The party never ends: Berlin’s club scene in a post-pandemic world
Berlin is a city brimming with the power of resilience. The last century has seen two world wars, two totalitarian regimes, mass migrations of people, and most recently the Coronavirus. Yet Berliners keep dancing: if their strength and wit remains the city’s lifeblood, the thumping bass of their nightclubs provides the heartbeat.
Following three years of unprecedented measures — lockdowns, social distancing, masks — overall club attendance has returned to approximately 85% of what it was in 2019. Club-goers can expect hour-long lines on the weekends. Dancers crowd shoulder-to-shoulder, spilling drinks, jumping to the relentless techno pulse. The energy is there.
But for a long time, things looked bleak, and, in some ways, they still do.
Concerned about the mental toll of lockdown on Berlin’s youth, the Berlin Culture Project initiated a program to pay young adults between the ages of 18–23 to go clubbing. In February 2023, the public agency opened applications for a “Jugendkulturkarte” or Youth Culture Card, a credit for 50 Euros ($56.10 USD) to use at popular clubs such as Ritter-Butzke and Klunkerkranich, as well as other cultural attractions across Berlin.
“A communal cultural experience was hardly possible during these times,” said Julia Kufner, press officer for the Culture Project. “The Jugendkulturkarte is an invitation to make up for missed experiences and to discover Berlin’s diverse cultural offerings — regardless of one’s budget.”
The club scene was already suffering in 2019 when the city received a flood of unprecedented noise complaints. Rising rent prices allowed tech companies to buy up properties from club-owners, driving out much of the underground Techno community that made Berlin famous.
But the true endurance test arrived the following year. With the onset of the pandemic, already-struggling clubs now had to contend with lockdowns, travel bans and an economic crisis to rival the Great Depression’s.
Konstantin Krex — who formerly worked at the now-defunct club Kater Holzig — says the pandemic only solidified a downward trend in people’s tolerance for the all-night club scene.
“People get used to the quietness,” he explained. “All of a sudden you switch it back on and they’re like ‘that’s what it’s like?’”
Krex now works as a public relations representative for Holzmarkt 25, an urban quarter on the banks of the Spree that holds much of the same “made for the people, by the people” spirit as the club scene. It’s also home to techno club Kater Blau, Holzig’s spiritual successor.
Greeting a half-dozen guests and shop-owners by name, Krex strolls through this beatnik village like a local celebrity. He stops at a bench beside the river, staring across the way at the abandoned soap factory that once housed Holzig.
“Club culture only grew so rapidly because of the giant resource of empty space after the Wall came down,” he said, gesturing to the old warehouse. “The economy collapsed, so no one wanted to invest.”
But, as Berlin grew into a hotspot for culture and tourism, developers became more interested in residential projects. “Many young people with good jobs flooded in from southern Europe,” Krex said. “It became hard to generate revenue as good as that. There was a competition for space.”
And turning a profit has only gotten more difficult. During the pandemic, interest rates went from 0.9% to 4%, while heat and energy prices have risen 12% since the Russo-Ukrainian war that began in February, 2022.
“Business models have to be more efficient to survive,” Krex said. This has crippled many of the more “artistic, anarchistic” underground upstarts that originally kicked off the techno trend in the 90s. Some have had to move to Berlin’s outskirts to duck the noise complaints.
“Clubs are still treated legally like strip clubs and casinos,” he says. “They are not considered as culture, by law.”
Though Berlin sees €1.5 billion ($1.68 billion) annual revenue in club tourism, major venues are still facing closure. A proposed motorway extension to Berlin’s A-100 through nightlife areas such as Mitte and Neukölln stands to wipe out established clubs like Wilde Renate and :// about blank — both located in Friedrichshain — if approved.
Not only does this threaten to pollute Berlin’s physical environment, but its cultural character as well. Protestors marching recently with the “Last Generation” group decried Berlin’s utter lack of follow-through on climate change policies, which were agreed upon at the Paris Agreement back in 2015.
Alex B., 52, says the Autobahn expansion plans add insult to injury: “We blocked the motorway last year to protest the lack of a speed limit, and now they do this.”
He attributes this to the city’s misguided emphasis on car traffic, despite its already-expansive public transport system and bike routes. “The way freedom equals guns in America,” he said, “freedom equals cars in Berlin.”
Another protester, Leander Grasmeier, also drew the link between the planned freeway extension and night life.
“How can we destroy our own culture for the sake of this,” asked Grasmeier, as he marched down Friedrichstraße.
As for the threatened clubs themselves, Wilde Renate, for one, has long been an LGBTQ+ staple in the club scene. While these closures might mean many Berliners lose a chance for fun and release, for members of the LGBTQ+ community, clubbing has been their only escape for a long time.
Gibran Braga, a Brazilian LGBTQ+ clubber and DJ with a Ph.D. in social anthropology, explained the scene’s importance between sips of cappuccino at a local café.
“It makes you realize how important these places are,” he said. “With the pandemic, they said ‘stay inside with your family’. But many of these people don’t have family or don’t have a good relationship with their family. Clubs are where they go to find a community.”
Regularly alternating between Berlin and his home in São Paulo, Braga says living in Berlin during the pandemic was especially difficult. “I think people moved because what was the point of facing the cruel winter without the clubs? At least in summer you could go outside.”
Indeed, the shortest winter days in Berlin boast a sunrise at 8 a.m. and a sunset at 3:30 p.m., leaving the other two-thirds of the day engulfed in darkness — not ideal circumstances for anybody suffering a mental health crisis.
“For some people, if they can’t hold a balanced relationship with drugs, the club scene can be self-destructive,” Braga continued, highlighting the at-times hedonistic, maximalist club life.
He cited an accident that occurred in August 2021, when a young woman died of an overdose in the bathroom of Berlin’s Suicide Club, a nightclub located in Friedrichshain. Baraga believes this was a wake-up call that clubs desperately needed.
“That girl being found dead created a new perception, that we need awareness teams to prevent these kinds of things from happening,” he said. “Nowadays, every underground party has an awareness team. They’re training bouncers, who are usually white, straight men, to be more sensitive. The members of these awareness teams are immigrants, women, and clubbers themselves who know how to take a much more caring approach.”
Frequent club-goer Tony Savarino, 22, says the local club KitKat has implemented this approach to positive effect. “It’s a really open, safe place,” he maintains. “The bouncers take care of all the customers.”
As for financial burdens and post-lockdown woes, Savarino feels that the period of sensory deprivation bred a desire for sensory overload.
“In my opinion, people got a lot more into clubbing after the pandemic,” he said. “It’s a way to escape work and the memories of isolation and the cold, grey winters. I just think the spirit of Berlin is really fluid and adapts to everything that it touches, same with the clubs and people.”
Another 26-year-old KitKat patron — who wished to remain anonymous — said it’s less an adaptation and more of a city-wide mid-life crisis, bringing out groups who hadn’t frequented clubs before.
“Who’s showing up to these clubs is sometimes shocking to me,” she confessed. “There are really old people who you wouldn’t expect in a club like this. I’d say the direct influence from COVID is like, ‘Fuck, I might all of a sudden be locked indoors for two years. Might as well go as hard as I can.’”
She believes the pandemic left mental scars and in Berlin you can go to a club and be completely anonymous. “A lot of it could be trauma—that need to be as private as possible or prevent people from knowing what you’re doing,” she said. “I know that has translated into the club scene — the whole ‘confiscate your phone, be in in the moment,’ especially post-pandemic, has led to the recent rise.”
While club-goers’ individual identities may stay a mystery, their numbers have risen measurably. Recently, The Berlin Culture Project released a statement pronouncing the project a complete success and announcing that 75,000 young Berliners had acquired a youth culture card, marking a total of 160,000 additional ‘cultural visits.’
As has been the case since the Weimar era a century ago, Berliners continue to balance a need for privacy and their desire for self-expression. Even if certain popular nightclubs close, you can bet that new underground venues will quickly open to meet the people’s demand.
“People have been saying since the 90s that Berlin is dying,” said Gibran Braga, the Brazilian DJ. “They have been adapting since forever. They’ll adapt again.”
Nick Blair is a California college student majoring in Film and Media studies. He is in Berlin this summer reporting as part of ieiMedia’s “Berlin Beyond Borders” journalism team.
