Berghain (German:[ˈbɛʁkhaɪn]) is a nightclub in Berlin, Germany. It is named after its location near the border between Kreuzberg and Friedrichshain in Berlin, and is a short walk from Berlin Ostbahnhof main line railway station.[2] Founded in 2004 by friends Norbert Thormann and Michael Teufele,[3] it has since become one of the world's most famous clubs and has been called the "world capital of techno."[1][4]
History
Berghain's origins go back to the mid-1990s. Beginning in 1992, Reichsbahnbunker Friedrichstraße was used for hardcore techno parties.[5] Thormann and Teufele hosted a male-only fetish club night called Snax.[6]Snax Club launched in 1994 with men-only events called Pervy Party.[7][8] One of the locations of Snax Club was Reichsbahnbunker in Mitte.[1] In 1995, Snax Club also came to Vrieshuis Amerika in Amsterdam.[9]
After parties in Bunker ended in December 1996,[10] Snax Club found a steady location of its own, which opened in 1998 and was called Lab.oratory.[11] Thormann and Teufele were offered to rent a depot building next to the Lab.oratory.[12] This venue occupying a former railway repair depot in Friedrichshain became Ostgut.[13] Lab.oratory hosted regular gay events, but "on certain nights of the month" Ostgut and Lab.oratory were combined into one space for Snax.[11] Unless a Snax event took place, Ostgut was open to the general public.
The sign for Ostgut
Despite being inclusive to all genders, Ostgut remained predominantly gay. It was a unique intersection between techno music and gay sex: "The main bar was located behind the dance floor – as well as the darkrooms, more or less to the irritation of the party people from Mitte. In Mitte’s techno clubs, gay lifestyle played only a marginal role. And vice versa: Most gay clubs didn’t care much about modern club music."[12] Two years after the Ostgut launch, the same team opened another space in the same building, this was named Panorama Bar.[12] All three spaces together had the address Mühlenstraße 26–30.[14]
According to Deutsche Welle, Ostgut, "known for unique parties and boundless freedoms, sexual and otherwise, is considered to have paved the way for Berghain."[15] "It remains Teufele’s and Thormann’s ultimate secret how they persuaded (or seduced) the gay crowd to dance to modern club music."[12] Ostgut closed in January 2003, with the building slated for demolition and later replaced by a large indoor arena, the O2 World Berlin.[3]
Berghain opened in 2004 as a reincarnation of Ostgut.[11][16] Panorama Bar opened in October 2004,[11] the main space Berghain in December of the same year.[15] A new Lab.oratory opened in 2005.[17] The name "Berghain" is a portmanteau of the two city quarters that flank the south and north sides of the building, Kreuzberg (formerly in West Berlin) and Friedrichshain (formerly in East Berlin), and has been described as evocative of the club's "post-1989 identity."[6] The literal meaning of the German word Berghain is "mountain grove."
The club is located in the former Friedrichshain Combined Heat and Power Plant built in 1953 as part of the flagship post-war Stalinallee development[6] and abandoned in the 1980s.[1] The space was originally rented from the energy company Vattenfall[18] but has been owned outright by the club since 2011.[19] The building has a cavernous main room with 18-meter ceilings and is dominated by steel and concrete. The design of the club's interior, as well as later interior and exterior expansions of the venue, were carried out by the Berlin design firm Studio Karhard.[20]
In 2016, a German court officially designated Berghain a cultural institution, which allows the club to pay a reduced tax rate.[21]
Nightclub
The club's main room is focused on techno, with a smaller upstairs space, Panorama Bar, featuring house music.[4][22] An outdoor garden opens between late spring and early fall to host daytime DJ sets.[23][24]
Berghain has a Funktion-One sound system on its main dance floor. Its first iteration, called the Dance Stack, was installed in 2005 and was one of the company's largest club installs.[25] The Dance Stack was replaced with a new, updated Funktion-One system in 2023.[26] The Panorama Bar system was upgraded in 2017 with a four-point line-array system with an additional six subwoofers from Studt Akustik.[27]
At the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in Germany, in March 2020, Berghain closed along with all other nightclubs in Berlin.[28] Over the summer, it hosted several sound art installations inside the building and garden.[29] In September 2020, the indoors club reopened as an art space, hosting an exhibition titled "Studio Berlin" featuring 115 Berlin-based artists including Tacita Dean, Olafur Eliasson and Wolfgang Tillmans.[30][31][32] After 19 months, in October 2021, Berghain resumed indoor dance club events, with patrons required to either be vaccinated or have recovered from COVID-19.[15]
Lab.oratory
The basement holds a male-only establishment called "Lab.oratory", which Rolling Stone described in 2014 as being "known as Berlin’s most extreme sex club."[1] For Snax parties, Lab.oratory and Berghain are combined into a single venue. This is in tradition with the old Snax at Ostgut in Mühlenstraße, but takes place less frequently.
Culture
Berghain has become associated with decadence and hedonism. It is open continuously most weekends from Saturday night through late Monday morning.[33] The club offers dark rooms dedicated to sexual activity, and media have frequently reported on guests openly indulging in sexual acts.[34] In 2019 Frieze magazine observed that in Berghain's early years, "the main room was mostly a space for gay men, [...] and now its queer palette is more mixed [however] the club’s values remain the same: concealment, queerness and excess."[6] The twice-yearly Snax Party is reserved for gay patrons only.[35]
No photos are allowed to be taken inside the club, and patrons are required to cover their smartphone cameras with a sticker.[3] This policy was also maintained in 2020 when the club temporarily converted into an art space for the "Studio Berlin" exhibition during the COVID-19 pandemic.[30] Additionally, the toilets of the club have no mirrors, proportedly so the clubs's guests are spared the "buzzkilling indignity of seeing their own faces after an epic partying session."[1][4]
A 2022 academic study described Berghain as a unique 'pharmacolibidinal constellation', where existing sexual orientations may become porous, as well as preexisting behaviors altered, due to the environment.[36][37]
The club's door policy is notorious for being both strict and opaque,[38] generating frequent debate and speculation.[39][40][41] The club's bouncers have also been accused of racism.[21][42] The head bouncer Sven Marquardt [de], who is a photographer, is also a minor celebrity in the techno scene.[43]
In 2007, Berghain collaborated with the Berlin State Ballet to create Shut Up and Dance! Updated, a ballet for five dancers that was performed at the club in late June and early July that year.[46][47] The ballet's soundtrack, released on Ostgut Ton on May 29, 2007,[47] is made up of five specially composed tracks by prominent minimal techno artists, such as Luciano, Âme, Sleeparchive and Luke Slater (The 7th Plain).[48] The soundtrack received some positive reviews,[44][49][50] while the ballet was less well received.[51]
In October 2010, the label released a five-year anniversary compilation, Fünf, for which field recordings from within the club were used. Nick Höppner explained that the idea had come from his collaborator Emika on "a regular Sunday morning [at Berghain, where] she noticed how everything in the building was resonating and vibrating and swinging and humming–she realized that there were a lot of sounds coming from the building itself. That led to the idea of doing field recordings within the building while it's not open to the public."[45]
In the same 2010 interview, Höppner stated that Ostgut Ton was turning down many recordings because there are "so many in-house artists", while the label at that time was selling more product than other labels, but not generating much profit.[45]
Ostgut Ton closed in December 2021, having been (according to Resident Advisor) "a dominant force in dance music, beloved for its mix series and dozens of EPs, albums and compilations" for 16 years.[52]
In 2021, ARTE Concerts produced a series of three videos at the Berghain and released it on YouTube.[53]
Around 2007, Berghain also launched its own booking agency Ostgut Booking, which among other artists represented Ben Klock, Steffi, and Marcel Dettmann.[52] In October 2022, it was announced that Ostgut Booking (which at the time represented 28 acts and had eight employees) would be closing down at the end of the year.[52]
Recognition
DJ Magazine's top 100 Clubs
Berghain first entered DJ Magazine's Top 100 Clubs list in 2008, ranking 20th, and reached the top position the next year.[54]
In 2013, American pop star Lady Gaga hosted an event at Berghain promoting her techno-inspired album, Artpop[79]
In the TV series Sense8 one of the characters, Riley Gunnarsdóttir, played by Tuppence Middleton, is admired for a recording of a DJ set she made in Berghain.[citation needed]
In 2016, American comedian Conan O'Brien attempted to gain admission to Berghain while filming a travel episode of his television show Conan, but was denied and asked to leave due to the presence of his camera crew.[citation needed][80]
In 2017, the card game Bergnein was released, a satirical card game where the goal is to "Let the right people in, outshine your colleagues and win the game!"[81]
In the 2021 television series Gossip Girl, Max Wolfe is said in the pilot episode to have visited Berghain. In his final appearance, he is shown to be thrown out of the club.[citation needed]
In 2021, DJ Mag suspected that "a number of Berlin clubs have inspired Hitman III's new night time venue: Club Hölle", a virtual in-game nightclub, including "Berghain, Kraftwerk and Griessmüehle".[82]
The Electro song Ostbahnhof by the French producers Miss Kittin and The Hacker, released in 2022, describes a night spent at Berghain without naming the club.[83]
In 2023, the film John Wick: Chapter 4 features John Wick visiting a fictional club in Berlin named "Himmel und Hölle" inspired by this club. It also features a cameo from the Bouncer Sven Marquardt.[84][85]
The song Berliner Luft by German band Scooter, released in 2023, mentions Berghain along with other Berlin clubs.[86]
In June 2024, podcast Search Engine released a two part episode documenting efforts to gain entrance into the club.[87]
^Collin, Matthew (2018). Rave on – Global Adventures in Electronic Dance Music. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. p. 73. ISBN978-0-226-59548-1. The club's roots ran deep into the Berlin subculture that developed after the fall of the Wall in 1989. Its owners, Michael Teufele and Norbert Thormann, organised first their Snax sex parties in the nineties at the Bunker club, an abandoned World War Two air-raid shelter occupied by ravers in 1992 and run as a hardcore outpost for acid techno, gabba and BDSM parties, amongst other niche predilections, until it was raided and shuttered in 1996. Two years later, Teufele and Thormann founded Ostgut in an old railway depot in the Friedrichshein [sic!] district, which at the time was a drab and desolate sector of what had been East Berlin. [...] The revolution was over – or was it? 'It was the end of the nineties, techno was out of fashion, but Ostgut was a place where people were still doing Ecstasy and having a great time, with parties going on until the afternoon,' Schneider recalls.
^Aussenstation. "Flyer Snax-Club 1994". www.instagram.com. Retrieved 2024-08-19. PERVY PARTY · Sat. 16.07.94 · Start 11 pm, End ?! am · Bunker Albrechtstr. 24/25 Berlin-Mitte [...] Rubber? Leather? You can change into whatever turns you on. SNAX CLUB is a new concept in fetish trading for pervy men.
^Another Snax-event, called FC Snax United, has its own logo, featuring following words: "est 1994"
^"Party – Snax i Amsterdam". QX. Stockholm: QX Förlag AB: 11. October 1995 – via issuu.com. Den berlinska klubben Snax gör ett gästspel i Amsterdam den 25 november. Vid vattnet, pà Vrieshuis Amerika, Oostelijke Handelskade 25 arrangeras ,Whipping Boys'-festen. Dj Mickey V (Amsterdam) och Dokker [sic!] Daan (Berlin), vilket i Snaxandan bör betyda techno. [...] Snax klubb är ingen läderklubb. Här blandas läderkillarna med technokids, gummiklädda, gay skinheads och allmänt partyglada män. Snax innebär dans, sex och glada miner.
^"Bauaufsicht schließt Techno-Bunker" [Building Supervisory Authority Closes Techno-Bunker]. Die Tageszeitung: taz (in German). 1996-12-14. p. 38. ISSN0931-9085. Retrieved 2024-08-22. Noch vor der offiziellen Schließung des Techno-Bunkers hat das Bauaufsichtsamt das denkmalgeschützte Gebäude in der Albrechtstraße gestern gesperrt. Damit fallen die für dieses Wochenende im Bunker geplanten Abschiedsparties aus. Wie die Polizei mitteilte, wurde der Bunker aufgrund einer Nutzungsuntersagung geschlossen. [Even before the official closure of the Techno Bunker, the Building Supervisory Authority closed off the heritage site on Albrechtstraße yesterday. This means that the farewell parties planned for this weekend in the bunker have been cancelled. As the police announced, the bunker was closed due to a ban on use.]
^ abcdWang, Daniel (2004). "Ostgut, Berlin — Discopia". Discopia. Archived from the original on 2007-12-24. Retrieved 2024-08-19. The Panorama Bar, which is the smaller upper portion of the legendary techno club Ostgut, has re-opened on Friday, October 15, at its new address in the Friedrichshain area of East Berlin. [...] Ostgut was the epicenter of Berlin nightlife starting late 1998 [...]. On certain nights of the month, Laboratory was the location for the famed Snax parties, with special themes for the insatiable gay appetites of Berlin
^ abcdWaltz, Alexis. "Nightclubbing: Berlin's Ostgut". daily.redbullmusicacademy.com. Retrieved 2024-08-19. At first, nobody knew who owned Ostgut. Michael Teufele and Norbert Thormann ran the lab.oratory, a gay sex club. The idea to open a dance club came up when they were offered to rent more space. [...] The Panoramabar opened two years later. It was accessible through a huge staircase after having passing the wardrobe. [...] The Panoramabar was more digestible for partygoers who did not relate to gay partying. There were more or less as many women as men, and the range of music was wider.
^Phayouphorn, Anna-Maria (14 February 2017). "Karhard. "Mut zur Eleganz"" [Karhard. „Courage to be elegant“]. Groove Magazin (in German). Retrieved 2 January 2022.
^Pidd, Helen (9 January 2008). "Last night a cellist saved my life". The Guardian. Retrieved 9 April 2014. Berlin's Berghain club is known for many things: its hardcore opening hours (starting from Saturday it stays open until Monday noon), its DJs (who play some of the best techno in Europe), and its relaxed attitude towards sex in public (walk past the booths on the ground floor and you're sure to see a bare bottom or 10).
^Battersby, Shandelle (2006-10-19). "Ich bin ein NZer". The New Zealand Herald.
