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- [00:01]
PJ Vogt
This episode of Search Engine is brought to you in part by Bombus. Summer's here and I am living for all things outdoors right now. From my morning runs in the neighborhood to constant backyard barbecues, Bombass makes my comfiest summer staples so I can make the most out of every single plan. I've been logging miles in their sport specific running socks. They're so soft and cushioned right where I need them. Plus they're airy and sweat wicking so my feet feel amazing even at the end of a sweaty workout for my upcoming summer flights, I'm packing their supportive compression socks. Usually those have a total hospital vibe, but Bonvas makes them in vibrant summer colors that keep my legs feeling fresh. I'm also obsessed with their new slides, made from ultra lightweight waterproof EVA foam. It literally feels like walking on marshmallows, whether I'm on a quick coffee run or lounging by the pool. Best of all, for every item you purchase, an essential clothing item is donated to someone facing housing insecurity. Head over to bombas.com engine and use code ENGINE for 20% off your first purchase. That's B O M B-A-S.com Engine Code Engine at checkout this episode of Search Engine is brought to you in part by Framer. Look, we've all been there. You need to launch a new landing page, but it immediately turns into a nightmare pile of JIRA tickets, developer handoffs and delayed timelines. You can change that if you start using Framer. Framer is the pro website builder trusted by massive companies like Miro and Perplexity because it lets your team ship production ready sites faster than ever. What makes it a total game changer right now are the AI agents built directly into your visual canvas. Instead of generating useless mockups, these agents work right alongside you to design pages, manage CMS content, and optimize SEO. The agents bring the speed and scale while you bring the taste, judgment and control. You literally prompt, inspect, edit and publish all in one single place. Learn how you can get more out of your site from a framer specialist or get started building for free today@Famer.com search for 30% off a Framer Pro annual plan. That's Framer.com search for 30% off Framer.com search rules and restrictions may apply. Hello, this is part two of our story about why two nice young American men were not permitted to enter Berghain, a famously exclusive German techno nightclub. If you haven't heard part one, please go back and listen. My body thinks that it's 2:30 in the morning, but I'm on a plane landing in Berlin where it's 7:30 in the morning. My body does not believe that. Welcome to Search Engine. I'm PJ Vogt. You're listening to the second part of our story. Why didn't Chris and Dan get into Berghain? In March, I found myself on a tarmac in Berlin, holding yet another book about the history of German techno. Cramming, I suppose for a very strange kind of test. It was all part of this crazy plan that a man named Lutz had described to me, and which I could not resist trying. Lutz had said that the real way into the most exclusive nightclub in the world, Berghain, famous for its four hour plus line, was to not wait in that line at all. It was instead to meet people in the Berlin techno crowd, gain a deep understanding of what the music meant to them, and in doing so, somehow melt into the scene. I am not socially adept. I don't speak German. I'm very new even to just dancing. Assuming this plan could work for someone, I'm pretty skeptical it can work for
- [04:18]
Gezina Cuna
me,
- [04:20]
PJ Vogt
But I felt like I wanted to try. As someone who has known the joys of belonging and the pain of not, I've always been very curious about where I can make myself fit in and which places are a bridge too far. Could a poorly dressed American with a weird laugh find even a temporary home in a severe German techno dungeon? I had less than a week to get an answer, but for once in my life, at least I knew it would be a definitive one. So on March 13, I get off the plane, blink in the bright cold sunlight and start practicing some rudimentary German.
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Gezina Cuna
Hello? Hello?
- [05:08]
PJ Vogt
I'm there with my editor Shruti, who by some miracle speaks the language. But other than that, I could not have been a more outside outsider to the city. Like it's our first day, and so we head to the neighborhood everyone had told me to start with. Friedrichsheim. Friedrichsheim is the neighborhood that contains Berghain. Walking the streets, I feel this feeling of Deja Street View. I've clicked through the same blocks on Google Maps for my apartment at home. I can see the big sports arena that replaced Ostgut Erghein's previous incarnation. I can see the River Spree, which winds along the city streets. I have the sensation that I get sometimes when I'm in a restaurant where a celebrity has appeared a little giddy, a little on edge. The Portal. Late in the morning, I find myself en Route to see a man named Sven von Toulen.
- [06:01]
Gezina Cuna
Who?
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PJ Vogt
Not the Berghain bouncer, Sven. There are many Svens in Germany. This Sven, a DJ and a writer. The music studio where he asks to meet. I walk up a walk up with a lot of stairs. I trail behind Shruti. Check, check.
- [06:22]
Philip Schroeder Ringen
Hi.
- [06:25]
PJ Vogt
I switch middle aged, fashionable, a short red brown widow's peak and a white T shirt. Sven dresses to my eyes more like a rock guitarist than a techno dj. But how does a techno guy dress anyway? This way it's quiet. Oh, it's crazy. We sit down and I tell Sven what I want him to help me try to understand. Today I'm trying to understand a genre of music, techno, which for some reason Germans love and Americans mostly view as vapid. Why would the same sounds be heard so differently in two different countries? In America, it's like the two types of music you're allowed to say you hate are country music and techno music.
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Sven von Toulen
Okay, that's always a problem when your idea of something is just that bullshit stuff that's mass marketed.
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PJ Vogt
Yes, Sven tells me he gets it. A lot of people's first exposure to electronic music is the worst of the genre. And he relates to that because when he first heard techno, he also hated it. His association with dance music was this cloying, repetitive, syrupy stuff that was sludging out of Europe in the 1990s.
- [07:38]
Sven von Toulen
I was like a punk kid. I lived in A squad and for me it felt like techno is just like apolitical. It's just hedonism. It's very German. It's like all that I, you know, as like, you know, an angry 16, 17 year old. I was like, I don't like any of that.
- [07:58]
PJ Vogt
To give you a sense of what angry young Sven was into, this is his old hardcore punk band, Abyss. Sven had no use for und uns. And he didn't just say techno. He hated the kinds of places that played it. At least in the town where he was from.
- [08:20]
Sven von Toulen
I grew up in a small town close to Hammer called Breme. They didn't have spaces, so they had to go in all the like discotheques, so. And they looked like discotheques. So I could never relate to that.
- [08:32]
PJ Vogt
But then in the mid-90s, Sven moved to Berlin and there he found himself listening to techno in a different context in different spaces.
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Sven von Toulen
In Berlin, obviously you had all these spaces that were basically like. Some of them were actually squatted, you know, like where you had like illegal clubs, illegal parties. And even if it wasn't Maybe not illegal anymore. It was still, like, rough and ready. Kind of, like real underground stuff. I would go to Tresor and it's like, oh, yeah, I can totally relate to that now. It makes sense to me.
- [09:05]
PJ Vogt
So it was seeing the places where the music was being played and understanding that they were, like, underground and sort of illegal to you. Part of what you were looking for as like, a young, like, punk kid. It didn't feel so, like, clean and commercial and like, whatever.
- [09:23]
Sven von Toulen
Yeah, the DIY aspect of it, because, you know, I was organizing concerts and we did all kinds of, like, labels and fanzines and, like, all this stuff. So everything was kind of diy. And in Berlin, everything was DIY as well. And it was like, basically, we take over spaces and do something great. And it's, you know, for us and our friends.
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PJ Vogt
I remember having the same feeling as a teenager, but listening to punk music in Philly. When I tried to listen to it first as recorded music, I couldn't hear past its roughness. But then I went to my first shows in some repurposed church basement. A DIY show where bands full of kids played for an audience of kids all flying arms and spit and sweat. There, the music came alive for me. Likewise, Sven found he loved the people who he met at the squats and the empty warehouses where Berliners showed up to dance to this new music, realizing,
- [10:25]
Sven von Toulen
okay, here are all the misfits. All the misfits of society are here. And feels today, you'd say, safe here. Welcome. And all of that that I had to see and experience that to fully. I understand that. And now I understand the music better as well.
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PJ Vogt
Sven was transformed in Berlin from a hardcore kid to a raver. He became a DJ. He's actually DJ'd at Berghain, and he's written a history of Berlin techno called De Klang de Familia, the Sound of the Family. He's now a full participant in the techno scene, a subculture he once thought he hated. Okay, can you just tell me, like, the origin story of techno music? Like, where is it born?
- [11:07]
Sven von Toulen
Oh, God. So techno music. So in 1988, there was a seminal compilation that was released by a British label, Ten Records. And that was the first compilation to basically showcase to the world the new dance sound of Detroit, which was techno.
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PJ Vogt
Why were people in Detroit? What was happening in Detroit that people were like, we should make music with synthesizers and dance to it? Like, why did that happen?
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Sven von Toulen
Well, there's this famous quote by Derek May, who said, techno is like Kraftwerk and Parliament. Stuck in an elevator.
- [11:48]
PJ Vogt
Techno is like craftwork and Parliament. Stuck in an elevator, huh? I've always tried to understand music, any music, by listening to the lyrics. It's part of why techno is actually hard for me to crack. It just doesn't have many lyrics. But I need to understand techno because I've been told that that understanding is part of my mission. This plan to break into Berghain and the stories Sven has to tell me about techno. It's about all the meaning that gets imprinted into music without lyrics. It's about Detroit, this place that was in the 1970s, experiencing all this strange and inexpressible history. History that would somehow be encoded into techno as the music that was being invented here. So here's how that happens. At the end of the 1970s, the city of Detroit is in some trouble. The US auto industry is beginning to sink, taking Motor City with it. But it's just the beginning of that decline. And Detroit still has something that was rare in American cities back then. A black middle class. In a Detroit suburb called Belleville, three of these middle class kids are obsessing about music. One of those kids is Derek May, who Sven just mentioned. The other two, Juan Atkins and Kevin Saunderson. They're staying up late listening to this very weird radio show hosted by a mysterious DJ named the Electrifying Mojo.
- [13:07]
Philip Schroeder Ringen
Awesome 84. A tripped out prototype of your musical future. The sound of sounds to come. It has long been the desire of the Metro to experience advanced sounds and concepts compatible with the technological advances of our time.
- [13:35]
PJ Vogt
That voice belongs to the dj. And the crazy thing is that all this hyped up shit he's saying, the prototype of your musical future. The sounds of sounds to come. All of this is actually true. The Electrifying Mojo did see the Future. Welcome to Awesome 84. A trip to the future of music.
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Philip Schroeder Ringen
Awesome 84.
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PJ Vogt
Awesome 84. Awesome 84.
- [14:18]
Sven von Toulen
And he mixed it all up. He would play whatever the B52s prince. He would play electronic music that came over from Europe. So you had Kraftwerk, obviously. You had like the Belgium stuff like Telex Italo disco. And he would kind of create these narratives. And he was kind of a mystical figure as well.
- [14:52]
PJ Vogt
So you've got the Electrifying Mojo, this unusual visionary mixing genres on the radio that tamer DJs kept on separate dials or off the air entirely. He's playing records for five hours at a time. And you have these three kids from Belleville who are listening to this strange radio program. And it's not Just them. A bunch of other young Detroiters are listening. Jeff Mills, Mad Mike Banks. And these listeners decide to start making their own music inspired by the sounds they're hearing. In 1985, Juan Atkins puts out a track called no UFOs. He's made it on an eight track recorder and his role in the TR909 drum machine coming very near. The track is synthy, like Kraftwerk. The beat is funky like Parliament. There's also this doomed science fiction feeling to it. This dance track about UFOs over Detroit. This music isn't just imagining a future for Detroit. It also seems to be mourning its past. I hear that in this track, Temptation by Vinyl. Cut the four on the floor beats. They're construction sounds. The sounds of what the city is losing bleeding into this music.
- [16:22]
Sven von Toulen
It's been said like many times that being in Detroit at the time, kind of in a post industrial city, the idea of the conveyor belt and that industrialness, that it all kind of played its role into how you approach making music.
- [16:40]
PJ Vogt
This new form of music, both enabled by technology and sometimes about technology, it ends up with an appropriate techno. Detroit would become known as the birthplace of techno. A metropolis where raves were thrown in grand abandoned buildings in the broken down city, dancers entering spaces that didn't even have working lights, dancing while holding flashlights, catching glimpses of all sorts of strange human behavior in the dark. The feature of this music that I most notice is how it loops. It loops in a way that sounds to some people meaningless, but to others deeply meaningful. What can seem repetitive often isn't. The same pattern returns, but now it's been complicated by some change in frequency or energy. An element added, an element removed. This is a stripped down and it turns out for many, surprisingly powerful kind of music. Techno would begin in Detroit, find homes in small pockets of cities in North America and Europe. Perhaps most consequentially, Berlin.
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Sven von Toulen
Berlin in the late 80s was still divided, it was still the GDR. And West Berlin had a really small scene. Like it was really just like, I don't know, 100 people or something.
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PJ Vogt
Oh, like small.
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Sven von Toulen
Small, yeah, small. Like really everybody knew each other by name. Small. And there were music enthusiasts and dancers and like all of that. And the music would obviously, you know, being played in like the two and a half clubs that West Berlin had at the time. And then for Berlin, the catalyst for everything was the wall just came down.
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PJ Vogt
Act two, the Wall. So where are we right now?
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Gezina Cuna
We are on, Behind us is Oberbaumbrucke, which is a beautiful bridge.
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PJ Vogt
It's 3pm now and Shruti and I are walking with Gezina Kiuna. Gezina is a person we've got been told to meet because she seems like a perfect guide. A club kid, but also a radio reporter who's covered the scene here for years, and a dj. I'd been picturing my stereotype of an intimidating Berghain scene star. Clad in four shades of black with an asymmetrical haircut. Gezina instead is all smiles. Wearing a lavender sweatsuit and these big glasses, she has the energy of an enthusiastic substitute techno teacher not yet burned out by the job.
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Gezina Cuna
We're staying in Friedrichsheim because I wanted to show you Berghain, which is, by the way, the name stems from Kreuzberg and Friedrichshain. So the Berg from Kreuzberg and the Hein from Friedrichshayn comes together in Berghain.
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PJ Vogt
Oh, so it's just. It's two neighborhoods Portmanteau smashed up together.
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Gezina Cuna
Exactly. And so what is this is the explanation of the name. How boring.
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PJ Vogt
Hey, I do think it would be more something.
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Gezina Cuna
Nah, it's not. It's very, very boring.
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PJ Vogt
Gesina tells me Berghain is actually closed on Wednesday, so all we can do this afternoon is study the club's perimeter. I still have a few days to do all my research before Klubknacht begins on Saturday. Berghain sits near a cluster of clubs. Small, big, discreet, not tucked along the banks of the River Spree.
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Gezina Cuna
On the right side there's the er. A Wegelande. We call it Raw. Where's a nice flea market on Sunday. And also certain little clubs which are totally okay to start clubbing or as a tourist actually. But be careful, a lot of shady drug dealers around here don't buy from them because apparently not so good.
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PJ Vogt
Gesina's lived in Berlin most of her life. She was born just outside the city in East Germany, while the Wall was still up.
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Gezina Cuna
We're gonna go this way around because I want to show you the Tordestreifen.
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PJ Vogt
The Deathstrip.
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Gezina Cuna
The Deathstrup. Yes, almost
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PJ Vogt
Tod Streifer.
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Gezina Cuna
Yes. And it's the strip of death. That's why.
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PJ Vogt
Let's just say the Death strip. During the Cold War, East Germany built what we call the Berlin Wall, but which was actually two parallel walls with a big negative space between them. That negative space is the death strip, patrolled by guards with guns, dogs, surrounded by barbed wire. It was called the Death strip because over 100 people were killed. Trying to pass the death strip is Berlin's defining scarlet. But it's also crucial to our story today, weirdly, because it's the cradle that will eventually birth the city's techno scene. But for Gezina as a kid before, there's the music, there's just a wall. Her family lived in the Soviet controlled East, the gdr. Gezina's father ended up on the wrong side of the secret police there, the Stasi, for what sounded to me like the dumbest possible reason.
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Gezina Cuna
When he was 16, he was actually knocked down by an old Stasi guy because he said something about the gdr, like something not even nasty, but saying, well, in this shitty place, you can't even get a lemonade because it was summer and all the lemonades were out. Which happened. And so he knew he always had this file and he couldn't move as he wanted to because he complained about there being. Yeah, lemonade deficit, exactly.
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PJ Vogt
This stray complaint about lemonade. One time it meant Gezina's family would always be surveilled. Targeted. Reading about life under the Stasi gives me a deep chill. The Stasi tortured, they poisoned. But what they're most famous for today is the way they surveilled and smeared German citizens. Germany's commitment to privacy, its suspicion of Internet companies and camera phones. I can't help but wonder if some of that traces back to this moment. The Stasi and their vast network of collaborators spied on everyone. They used secrets and rumors to destroy anyone in their way. Gossip wielded by idiots, a weapon of mass destruction. Today, Germans talk about privacy the way we talk about free speech. But Gesina's family, they actually found an escape from the East. In 1984, this door opened for them. Some East Germans were being allowed to go west, the west essentially paying the east for workers it needed. One day, Geina's family found out they'd been selected. But the opportunity had come out of nowhere and her mother wasn't ready. She needed time to prepare. So they came up with a story. Her parents told Gezina, six years old at the time, to pretend to be sick, to buy the family a little more time while the Stasi monitored them.
- [23:38]
Gezina Cuna
And we've been followed. When we're driving around with the car, we've been followed by the Stasi all the time. And my parents always looked to the backseat and said to me, okay, when we arrive now, you're gonna be sick again. You have to act sick. So I've been holding my stomach and acting all sick. And so we got, I don't know, a couple more weeks in the gdr so mom could finish up whatever she had to finish up. And then we left. But the day you leave, they cut your passport, and you're not a citizen of anywhere. Like, you don't have a passport, you don't have an identity anymore, pretty much. And the good thing was us being Germans, when we went to West Berlin, you're instantly a German citizen. So that was kind of good. But now being 46 or 40 years. 40 years later, actually. Wow. I have to deal with that a lot. I'm actually trying to work through things because we're ripped out of our environment and now slowly realizing how much harm it actually did.
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PJ Vogt
Gezina's family moved to the part of West Berlin that was specifically for people coming in from the east, as she describes it, a quasi refugee camp. Life there would end up being challenging. Her brother was badly bullied in school and turned around and bullied her. Her parents, who had been much more present in the east, now disappeared into work, leaving her and her brother home alone with the television. For her parents, life in the east was the bad memory for Kazina, who left all that so young. It's the west, this strange new country, that changed her family. That left a bruise that stuck around. Okay, so where are we?
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Gezina Cuna
So this is part of the Wall, which is like now a monument. East side gallery with lots of different paintings along the Wall.
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PJ Vogt
We're standing with our backs to what's left of the east side of the Berlin Wall. It's covered in street art and graffiti now. Nearby, there's a field of grass and dirt and then the river. Honestly, as far as monuments go, it's not much. The Wall fell in November 89, and the two cities that had been kept apart rushed to join each other. It's strange to think that this place where we're talking, anyone standing here, would have been shot. It's just a field.
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Gezina Cuna
This would have been the death strip, because then the canal was also part of the Wall or of the no go area. And then behind it is Kreuzberg on the other side.
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PJ Vogt
The size of this trip is pretty crazy. It's just so expansive.
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Gezina Cuna
Yeah, we can walk to towards the water. So, yeah, here is where bath 25 used to be. And now it's like Kata Blao and the whole area. But Bao 25 was also quite famous.
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PJ Vogt
Gesina starts pointing downriver to this spot, a decommissioned soap factory turned into a club, which closed and turned into another club. I know exactly the feeling she's having. Like anybody who's lived somewhere long enough, she's looking at the city, but she's seeing all the cities that used to be here underneath it. Berlin in the 1990s. A decade, really, of parties, many of them technically illegal, occupying spaces for a few years, maybe longer, before disappearing. A good party is typically about celebrating something, a birthday, a promotion. But the truly great ones, they're almost always about release and the intensity with which Germans grabbed a hold of techno, the height of the fire of the scene they built here. This was a country with decades of awful, unspeakable history, trying now to find a way to move forward. I'm going to tell you the story of the one party that towered over all the others. A party that somehow tied all these strange threads of time and history together. After the break, I'm going to tell you the story of Tresor. This episode of Search Engine is brought to you in part by Rosetta Stone. We've all tried learning a language before, but when it's time to actually use it, we realize knowing random words isn't the same as real conversation. That's why I've been messing around with Rosetta Stone Sapphire to improve my Spanish for my next vacation. Rosetta Stone is the trusted leader in language learning for over 30 years. They just launched Rosetta Stone Sapphire, a new app that combines its proven immersion method with the latest innovation in technology to help you learn faster, personalize your lessons and have more fun along the way. It lets you study what you actually care about, like food, travel or football. Best of all, the new chat missions let you practice real life conversations safely while getting instant feedback, making it feel like a game. Search Engine listeners can get 20% off their Rosetta Stone Sapphire subscription when they sign up today. You'll get unlimited access to all 25 Rosetta Stone languages plus the all new Sapphire learning tools. Visit Rosetta Stone.com search engine to redeem your 20% off. That's RosettaStone.com SearchEngine and start learning a language for real. This episode of Search Engine is brought to you in part by Odoo. Ever feel like you need one app for sales? Another for inventory? Another for account list? Never ends? Managing a business should not feel like a full time juggling act. That's where Odoo comes in. Odoo is the only business software you'll ever need. It's an all in one fully integrated platform that handles CRM, accounting, inventory, e commerce, hr, you name it. No More bouncing between apps or remembering a dozen logins. Everything works together seamlessly so you can actually focus on growing your business. And the best part, Odoo replaces multiple expensive platforms for a fraction of the cost. And it's designed to grow with your business, whether you're just starting out or already running a large company. It's easy to use, customizable, and streamlines every process so you can spend less time on software headaches and more time on what really matters. Thousands of businesses have already made the switch. Why not you try Odoo for free today at odoo.com, that's O-O-O.com. Act 3 the vault in the 1910s, before the Nazis took over, the biggest department store in Europe was a store called Wertheim, founded by George Wertheim, a Jewish man. His chain's flagship store was the one in Berlin. There's photos of it from before the destruction. It's worth looking them up, honestly. Store doesn't really describe it, really. It's a cathedral featuring an enormous light filled atrium, beautiful frescoes, 83 elevators. Somehow in 1933, the Nazis start picketing the store. There's a photo of them standing outside holding their signs, don't buy from Jews. Wertheim is forced to hand his store over to non Jewish Germans. He dies of pneumonia in 1939. The store itself is destroyed a few years later by Allied bombs. What's left is raised to make more room for the wall. The former Wertheim location unfortunately falls in the death strip. In the end, all that's left, some rubble and the old vault that was beneath the store. It's like every horrible decision Germany made for 50 years, they also made on this one, Wertheim. And then the wall falls. Sven von Toulen, the DJ techno historian, picks up the story of Wertheim here.
- [31:49]
Sven von Toulen
During the war, the building was destroyed, but the wall was still there. And then on top of the wall was like just a kind of small bungalow shack, whatever you want to call it. And it was situated right at the former death strip. This whole area, there was nothing. It was only like debris, sand. It was empty. So when they found the place by chance, Donny Steeler from the east and Achim Kolberger and Dimitri Hegemann from West Berlin, they were driving around like, we want to open a club in East Berlin. And basically by chance saw this shack. It's like, what's that? So they parked their car, went in and the door was open. They kind of looked around and didn't look so special. But then they found this, like, door. It's like, where does this door lead? And then they opened the door, and then it was just like dark, wet stairs going down into a basement. And they were like, huh, okay. And so they had their lighters, went down around the corner, and then they suddenly stood in front of these, like, in a prison, like rusty steel bars and, like a big vault steel door. And they were like, what is this? And they all knew it was empty for at least 30 years. There was nothing. They basically, the air they would breathe, like, when they went down, it was, like, kind of old. They all said it was kind of like a spiritual experience. They said when they got out, they didn't talk. They didn't talk for, like, half an hour because they were like, completely, like, in this mixture of in awe, in shock, they all knew this is it. This is a place.
- [34:00]
PJ Vogt
This place would become the site of a club called Tresor, German for vaults, the jewel of the city's new techno scene. Years before that title was seized by Berghain, Tresor, a nightclub, but also a portal between Berlin and Detroit. One of the men in the car that day, Dmitry Hegemann, had already been flying to America, even signing some Detroit DJs to his label, getting their music into his West Berlin club before the wall fell. But now Tresor would be where Detroiters like Derek May, Jeff Mills, Juan Atkins could now fly out and spin techno records for ecstatic Germans, sometimes quite literally ecstatic mdma, a large part of the scene at the time. These American DJs were finding that the techno they made at home meant something else here in Germany. This place that had been so stuck in its own history, loved this music, whose power lay in how it looped. It looped in a way that sounded to some people meaningless, but to others, deeply meaningful. The music looped. Sometimes the stories about it did too. One of the Germans converted to techno in a sweaty dungeon of Tresor, Gesina Cuna. Although before Gezina loved electronic music, she actually hated it. Her association with dance music was this cloying, repetitive, syrupy stuff that was sledging out of Europe in the 1990s. But then a friend of hers told her that there were these strange new underground clubs populating the empty parts of the city, and he invited her to come explore them.
- [35:28]
Gezina Cuna
My best friend Martin, who is such a soul in all kinds of ways, he started taking me to those places. And one was Tresor.
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PJ Vogt
Tresor was a turning point for Sven van Toulen, too. The site of his conversion. Do you remember just the first time you went to Tresoor?
- [35:45]
Sven von Toulen
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I remember the first time I went to Tresor. I went right down the basement.
- [35:51]
Gezina Cuna
Downstairs was just super interesting with the old compartments and the very famous Stahl guitar here. What do you have in a. In a prison? What's it called? The steel bars, which looked like, you know, a cell kind of thing.
- [36:09]
Sven von Toulen
It was full of, you know, fog. And the strobe was going off and
- [36:14]
Gezina Cuna
you walked in there and there was the techno floor. That was the Tresor floor where techno was played. And I was standing on the floor there and looking around me because I felt a bit uncomfortable because that was loud. And Strobal lightning, always a bit weird for my eyes. And then it became all dark and
- [36:34]
Sven von Toulen
I couldn't see anything. And the next thing I know, I just fell because there was, like, a speaker on the ground and it was like. And then I went to the wall, kind of like, ugh, where's the wall? Where am I? And it took me a little bit
- [36:49]
Gezina Cuna
to adjust and I felt something wet dripping on my nose. And I'm just, like, looked up, couldn't really see. But then the strobos started. I'm like, oh, that's like sweat from the ceiling. That's very interesting. And then the kick drum kicked in. So, like, pure bass in my stomach, and I felt it in my stomach. And that was such an amazing feeling. Like, seriously, I was standing there a bit like I had an epiphany or maybe Jesus came to me. I was like, oh, I understand. I looked at Matt. I'm like, I understand now, okay? And I didn't drink or anything back then. I was pure. Pure energy of the music.
- [37:47]
Sven von Toulen
Yeah, I'll never forget that. Funnily enough, I kind of started my DJing at Tresor as well, because a friend of mine, she was cleaning Tresor at the time, and I didn't have turntables yet, so she was like, you know what? Just come over while I clean. So I was there quite often on Saturday, Sunday afternoons, basically playing and cleaning.
- [38:14]
PJ Vogt
Okay. It's also. It's. So when you. When, like, I've heard this week, we've spoken to people and, like, I've thought, like, I was aware of Berlin Wall fell as a historical event. I had not spent that much time really, like, thinking about the emotional reality of it and the strangeness of its existence and the strangeness of its end. And there's something, the way you talk about that. It's a combination of, like, it's so beautiful, like, as an expression of like human freedom and joy. And so strange. Like, it's so strange to me that, that there would be a city divided where two different economic models were in competition with each other, where people had to live these very constrained lives. And that when you set those people free, it turns out the thing that they're gonna do is have computers make music for them and shake their asses in like dungeony, like bombed out buildings. It's so strange.
- [39:13]
Sven von Toulen
Yeah, I mean you cannot make it up. In a way. It just kind of coincided perfectly. There was this whole optimism, you know, like the end of the Cold War. The future is bright. Like, ah, we had impending nuclear war. Like all of that was like, ah, nah, it's gone. And then you have all these possibilities. Suddenly you have the spaces. You have zero economic pressure. You didn't have, you didn't pay taxes, you didn't do anything. You just did. Right. It felt like an exorcism for a lot of Germans, like the exorcism of the second World War, Nazi Germany, the separation, all of that.
- [39:54]
Gezina Cuna
Even I have trouble sometimes finding words for the history I have within my body and having something like techno where everyone comes together and people with no agenda on both sides there were still,
- [40:06]
Sven von Toulen
you know, conflicts and all that. But overall, whereas in the rest of German society a lot of shit went down. A lot of infighting, you know, and a lot of like blame going back and forth between east and west and all of that. But it was really wasn't an issue in the club scene at all. It didn't matter if you're from the east or West. It was like reunification first started. On the dance floor.
- [40:36]
PJ Vogt
For Sven Tresor is where the new city began, where he learned to love techno music, where he found a path for his life in a former vault where sweat and chunks of plaster routinely dripped from the ceiling into people's drinks. And this was the scene that would over the years, draw an international crowd. People from all over the world who had no real feelings about a unified Germany or the scars of the Cold War, but who could recognize a good party and who wanted to join one. Tresor would lose its original location. A lot of those early clubs would disappear at some point. The egalitarian anyone can join the party vibe would fade, replaced with something more exclusive. A new intimidating club which drew foreigners, even ones who didn't know very much about techno, but who just heard there was a room that was very hard to enter, a room they now wanted to try to get into. Berghain Act 4 portresses it's still Wednesday afternoon. Our stroll with Gezina, the DJ and radio reporter, continues. She's about to show us Berghain's outside the castle's exterior. We leave the park and its remnants of the old Berlin Wall and we walk towards our destination, just a few minutes away.
- [41:52]
Gezina Cuna
We're gonna get there from the side, which isn't maybe as cinematic. Yeah, bombastic, but I think you still get the gist of it. Okay, you can already see. Is that it? Yeah, you can already see part of Berghain there.
- [42:05]
PJ Vogt
Oh, it's enormous.
- [42:06]
Gezina Cuna
It's huge. Like, seriously, it's so, so big.
- [42:10]
PJ Vogt
Berghain takes me by surprise somehow. We're walking down a side street, when suddenly the top of this massive building appears in the distance. It doesn't look like a power plant. It's palatial with double height, skinny rectangular windows. Honestly, to my eye, it looks like an industrial version of Buckingham Palace. Maybe one occupied by squatters. For Gezina, if Tresor was the site of her techno conversion, Berghain is the church she now visits most regularly. Can you tell me the first time you went to Berghain?
- [42:42]
Gezina Cuna
Yes and no. Because when I start telling those stories to my younger friends, when they ask you, what was your first time to Berghain? How long?
- [42:51]
PJ Vogt
Not supposed to ask that question.
- [42:52]
Gezina Cuna
How long have you been coming here? This is the question I get. I'm like, you know what? I've been going to Osgood. This is how long I've been coming here. And this is where I say, grandma is starting to tell stories from before the war. It's okay, Grandma, let's get you to bed. So my first Berghan experience was not Berghen, was Oscar, which is the predecessor to Berkhei? Exactly.
- [43:19]
PJ Vogt
Gesina said she went there to see one of her friends. Dj. The line was short back then, but Sven Markart was already manning the door. Two decades younger, his reputation already firmly established. When Ostgut morphed into Berghain, it kept the same values, secrecy and privacy for its guests. Walking toward the club, Gesina explains that even today when you enter, your phone is taken so its camera lens can be covered.
- [43:44]
Gezina Cuna
No photos, so you get your stickers on. Can't take any pictures in there. It doesn't matter what kind of performance or whatever you're going, it's always stickered here, look, this.
- [43:56]
PJ Vogt
Oh, what's that? There's a little green sticker on the ground.
- [43:58]
Gezina Cuna
Well, this is.
- [43:59]
PJ Vogt
Is that a Berghain Sticker.
- [44:00]
Gezina Cuna
Yes. It's this. Yes.
- [44:02]
PJ Vogt
Oh, it goes right over the lens.
- [44:03]
Gezina Cuna
Those are like. I'm wearing the, like mostly neon colors.
- [44:07]
Philip Schroeder Ringen
Colored.
- [44:07]
Gezina Cuna
And you see there's a yellow one.
- [44:08]
PJ Vogt
Yeah. There's a bunch.
- [44:09]
Gezina Cuna
There's an orange one.
- [44:10]
PJ Vogt
There's Berghain Shrapnel just a couple blocks away.
- [44:12]
Gezina Cuna
Yeah.
- [44:13]
PJ Vogt
We pass through a small park, a former train lot. Concrete and graffiti covered benches. We pop around a corner and now Shruti, Gezina and I are standing by what seems to be the side of Berghain. I noticed this unassuming metal door that looks like a service entrance. Maybe.
- [44:28]
Gezina Cuna
So the main line just goes this
- [44:29]
PJ Vogt
way and then to the left.
- [44:31]
Gezina Cuna
This is the door.
- [44:33]
PJ Vogt
This is the main door of Berghain. We're here already. 4:30pm on a Wednesday. The club is closed. No one's outside. A gray door, sealed tight and graffitied. This will be where the line ends on Clubknacht. In front of the door, a series of waist high metal gates to corral that line. And overlooking it all, I notice two prominent white security cameras. The scene does not feel like what you'd see outside of a nightclub. It feels like what you'd see in front of a tiny patch of the Berlin Wall. High security. I have a question, actually.
- [45:05]
Gezina Cuna
Yes.
- [45:06]
PJ Vogt
So is there a way to sneak in, that is, has anyone snuck into Bergheit?
- [45:13]
Gezina Cuna
Not that I know of. Because, I mean, look at it. You have barbed wire, you have cameras there at the door.
- [45:20]
PJ Vogt
Gazina says highly unlikely, just given how tight this security is here, the sheer number of people who work the door. But she also uses the opportunity to point out people sort of misunderstand. These bouncers, these doormen, these gatekeepers, everyone obsesses over and sometimes reviles.
- [45:38]
Gezina Cuna
Let's talk about any bouncer in the city. Not specifically.
- [45:41]
PJ Vogt
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Not the place that we're standing 10ft away from.
- [45:45]
Gezina Cuna
I know. It's a very delicate topic. Very delicate because you select and selecting people has a very bad ring to it. Very bad. Very, very bad. Also, the selector calling it a selector has a very Nazi ring to it as well. That's really.
- [46:03]
PJ Vogt
I always thought that.
- [46:04]
Gezina Cuna
Yeah, really bad. Yeah. So I don't want to say that term because it's nasty. And given our history, even worse. The thing is, which makes us so delicate is that they decide about you within milliseconds, not even seconds, but like less than that. Like in a very, very short amount of time. They look at you, they check you out and then decide, do you fit Tonight, not just in general. Do you fit tonight or not? Then they might ask questions, hey, where are you coming from? How old are you? Or. Or who's playing? Like, they ask a lot like, who's playing tonight? Just to see if they're really into the music, but they really decide how the party is going to turn out. The thing is, in my club life, I kind of grew up with bouncers. It's a weird thing to say, but I always felt like every part of the club is very important, not only the dj. And I was always very fond of the bouncers. I always became friends with, with them, different clubs in the city, and stood there with them and realized how much trouble they have to go through, like how much hate they get. And that's why they also have to be a bit more strict and kind of the feel of being intimidating. But usually they're not. And usually very, very important. A good bouncer is a very smart person, by the way, it's not a dumb, whatever, broad person that was just casted out of the gym with big muscles. No, not at all. The best bouncers are super smart people.
- [47:44]
PJ Vogt
Now, standing here doesn't look so narrow. Like, does the line go much, much farther back?
- [47:49]
Gezina Cuna
I was just going to lead the way to where the line sometimes goes to.
- [47:55]
PJ Vogt
Geina walks us away from the door, away from Berghain. We're now walking down a concrete path. We pass by a closed Imbus, a German snack shop whose entire business seems to be selling food to Berghain's line supplicants. We walk and we walk this currently empty path that in a few nights will be filled with pilgrims. We walk to the end of the road and then we turn around and behold the grandest view of Castle Berghain. I imagine for a moment the ghosts of Chris and Dan making minor dance movements here, wondering if the club can perceive them and if so, what it's thinking. So if you were here, how many would it be? Like a couple hours?
- [48:34]
Gezina Cuna
Yeah, probably. I mean, the, the longest my, my husband waited with his friends was seven hours.
- [48:42]
PJ Vogt
Seven hours.
- [48:43]
Gezina Cuna
That was the day where two guys got rejected and he, with his, like, good friend got in.
- [48:49]
PJ Vogt
And so wait, they waited seven hours at the line? Half of their party was rejected. And he was like, I'm so sorry. I'll see you tomorrow.
- [48:56]
Gezina Cuna
Well, yeah, you go in then. Like, you know, our favorite DJ was playing, so it was so funny because I was just. I was walking a friend to the train station and I came back and walked in just 20 minutes after him, after he had waited for seven hours.
- [49:13]
PJ Vogt
Because you were on the list.
- [49:15]
Gezina Cuna
No, I wasn't on the list.
- [49:16]
PJ Vogt
Oh really?
- [49:18]
Gezina Cuna
That's a thing about knowing bouncers quite well, you know. And belonging, I guess.
- [49:26]
PJ Vogt
Gezina talking about waltzing into Berghain without waiting in line, without even being on a list, is a little funny to me. Elon Musk reportedly was not only rejected by a doorman here, but rejected despite being on a guest list. But Gezina, who is just a very normal adult Berliner, a person who owns zero electric car companies, actually stitches together a lot of jobs to make ends meet. For her, Berghain is just the place she belongs. It reminds me of that conversation with Lutz from the last episode where he explained how a nightclub is in fact a club that here at least you can't buy your way in. At this point I make a confession to Kizina. I'm thinking myself about trying the door on Sunday. She looks at me and Shruti appraisingly.
- [50:13]
Gezina Cuna
The thing is, I would say at the moment, Shruti would get in and you would be rejected.
- [50:19]
PJ Vogt
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [50:20]
Gezina Cuna
You look so American.
- [50:22]
PJ Vogt
Yeah.
- [50:23]
Gezina Cuna
They can sense you from miles away.
- [50:25]
PJ Vogt
And Americans are not like adored at Berghain.
- [50:28]
Gezina Cuna
Not really. Sorry.
- [50:31]
PJ Vogt
I get it. For the record, I want to say I am dressed badly, as is my custom. I've never really figured out pants. So it's not that I'm dressed frumpily, it's that I'm dressed Americanly.
- [50:42]
Gezina Cuna
Yeah, yeah, you just look very American.
- [50:47]
PJ Vogt
That's a tough one. Okay, but here's what's hard. So you say that. I totally agree. And I'm like. But like, if the club is supposed to. It's early evening when we say goodbye to Gesina and leave Friedrichsein. I'm still jet lagged and a little confused. I eat a doner kebab at dinner with some American friends. They want to hit the bars. I try, but I find myself falling asleep into a gin and tonic. I tell myself it's the first night, there will be others. I say goodbye and my friends forge on in search of an adventure which for them does not quite work out. What happens is they go from bar to bar, but then somewhat randomly end up outside the Kit Kat Club, a very famous fetish club where. Where the dress code runs towards leather gear or else basically nothing. My friends show up at the door dressed in comfortable American tech worker fleeces. The bouncer is horrified. He looks at them and says, no, no, this is impossible. We are a fetish club. Please go home. Read our website. The Americans seem to find this experience completely entertaining. A good story to tell. Take home through all of this, I am asleep. Despite visions of Berghain doorman Sven Markart, I have no nightmares. This episode of Search Engine is brought to you in part by Rocket Money. Thinking about my finances and setting a budget used to be the last thing I wanted to deal with over a relaxing weekend, but Rocket Money has made this so much easier for me. Now, instead of feeling overwhelmed, I get personalized insights and regular reports that actually make sense. You can easily set customizable budgets, track your goals, and receive real time alerts for large transactions or low balances. In fact, users who create a financial goal with Rocket money save over $70 on average within the first 30 days. It takes all the guesswork out of your spending patterns by automatically categorizing your transactions across all your accounts. Rocket Money is a personal finance app that helps find and cancel unwanted subscriptions, monitors your spending, and helps lower your bills so you can grow your savings. Let Rocket Money help you reach your financial goals faster. Join@RocketMoney.com Search that's RocketMoney.com Search RocketMoney.com Search. This episode of Search Engine is brought to you in part by LinkedIn Talent Solutions. Running a small business means every hire matters. Bad hire can cost you time, money and momentum. A good hire? They can help grow your business. But finding great talent isn't easy, especially when you don't have the time or resources to sift through piles of resumes to find the right fit. That's why LinkedIn built Hiring Pro, your new hiring partner that screens candidates for you. So instead of sorting through applications, you spend your time talking to candidates who are actually good. Making a good hire is always important. It's especially important if you have a very small business like Search Engine. With Hiring Pro, you can hire with confidence, knowing you're getting the best talent for your business. In fact, Those hiring with LinkedIn are 24% less likely to need to reopen a role within 12 months compared to the leading competitor. Join the 2.7 million small businesses using LinkedIn to hire. Get started by posting your job for free@LinkedIn.com PJSearch terms and conditions apply. This episode of Search Engine is brought to you in part by Ring. Know your home is safe when you're away this summer. With Ring, it's protected. Leaving your house behind for seasonal travel can bring a lot of unnecessary stress, but Ring makes it incredibly simple to stay connected to your property from absolutely anywhere. For instance, you can effortlessly keep track of deliveries right at the front door, so your important packages will be sitting there safe and sound for you when you get back. All thanks to Ring Battery Doorbell. If you want to keep tabs on the rest of your property, you can easily check in on what's happening in the yard and zoom in to catch every single detail with the crystal clear retinal 2K video on outdoor cam. Plus, best of all, you will instantly know if unexpected motion is detected and can arm your security system from anywhere. Right in the Ring app. With Ring Alarm subscription required, it provides complete effortless control over your home security setup right from the palm of your hand. Travel without worries this summer knowing your home is safe with Ring it's protected shop cameras, doorbells and more right now@ring.com. Act 5 intoxication Thursday morning I wake up still pretty jet lagged. I go to get a table at a coffee shop in Friedrichsheim and standing, waiting, I behold a sight I'm pretty sure is a hallucination. I snap a photo just to be sure and then go find Shruthi to learn if I'm seeing what I think I'm seeing. Can I show you a picture that I just took? Yeah. Look who is sitting at the cafe. Sven Markart, haunter of my dreams. You want to go talk to him? Not at all. It's a high risk maneuver. Oh, come on. The recording stops here because I realize I'm about to debase myself and don't want to record it. I will just say we have an argument, which I win and the end result is Shruthi has to go say hello. She compliments Sven on his photographs, which if you haven't seen them honestly, are quite beautiful. Sven is gracious. No one spontaneously combusts, but he also does Not Hand Shruti 2 Secret Golden Tickets into Berghain. My efforts to melt into this scene will have to proceed differently. I delete the photo from my phone, we leave the coffee shop and we head to a very different part of the city to meet somebody connected to the techno scene. We're in Mitte, now, the center of Berlin, one of the neighborhoods the wall used to divide. These days, Mitte is a place filled with expensive old buildings. The neighborhood where the lawyers work. And we are there, appropriately, to meet a lawyer.
- [57:33]
Philip Schroeder Ringen
Hi, nice to meet you.
- [57:37]
PJ Vogt
Sure, thank you.
- [57:39]
Philip Schroeder Ringen
Nice to meet you as well.
- [57:41]
PJ Vogt
We settle into a meeting room. It's a nice one. Wayne Scotting for days. When did you Arrive yesterday. Yesterday, yes. First things first. Can you just say your name and what you do?
- [57:53]
Philip Schroeder Ringen
My name is Philipp Schroeder Ringen and I'm a lawyer.
- [57:56]
PJ Vogt
And what type of law do you practice?
- [57:58]
Philip Schroeder Ringen
Event laws have many clients from the event industry, like clubs or organizers, festivals, et cetera.
- [58:09]
PJ Vogt
In a normal city, talking to a lawyer would not be a good way to break into or understand the techno scene. But we're in Berlin, where a lot of the grownups are former or not so former club kids. Philip says he grew up haunting West Germany's club scene. He even threw parties of his own. But that was then. He's been a lawyer for 15 or so years now. Philip, a handsome man, 45, but looks about a decade younger. Apparently dancing is good for you. He told me about the kind of work that a grown up club lawyer finds himself engaged in.
- [58:40]
Philip Schroeder Ringen
Yeah, typical problems where we could help with is, for example, noise issues with the neighbors. For example, clubs are too loud, or festivals, concerts needed noise permission. And we try to get these kinds of permission. We help the organizers to fight back neighbors that have an issue with these permits and then we go to court. By the way, did you realize that Berlin techno culture became a UNESCO World Cultural Heritage?
- [59:11]
PJ Vogt
It was yesterday, right?
- [59:12]
Philip Schroeder Ringen
It was yesterday.
- [59:13]
PJ Vogt
I'm not going to play all the times this moment happens in a recorded conversation. This week. We're both better than that. But it's a lot. Over and over again someone will ask me, have I heard about the UNESCO news? And it's true. March 13th, the day we arrive in Berlin. Berlin Techno is declared a UNESCO Cultural Heritage site. UNESCO World Heritage sites include the Great Wall of China and the Acropolis. Berlin Techno is technically considered an intangible cultural heritage site. But still, Phillips says as a lawyer, this UNESCO designation will be useful ammunition in his ongoing battles.
- [59:52]
Philip Schroeder Ringen
Because when you have to outweigh the interests between neighbors and club owners, it will be a bit easier to get the permits with this decision now.
- [60:02]
PJ Vogt
And it's a way of saying basically all of these things amount to the same thing, which is the city is constantly having to make choices about whether to favor the needs of a resident or a business. And what something like this does is it lets culture make its argument as well. To say, this might inconvenience a neighbor in this way, or this might prevent this other business, Romania here, but we are deciding to preserve our culture.
- [60:26]
Philip Schroeder Ringen
Exactly.
- [60:27]
PJ Vogt
The UNESCO designation may be a sign that Berlin's nightlife has won its multi decade war for legitimacy. A war which Philip played a role in Philip had been there in the 2000s, when this new generation of Berlin clubs had had to fight against being wiped out by a proposed new tax designation. This was the story I'd heard in Broad Strokes before from Lutz Leichsenring in the last episode. But I wanted to hear it from Philip, who'd actually helped put the club's legal argument together. A refresher, just in case you need it. In the early 2000s, underground techno clubs in Berlin had been taxed mostly as concert venues, which pay pretty low taxes to the city. The tax authorities wanted to start charging the clubs at entertainment rates to treat them all like garden variety discotheques, which would mean almost 20% of all the club's earnings went to the city and Berghain and other clubs like it wouldn't just owe 20% going forward, they'd have to pay those taxes retroactively as well. For the club owners, was it like existential? Like, were there clubs that were worried that they would go out of business if they had to pay this bill?
- [61:34]
Philip Schroeder Ringen
Absolutely, yeah. We're talking about like hundred thousands of euros would have been like an earthquake and it would have been dramatic. And I think there would have been some clubs that had to close the doors if they had to pay back all that money. So it was existential. Absolutely.
- [61:52]
PJ Vogt
So in 2011, Philip's law firm starts meeting with the club commission and certain club owners. He can't say which ones, but let's say some key players, they meet with the tax authorities to make their case. Bureaucrats and club owners in a room together, hashing it out.
- [62:09]
Philip Schroeder Ringen
I remember it was at the top of the building, very impressive old building. And we were sitting there with older gray haired people that didn't look like they would go clubbing. And we sat there together with the different club owners. I can say who was there, but they also tried to dress up a bit and to behave seriously in that situation.
- [62:38]
PJ Vogt
These club kids in suits had to defend the thing they did at night as meaningful discussion ensued.
- [62:44]
Philip Schroeder Ringen
And that was a very funny conversation because you have to agree on two things for the reduced taxes. First, it has to be a concert, so you need an artist. So we had discussions about the DJs being artists, do they use instruments, what are they doing there? And. And tax authorities was of the opinion said, no, this is not art. I mean, you put on a CD or LP and you just let it play, it's no art.
- [63:13]
PJ Vogt
So that's the first point of contention. Is a DJ an artist? The second point was, even if they are. Is a DJ set really like a concert? One way you could define a concert would be fans pay for tickets and the price of the ticket is based on how famous the artist is and how close to the artist the fan gets to sit. The physical authorities looking at a techno club did not see that happening.
- [63:36]
Philip Schroeder Ringen
And fiscal authorities, they said, oh, no, we checked it. And you have bars and you drink very much and you have low entrance price. You make much more with drinks. So this holds against a concert. And what also holds against is that people don't know who's playing, who's the dj. And the DJ is not like on the concert, on a big stage, he's maybe in the corner, there's no light, and people move around and they don't really care who's playing there. And we went into all this discussion and said, okay, come on, look, we have lower entrance fees because we want to provide opportunity for many people to enjoy club life. But at the same time, the clubs pay a lot for the DJs. I mean, they have resident, they have international DJs. They are well known. Of course, people come because they want to see these DJs. They celebrate a DJ, if he's doing a good job, then they're applauding, they are cheering.
- [64:29]
PJ Vogt
Slow down for a second. These tax authorities who you're having these conversations with, are they people who are more used to rock shows? Because if you just think about it, like, is there any reason why when a rock band plays, we all stand and watch them strum a guitar? We could celebrate it by standing away from the band and dancing. Like, it makes you think about the arbitrariness of how we celebrate music together in modern life. It's very strange.
- [64:56]
Philip Schroeder Ringen
Yeah, it is like a very old school, maybe Prussian way of looking at concerts. Like everybody has to sit in a row and be quiet and do nothing else but listen. And I had a good feeling after this conversation that we have the better arguments, obviously. But the fiscal authorities and these people didn't agree and instead they went to court.
- [65:24]
PJ Vogt
The club that would fight the fiscal authorities in court was of course Berghein, or as the Germans call it, the Berghain.
- [65:32]
Philip Schroeder Ringen
I was very happy that it was the Berghain, because it is like that and still is one of the most famous clubs of Germany. And if it wouldn't work here, it wouldn't work for other clubs.
- [65:46]
PJ Vogt
Similar arguments will be made in open court to the ones Philip and his team had made behind closed doors. But here those arguments seem to fall on more sympathetic Ears. The court agrees. DJs don't just press play on CDs. They have synths and mixers and faders. They change the pitch and the frequency of their tracks. But then the tax officials argue, don't people just go to Berghain and places like it to get intoxicated? And here the club lawyer concedes the point. Yes, they do. But he had a question. Wasn't intoxication so often the point of listening to music the lawyer's example? What was the feeling you were meant to have when listening to a piece by Gustav Mahler if not intoxication? And if that was true, couldn't you just as easily feel intoxicated after hearing a track from Planetary Assault Systems? September 2016, the verdict is announced. Berghain wins. The court had sided with the club kids. Did people celebrate? Like, did people go out?
- [67:21]
Philip Schroeder Ringen
If they did, I was not invited.
- [67:23]
PJ Vogt
I don't know. Does that mean there's a pressure on these clubs in the wake of these rulings, to behave artistically, whatever that would mean, or behave culturally, whatever that would mean? Does it push people towards a kind of conventions or rules with an eye towards the tax authority?
- [67:50]
Philip Schroeder Ringen
I don't think that they changed the program or the culture. But what they are doing now is, of course, to do their paperwork. So they make sure that the running order is published before, like online or on social media, that they have scans of their flyers. And maybe you realize if you go out here, they might ask you if you know who's playing tonight. So this is also something they do since the discussion started, to make sure that the people come to the club because of the resident and DJ or whatever.
- [68:24]
PJ Vogt
This was a story that I heard all the way in New York, that if you go to the door at a place like Berghain, you may be asked who the DJ is. And then later I'd heard rumors that this was partly as a result of German tax law. I love a good story that seems crazy because I feel like, is that true? That you can draw a line from that tax decision to that question?
- [68:46]
Philip Schroeder Ringen
Yeah, it starts from the discussion with the tax authorities, I'm sure.
- [68:55]
PJ Vogt
Act six Techno Loops the story is about a DO two sometimes. When I'd first heard this story from Lutz, I liked it. I thought it was funny. And I guess I understood it as a tale of the club kids being clever, outmaneuvering the tax people a bit here in Berlin. It settled on me differently. The conversation with Philip happened late in the afternoon. That night I had really My first sublime Berlin dance floor experience. This tiny spot, no bouncer, it's called Suzvardestern Suite was yesterday. I don't record here. I don't record in any club. I'm trying to follow the rules of this place that's so dead set against the casual surveillance we're all used to at home. But it's dingy and beautiful here. The dance floor like a living room from Alice in Wonderland. Maybe someone stapled a Persian rug to the ceiling. The floor is crowded, people really, of all ages. For some reason. The room has an absurd amount of couches, but the dancers just clear all the furniture. I'm told that's how it happens every week. As I watch the DJ and the people around the dj, I find myself thinking about Philip and the court case and about what's happening in this room. I think about Sven von Toulen, the hardcore kid turned techno dj. Sven had told me at one point part of why he loved techno was the same reason he'd loved punk, that it was a genre that just did not care for rock stars. In the early days in particular, he'd said the people dancing at the party were the main attraction. The DJ conducted them. But the DJ also kind of disappeared. It wasn't like a concert where hundreds or thousands of people stare at one person in a kind of secular worship. This was something older, weirder, people losing themselves, becoming a mass. It's happening in this room tonight. And I think maybe this is what the club kids were trying to say to those tax authorities, that this was worth defending, valuable, or at least cultural. Saturday night comes the beginning of Klubnacht at Berghain. Instead of going there and braving the bouncers staring down Sven, I go with my friends to a different Berlin club, this one sitting on the banks of the River Spree. The bouncer there, a stylish woman, asked our group if we speak German. The German speakers in our party try to cover, saying, we all do. Her eyes fixed directly on my cow like uncomprehending American gaze. And she asks in English, do you speak German? No, I confess. She starts laughing. Why would you lie to me? She lets us all in. Sunday morning, one final dance party. We show up at an old public German swimming area, this small lake outside of the city, in a shack on the water. All the windows have been covered in colored gels, so when the morning light comes in, it feels like you're inside a cathedral instead of a lean to. It's so crushingly beautiful, so criminally Instagrammable. One of my American friends can't resist. He takes out his phone immediately. A German partygoer is on top of him, reacting the way someone would react if you took out an actual weapon in an American nightclub. Stay in the moment, she yells, or something to that effect. It's a little aggressive, but the phone is ultimately holstered. Sunday afternoon, a few hours later, a text arrives. Do I want to see Berghain? A person I'd met this week. Their friend is DJing today, so they're going to support them. They can take me along if my clothes aren't too bad. I'll still have to pass a bouncer, but I'll have a real Berliner offering me a halo. 3pm the sun is shining at morning, church level strength. The line of petitioners outside Berghain is as long as ever. The line where Chris and Dan had found themselves snakes from the entrance of the club, maybe a hundred yards back. At the front, an open door guarded by two men inside. Through the black rectangle of the door, Sven watching a series of security camera monitors, presumably directing decisions from inside. I meet my Berliner friend, and we stand near the famous line. For a very, very long time. We just watch the line. It feels tense and electric to be here, observing it, like I'm breaking a rule and maybe I am. A bouncer from the door asks me, is everything okay? But I tell him I'm just watching, and he nods. That's fine. Like everything in life, the line is not what I expect it to be. A woman in her 50s dressed for the airport. She's waved in. A Middle Eastern guy in his 30s, alone, wearing a functional hiker's backpack. He's also in two young Eurotrash gentlemen dressed for Ibiza. They get the not tonight. Most people today, though, are getting waved in. The ones who don't, they walk away looking like they somehow knew before they heard the words, the whole thing. It feels like watching something that's already happened happen, like the divorce papers or the marriage license that shows up in the mail a year later. Eventually, my friend takes me to the shorter line that they usually wade in the list. For regulars, it's much faster than the main one. I wait as people shuffle to the front for the bouncer's inspection. It's my turn now. I stand in front of a bouncer. Not Sven, one of his under doormen. I stand in front of the bouncer and the bouncer looks at me, his face blank, blank like Anubis. My brain fills with a question that I realize always hums in the background. But now, now it's brighter and more intense than I've ever heard it. It's almost deafening. Do I belong? I wait to find out. Sam.
- [75:22]
Sven von Toulen
Sa.
- [75:48]
PJ Vogt
Search Engine is a presentation of Odyssey. It was created by me, PJ Vogt and Shruti Pinamaneni. Garrett Graham is our Senior producer. Emily Maltaire is our Associate producer. Our production intern is Piper Dumont. Theme Original composition and mixing by Armin Bazarian Fact checking this week by Claire Hyman. Additional production on this episode by Noah John thank you to everyone in the Koodle Moodle and Laura Somm and Kelaf Hassaneh. Thanks also to the label Oscud, Thon and Tresor for letting us dip into their catalogs. Our executive producer is Leah Rees Dennis. Thanks to the rest of the team at Odyssey. Rob Morandi, Craig Cox, Eric Donnelly, Colin Gaynor, Maura Curran, Josefina Francis, Kurt Courtney, Vanessa Tinkati and Hilary Schaff. If you have a business and would like to advertise on Search Engine, Please email us pjvote85mail.com subject line advertising. You can also send us questions there if you have a question you'd like the show to answer or feedback on anything you've heard. If you would like to remove ads from your version of Search Engine, there's a way to do it. You can sign up for incognito mode. That is our paid feed. It is $50 a year. You also get extra episodes, bonus interviews. You can sign up at the link in our show notes. Your contributions there are the way we are able to fund this show for everybody. Thank you as always for listening Sam. This episode of Search Engine is brought to you in part by vistaprint. You know that feeling when you walk into a business and the whole team is wearing branded apparel that they clearly love. Everyone looks cohesive, confident and completely elevated. Obviously, podcasters do not need to wear uniforms, but I have been messing around with internal apparel for Search Engine and I found that Vistaprint makes it really easy. It lets you effortlessly create high quality apparel that fits your style, your business and your budget. You could even have custom polo shirts. You could have structured hats. You could have cozy zip up sweatshirts. It's amazing how looking uniform instantly boosts team pride and makes us look like real professionals. Over 17 million businesses trust Vistaprint for a reason. They deliver the premium quality and trusted service small businesses need to thrive. Vistaprint Print Year possible Right now new customers get 20% off with code NEW20@vistaprint.com remember that's 20% off@vistaprint.com using code NEW20.