for new clubs or even for existing clubs to continue, has narrowed. Only a handful of the abandoned buildings from the ’90s are still occupied by squatters, and rising rent prices have helped to push clubs, and people, out of their homes. Large tech companies are moving into these spaces and Berlin’s global popularity means the city’s core is filling up — which in turn means less space for the techno scene.
Konstantin Krex, the night manager at Kater Blau and spokesperson for Holzmarkt, a neighboring arts, culture and music co-op, said techno clubs are now closing down quicker than they are popping up. Exploding rents, tougher city regulations, and the massive tourism that accompanies any major city all point to a harsher environment for the success of any art scene, especially techno music.
“The biggest question is whether the scene is able to survive with Berlin becoming more and more an average metropolis,” Krex said.
The closures of archetypal techno clubs, such as Bar 25, and the rumored closure of Watergate later this year, are telltale signs of this trend, and paint a glum prospect for the future of techno in the city.
“Now we are losing big and important clubs, but there is nothing new really coming anymore because you can’t afford to open another one, or people just can’t afford to dedicate their lives to the electronic music scene,” Krex said.
As money came into the city, the techno scene sometimes compromised its authenticity for durability, said Krex.
“It had to become more commercial because what made it possible is vanishing. All of the free spaces and the low rent and the low costs you used to have in Berlin, we don’t have that anymore, so the scene had to find ways to survive,” Krex said.
Kater Blau, is a prime example of how gentrification threatens techno. Kater and Holzmarkt are a collective project, formed by founders and supporters of the now- defunct Bar25, one of the most beloved techno clubs in Berlin.
Bar25 saw numerous almost-closures throughout the early 2000s, but despite exhaustive attempts to keep its doors open, it’s final closure in 2010 took a toll on many in the techno community, including Jake Basker, or Jake the Rapper, who DJed at the club while it was still open.
“There were tears. There were tears every time,” Basker said. “I know that I hadsome of the best days of my entire life behind me and I had them there. It was a really, really beautiful place. It was the perfect storm of things that just can’t be recreated.”
Basker got his start DJing at Bar25 in the early 2000s when he first came to Berlin.As he ventured into Berlin’s techno, he discovered Bar25 and eventually convinced the old crew there to let him start DJing despite having virtually no previous experience. The Bar 25 stamp tattoo he bears on his wrist is a testament to his appreciation for that club and its people. The kind of nostalgia he shares for the earlier years of techno in Berlin is not uncommon to the scene’s long-time players.
A producer who works with Basker in Berlin, Fred Brune, remembers old techno’s quintessential ability to bring together groups of people in the clubs who would never otherwise cross paths in the city.
“You had these crazy freaks, this bunch of random, awkward people coming together. There’s the cashier you saw from the grocery market dancing next to this huge bald-headed guy with tattoos on his face next to these weirdos with piercings all over,” Brune said. “It’s a complete mix of random people all dancing and having fun.”
But now, Brune believes that techno’s authenticity has cheapened since its inception, as the scene attracts superficial followers and becomes more money- driven than music-driven.
“Now people are doing music or getting into techno because they want moreInstagram followers or play big stages,” Brune said. “It’s more about the fame than about the music and I think back then it was more about the music than anything else.”
As Bar25 was closing for the last time, members of the scene proposed a plan to maintain the lot as a space and co-op for public use and access to the water, where the organizers would create restaurants, artists areas and a new techno club. The plan won over enough public support to allow for its implementation, and Kater Blau now sits in Bar25’s previous spot. Despite its success, challenges for the club and surrounding arts scene did not stop there, Basker said.
Local police and political parties have been cracking down lately on what Basker said were unsubstantiated claims of noise and fire safety violations. Basker said these arbitrary attacks on the techno scene are due to the city’s desire to replace the once-profitable tourist attraction with more lucrative businesses, such as tech start- ups. The club has faced bureaucratic impediments, such as alcohol sale restrictions and quiet hour regulations at the club and marketplace, which Basker said could kill the club’s chance to survive.
As for Berlin’s techno scene generally, Basker is losing hope that it will survive the challenges of recent years.
“I don’t want it to end because it’s a beautiful thing, but all signs point to it becoming more and more difficult to really have the kind of freedom necessary to celebrate our diversity through dance,” Basker said.
But he remembers when the techno scene in Berlin faced fewer roadblocks from city. In the mid-2000s, Basker would regularly DJ in public parks in Berlin, and at a time when noise complaints, if there were any at all, were dealt with much differently.
“The cops would come and be like ‘Hey man, we got a noise complaint. You gotta turn the base down’ and I remember this one time the guy turned the base down and the cop was like ‘Not that far,’ and he turned it up a little bit more and was like ‘That’s good,’” Basker said.
Now, a couple kilometers down the street from Basker’s old stomping ground, Zur Wilden Renate, another classic Berlin club, sits on a dimly lit street corner in Friedrichshain. Partygoers are welcomed into an outdoor courtyard filled with towering trees, a shipwrecked boat filled with sitters and smokers, a garden area with wooden benches and gazebo and a bar next to the entrance boasting cheap drinks, pizza and a cigarette machine.
On a summer night in July, the various dance floors are dominated almost exclusively by native Berlin DJs as locals, expats, tourists and everything in- between swarm the spaces. In one dance floor hall, decorated with disco balls of varying sizes and bird cages hanging from the ceiling, sweaty bodies bounce uninhibitedly, drinks in one hand, cigarettes in the other, occasionally relieved by clouds from a smoke machine billowing into the crowd. As Monday approaches, the club’s flashing lights and thundering music falls to a whimper, and the doors eventually lock behind the last patron until the next party begins.
Still, the question of whether or not techno will survive — or if it even still authentically exists in Berlin — remains unanswered. Groups, like that behind Kater Blau, are still pushing to keep the culture alive despite the obstacles in its way.
For Krex, who plans to transition out of his role as a night manager at Kater Blau in the next few years, the future of techno music is uncertain, and the sound of freedom is becoming ever-more quiet in the changing Berlin.
“Now that this unique history is gone, the question is if the scene can survive, and I’m not sure.”
Sofia Mejias-Pascoe is a third-year communication major and Spanish minor at UC Santa Barbara. She writes about culture and politics from an international perspective, and plans a career as a foreign correspondent.
