Berghain

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Berghain / Panorama Bar (2017)

The Berghain is a techno club in the Berlin district of Friedrichshain . Its name is derived from the district name Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg . Berghain is one of the most famous techno clubs in the world.

history

Ostgut (left), Panorama Bar and lab.oratory Ostgut (left), Panorama Bar and lab.oratory
Ostgut (left), Panorama Bar and lab.oratory

The Berghain emerged from the Berlin Technoclub Ostgut , which opened in 1998 and which in turn had a forerunner in the Berlin techno culture of the early 1990s and was a first permanent location for gay fetish and sex parties, known as snax events. It was located in a warehouse of a former freight yard ( Alter Ostbahnhof / Küstriner Bahnhof) and was considered one of the centers of Berlin's techno culture. On January 6, 2003, the last big “Club Night” took place there. Due to the construction work to build a multi-purpose arena , it was demolished in 2004, about a year after it was closed.

Then the operators of the Ostgut founded the Berghain in a larger location . After a section called the Panoramabar was opened on October 15, 2004, the official opening of Berghain took place on December 18, 2004. There were regular reports on the club at home and abroad.

In 2010 the Berghain was rebuilt and renovated to make better use of the space in the building and to furnish it anew. In 2014 the club celebrated its tenth anniversary with an exhibition and various parties.

Venue

The Berghain up close

The Berghain is located in a former district heating plant near the Ostbahnhof on the site of the old Ostbahnhof with the address Am Wriezener Bahnhof . The building was built between 1953 and 1954 in the style of socialist classicism . It is available as part of the building ensemble Karl-Marx-Allee under monument protection . Due to the planned new use as a techno club, the building was largely gutted and rebuilt by 2004. The renovation and design of the interior of the club, as well as later extensions to the interior and exterior, were carried out by the Berlin design company Studio Karhard . Initially, the operator rented it from the energy company Bewag / Vattenfall (similar later, the techno club Tresor , the power plant Berlin ). In 2011 they bought it from Vattenfall.

Club building

Taking such photos is prohibited today - the Berghain from the inside (2007)

The four-story building consists of the following parts:

The ground floor with the cash desk area, central cloakroom and a small bar. The originally larger dark room was converted into another event area called pillar in spring 2017 . A room-defining element was the large-format wall installation by the artist Piotr Nathan with the title Rituals of Disappearance (2004). The work consisted of 175 painted aluminum plates on an area of ​​4.8 × 25 meters. The four elements were presented as natural spectacles based on greatly enlarged historical engravings. The installation was dismantled in 2017 for renovation work and sold in its individual parts.

From this level there is a passage to the so-called Lab.Oratory . For the annual gay fetish party called Snax on Easter Saturday , both clubs will be merged and only men will be allowed in. During regular events in the “Lab”, which has its own entrance from the outside, this passage is not passable for visitors.

A steel staircase takes visitors to the actual Berghain club room. The room and the dance floor are designed for around 500 people. The dance floor is surrounded by four dance stacks loudspeakers from the company Funktion One , the DJ desk and five platforms suitable for seating. The dance floor is 18 meters high. On this floor there is another bar behind a large glass wall with a long bar counter and various seating options as well as a second dark room.

The Berghain only takes up half of the building; the other half was newly developed as Halle am Berghain by 2013 . It is normally not accessible in club operations. Other cultural events such as exhibitions or sound installations take place there. In the case of a few special events per year, this area, which is located parallel to the Berghain dance floor behind the northeastern front, is also accessible from the actual Berghain, which greatly increases the capacity of the entire club.

Finally, on the southwest side of the Berghain level, there is a separate bar (the so-called toilet bar ), behind which there are unisex toilets . On this side, two separate stairs lead to the upper floor, where the panorama bar is located. This is dominated by the large window front, which can be darkened with roller shutters, which, however, are sometimes opened for a few moments during the day in connection with the light performance and allow rays of sunshine to fall directly onto the dance floor. There are also large-format photographs by Wolfgang Tillmans . The entire club can accommodate 1500 guests.

Outdoor area

Outside the building there are other venues on the site:

In the summer months, the garden offers club guests another dance floor in the landscaped outdoor area. The separate canteen at Berghain is primarily used for concerts and the Bierhof Rüdersdorf is seasonally operated as a publicly accessible beer garden.

DJs and music

A l'Arme! Festival Vol. IV, concert preparation Laniakea, 2016 in Berghain

On the regular club nights, mainly techno is played . Well-known house and deep house DJs play in the Panorama Bar . The residents include Marcel Dettmann , Nick Höppner, Tama Sumo , Ben Klock , and Virginia. Klock, who also releases on the Ostgut Ton label affiliated with Berghain , sees his musical roots as a club DJ in Detroit techno in the 1990s.

Occasionally, cultural events beyond club culture take place in Berghain, such as Shut Up And Dance in cooperation with the Staatsballett Berlin , the monthly electroacoustic salon or the photo exhibition 13 Monde , in which Sven Marquardt , one of the club's bouncers, exhibits photos Has.

In recent years there have been more concerts on the Berghain plain (e.g. Fever Ray, Zola Jesus, Swans, Fixmer / McCarthy, Laibach). These are usually held on working days.

Opening times and special features

This article or the following section is not adequately provided with supporting documents ( e.g. individual evidence ). Information without sufficient evidence could be removed soon. Please help Wikipedia by researching the information and including good evidence.
Doorman Sven Marquardt

The club regularly opens every week on Friday around midnight and closes Saturday around noon, with DJs usually only playing in the Panorama Bar on that night . The subsequent so-called club night , in which both the Panorama Bar and the main floor , known as the (actual) Berghain , are played, begins on Saturday night and usually goes on until Monday morning without interruption. In the summer months, the garden with bar and DJ music is also open on Sundays from 12 noon. On the night from Saturday to Sunday and on Sunday evening, long queues of visitors often form in front of the club. The waiting time can be several hours in the summer months and with popular DJs. Parallel to the normal queue there is often a second queue for regular and guest list guests at peak times, which also requires a considerable waiting time.

Berghain is best known for its long parties that are perceived as sexually revealing. At the entrance, the doormen make a strict selection of guests. It is common for potential visitors to experience a rejection. The reasons for this are not communicated to the outside world by the bouncers and club management. In media coverage, there is often talk of the “toughest door in Berlin”. In this context, the doorman Sven Marquardt has achieved international fame, and as one of the few employees permanently affiliated with Berghain, he sometimes appears in public with interviews. DJ and producer Felix da Housecat was refused entry on February 21, 2015, whereupon he publicly complained and accused Berghain of racism .

Photographs or video recordings inside the building are strictly forbidden in the club, in order to guarantee guests maximum freedom and personal development. The author Tobias Rapp puts this as follows: “The club does not want to find any image of itself in the outside world. His world exists in an eternal early morning. The focus here is on the unfiltered, unrecorded experience. ”In the entire Berghain there are therefore no mirrors and only a few reflective surfaces. As a further measure to enforce the photography and video ban more effectively, the camera lenses of the guests' smartphones have been covered with stickers at the entrance control since 2014 at the latest . Despite the general ban on photography and video, filming permits for television teams have been issued in the past, and photographers are occasionally given permits to take pictures.

The media also reported repeatedly about drug use in the club. In June 2017 a 30-year-old American woman died in hospital from the effects of MDMA - overdose after two ecstasy pills had swallowed, which a friend of her husband in the toilet of Berghain from a dealer had bought.

The club is repeatedly the subject of national and international reporting. In an article published in 2014, Rolling Stone spoke of a "closed, sex-driven world in the coolest techno club". The New York Times , Der Spiegel , Die Zeit , Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , Süddeutsche Zeitung , Die Welt and countless other publications regularly report on Berghain. In 2015, US actress Claire Danes caused a sensation, in an interview with Ellen DeGeneres, who described Berghain as the “best place in the world”.

Companies

This article or the following section is not adequately provided with supporting documents ( e.g. individual evidence ). Information without sufficient evidence could be removed soon. Please help Wikipedia by researching the information and including good evidence.
Berghain logo

The founders Michael Teufele and Norbert Thormann changed the legal form of the club and its historical predecessor several times or changed the companies. Berghain, which opened in 2004 and as it exists today, is now operated by Berghain OstGut GmbH , which was founded in 2009 (original name: KulturKubus GmbH ). In 2012, the company was renamed and merged into its current legal form. The two founders, however, were both managing directors and shareholders for 50% for many years. In 2017 Michael Teufele stepped down as managing director, André Jürgens took over. In addition to the club, the company operates a music label called Ostgut Ton. In 2012 the Berghain had around 180 employees. In 2016, the Berlin-Brandenburg Finance Court ruled that events in Berghain are considered cultural events. This means that they are not subject to the normal sales tax of 19 percent, but the reduced rate of 7 percent.

Exhibitions

  • 2011: ALL - Worker's Pearls with exhibits from employees
  • 2014: 10 for the club's tenth anniversary.

Awards

The Berghain has received various awards. From statements, for example by resident DJ Ben Klock , it can be concluded that the publicity of such rankings, as well as other media reporting - at least according to the official self-image - is undesirable.

  • In 2009 the club was voted number 1 in the “Top 100 clubs in the world” by DJ Mag. In this context, the allegedly only officially disseminated statement from the owners is passed down: "We will continue as before." In the following years, the ranking in this readers' poll fell to 13th place in 2012, although the process was temporarily closed by an editorial recommendation a reader vote was changed.
  • In 2012 the club received the Berlin Bear Culture Prize awarded by the Axel Springer Verlag . Sven Marquardt and Marcel Dettmann accepted the award and explained to the audience: "We see the award as an appreciation of the Berlin club scene."

Literary reception

The Berghain plays an important role in the 2008 diary Strobo by the anonymous author Airen and in the 2010 novel Axolotl Roadkill by the author Helene Hegemann, which is partly related to it . The book Die Clubmaschine (Berghain) by Kilian Jörg and Jorinde Schulz takes a close look at the club “as the epitome of Berlin club culture” and tries “to bring the macro-political tensions, tendencies and contradictions of our society to light out of the darkness of a club To fathom love for machines and to understand the post-industrial attitude to life ”.

literature

Web links

Commons : Berghain  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ MIZ - German Music Information Center
  2. ↑ What, you're sending people away? In: sueddeutsche.de. August 11, 2014, accessed March 24, 2018 .
  3. ↑ Half past nine in the morning in the thermal power station . In: Berliner Zeitung , November 11, 2006
  4. ↑ Daniel Sigge: Perhaps the last text about Berghain ... and digital clubbers. January 2, 2017, accessed September 14, 2018 .
  5. ↑ Flyer Berghain December 2004 (PDF) Retrieved September 14, 2018 .
  6. ↑ The Berghain is expanding . In: tip
  7. ↑ berliner-zeitung.de
  8. ↑ Entry in the Berlin State Monument List
  9. ↑ Anna-Maria Phayouphorn: Feature: Karhard. "Courage to be elegant". In: Groove Magazine . February 14, 2017. Retrieved August 20, 2017 .
  10. ↑ Andreas Tzortzis: In Berlin, art among the ruins . In: The New York Times . May 1, 2007, ISSN  0362-4331 ( nytimes.com [accessed April 2, 2016]).
  11. ↑ a b Jens Balzer: Berghain: This would have been your club . In: fr-online.de . August 15, 2012 ( fr.de [accessed April 2, 2016]).
  12. ↑ Marcus Weingärtner: Dancefloor "Pillar" Why Berghain has to reinvent itself. Berliner Zeitung, February 15, 2017, accessed on September 14, 2018 .
  13. ↑ Piotr Nathan: Rituals of Disappearance. (PDF; 18 MB) In: Drawing And Space / Portfolio. Retrieved September 14, 2018 .
  14. ↑ Dominic Eichler: Pictures of the night: Art and clubbing . In: db artmag , 04/2005.
  15. ↑ Mondo Magazine July / August 2007 ( Memento of the original from January 16, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. via the music and light system in Berghain. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.funktion-one.com
  16. ↑ Volker Blech: The Fall of Man in the Berghain Technoclub. In: morgenpost.de. May 4, 2013, accessed April 2, 2016 .
  17. ↑ 10 years of Dial . ( Memento of the original from February 1, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. In: Spex - magazine for pop culture. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.spex.de
  18. ↑ Artist: Marcel Dettmann. Ostgut Booking, accessed April 7, 2018 .
  19. ↑ Artist: Nick Höppner. Ostgut Booking, accessed April 7, 2018 .
  20. ↑ Artist: Tama Sumo. Ostgut Booking, accessed April 7, 2018 .
  21. ↑ Artist: Ben Klock. Ostgut Booking, accessed April 7, 2018 .
  22. ↑ Artist: Virginia. Ostgut Booking, accessed April 7, 2018 .
  23. ↑ Ben Klock: "I'm not a techno purist" . In: Thump . October 21, 2015 ( vice.com [accessed October 16, 2018]).
  24. ↑ Myth Berghain: They all failed at the toughest door in Berlin! In: bild.de . ( bild.de [accessed on October 16, 2018]).
  25. ↑ tagesspiegel.de
  26. ↑ Felix da Housecat unfortunately had to stay outside - are Berghain bouncers racists? In: Thump . February 22, 2015 ( vice.com [accessed October 16, 2018]).
  27. ↑ Berghain at laut.de.
  28. ↑ storify.com
  29. ↑ The new temples of techno , interview with Tobias Rapp. In: tagesspiegel.de, March 2, 2009.
  30. ↑ Blog makes fun of photo bans in Berghain . ( bz-berlin.de [accessed on October 16, 2018]).
  31. ↑ Berghain: 24 hours in the wildest club in the world , Focus Online from December 30, 2014
  32. ↑ "Hello soul, come with me to purgatory, you've got it good" , stern.de from August 6, 2017
  33. ↑ agony at Berghain , Der Spiegel , no. 12/2018
  34. ^ Rollingstone.com
  35. ↑ Hili Perlson: Berghain, Berlin's Legendary Nightclub, Celebrates Its 10th Anniversary With an Art Show . In: T Magazine . ( nytimes.com [accessed October 16, 2018]).
  36. ↑ Tobias Rapp: The Party Monastery . In: Spiegel special . July 7, 2009 ( spiegel.de [accessed October 16, 2018]).
  37. ^ Daniel Haaksman: Berlin rave culture - waste your youth , Spiegel Online , July 2007; Alexander Osang : death in Berlin . In: Der Spiegel . No. 12 , 2018 ( online ).
  38. ↑ Moritz Uslarvon: Berghain: In the morning half past nine in Germany . In: Zeit Magazin . September 9, 2014 ( zeit.de [accessed October 21, 2015]).
  39. ↑ Julia Spinola: Almost like Bayreuth. Festspielhaus in East German wasteland . In: FAZ , July 25, 2009
  40. ↑ In the realm of madness . In: SZ-Magazin , issue 15/2009
  41. ↑ a b Sören Kittel: Boundless Berlin: The "Berghain" is a bit scary. In: welt.de . May 4, 2011, accessed October 7, 2018 .
  42. ↑ The Truth About The Best Club In The World . In: Die Welt , April 15, 2009
  43. ↑ Claire Danes Loves Techno. TheEllenShow, September 28, 2015, accessed October 16, 2018 .
  44. ↑ The Berghain is now officially high culture . ( tagesspiegel.de [accessed December 18, 2016]).
  45. ^ Body in the dark room , FAZ from August 14, 2014, p. 12.
  46. ↑ Kirsten Niemann: British magazine "DJ Mag" has awarded Berghain: Best Club in the World . In: Berliner Zeitung . ( berliner-zeitung.de [accessed on October 16, 2018]).
  47. ↑ Berghain only 13th place in Top 100 Clubs , Welt Online , March 29, 2012.
  48. ↑ "The Berghain has not lost its shine". Retrieved October 16, 2018 .
  49. ↑ Bronze bears for creative minds: Berlin celebrates the BZ culture award. Retrieved October 16, 2018 .
  50. ↑ Kilian Jörg, Jorinde Schulz: The Club Machine (Berghain) . Textem Verlag, Hamburg 2018, ISBN 978-3-86485-134-6 , pp. 1 .

Coordinates: 52 ° 30 ′ 40 "  N , 13 ° 26 ′ 35"  E