How techno became the soundtrack of reunified Berlin in the 90s

, Techno and the turnaround - these three pillars created a soundscape around 35 years ago that has in a way become the soundtrack of an entire decade, the perfect accompaniment to the 90s, which were considered hedonistic. ButHow could techno become such a soundtrack in reunified Berlin?

To this day you can still feel the impact of that time in Berlin, although certainly much less than back then. But Berlin and electronic music - it's probably a never-ending love affair forever.

In order to understand how Berlin was able to become the global metropolis of electronic dance music at the time of reunification, you have to know the state of the city, the mindset of the people and the socio-political circumstances. And maybe we'll just start with the city.

After the fall of the Wall, there were numerous unused open spaces and buildings all over Berlin whose ownership was unclear. According to estimates, a third of the buildings in East Berlin suddenly found themselves empty, more than 25,000 apartments. Potential locations that simply existed in order to create creative freedom - be it by opening galleries, ateliers, studios or just that. Sometimes these only existed for a few weeks, but that didn't stop people from filling them with life in the time available. And above all with: Techno.

One of the first well-known clubs back then was the UFO, which was ultimately nothing more than a former cellar in Kreuzberg, from which the renowned Tresor club later emerged. For this purpose, its operator Dimitri Hegemann converted the steel room of the Wertheim department store on Potsdamer Platz and transformed it into one of the most stylish clubs of the time.

At the beginning of the 1990s, Germany found itself in a completely exceptional political situation that was characterized by extraordinary optimism. Everything suddenly seemed possible and this spirit of optimism was also reflected in the rave scene - especially in contrast to what was still in vogue in the 80s. In the 80s there was a lot about demarcation, for example within the punk movement, which tended to be more negative and tried to destroy the old world. The techno culture was much more positive. It was more about bringing things and people together and building your own new world together - and that was hardly possible anywhere as well as in Berlin, where everything was at zero due to the fall of the Wall and needed to be filled with life.

The fact that the burgeoning techno movement coincided with the fall of the Berlin Wall was, of course, pure coincidence. But the fact that techno fell on such fertile ground in Berlin of all places was not a given. On the one hand, due to the exceptional political situation, there were the already mentioned party locations that were converted into illegal clubs, and on the other hand, the music was something new for both people from the west and those from the east of the city , which they were able to discover together; an area where everyone was on the same level and there was no longer a gradient separating west from east - everything was completely resolved at 180 bpm and strobe lighting. When discovering techno culture, everyone was one - and this unconditional equality and openness was one of THE driving forces of the rave culture at the time. As soon as you were on the dance floor together, there were no differences, no more inhibitions; It didn't matter where someone came from. In the club the (interpersonal) world was still in order.

For one of the first rave series in the reunified city, theTeknoside, the organizer Wolfram Neugebauer alias Wolle

Techno was a new, exciting thing for both East Berliners and West Berliners, lifting both sides out of the leaden boredom of the 80s. While the West remained in a state of post-punk heroin paralysis, real socialism was in decline in the East. Therefore, the world of life on both sides of the wall may have been different, but emotionally they weren't that far apart at the time - and this fact also united people from both sides of the city within the rave culture.

However, one has to say: Due to the fall of the Wall, the associated euphoria of the people from the East and the unprecedented feeling of freedom, the enthusiasm of the former GDR citizens was certainly significantly greater than that of the people from the West - and probably made it possible for the techno movement to develop the explosive intoxication that made this period such a myth. And the reunited Berlin became the techno capital of the world.