In the 1990s, these steel doors opened up another world: the world of techno.Swiss National Museum
A door to another world
The steel door from the Tresor Club in Berlin is an icon of the city’s techno movement. At first it protected the valuables of Berlin’s well-heeled residents in the depths of the Wertheim department store, and later it was a threshold crossed by hundreds of thousands of clubbers.
Dimitri Hegemann is a techno pioneer and culture manager from Berlin.
Doors open up spaces as gateways between the past and the future, and between the known and the unknown. One such door opened on 13 March 1991 – the door of the Tresor Club in Berlin. Behind it lay a new world – the world of techno, a music genre that was revolutionary at the time. A movement that shaped a generation, and an attitude to life that promised ecstasy and freedom. The massive steel door of the Tresor Club became an emblem of this shared awakening for the kids from East and West Berlin. Those who went through it left their everyday lives behind and immersed themselves in the beating heart of Berlin’s new youth culture.
After the fall of the Berlin Wall, the city was in turmoil, and ‘Tresor’ became the epicentre of this shift. This legendary club originated in an unusual place – the former vault of Wertheim Bank. The vault lay deep under the ruins of the once grand Wertheim department store on Leipziger Strasse. Dubbed ‘Germany’s most beautiful department store’, it was built in 1897 and at over 100,000m2, was the largest of its kind in Europe. Affluent customers would go to Wertheim to shop, but also to store their money and valuables safely. Hefty safe doors protected the treasures inside the vault. But like so many things in Berlin, their history also has a dark side: in 1934, the store was boycotted by the National Socialists and in 1937 it was ‘Arianised’, and its Jewish owners were expropriated, ousted or murdered. During the Second World War, bombs destroyed large parts of the building, but the vault and its steel doors remained intact.Interior view of the Wertheim department store in Berlin, 1900.Wikimedia / Bildarchiv Foto MarburgView of the vault at Wertheim Bank on Leipziger Strasse, 1902/1920.Stadtmuseum BerlinView of the destruction wrought by the war on the rear of the Wertheim department store, circa 1945.Stadtmuseum BerlinFor decades the vault was forgotten. After the war, it stood empty, steeped in dust and history – until it was rediscovered by techno pioneers in 1991. They recognised the magic of the place and the potential to create a new future from the remains of the past. The gritty, derelict beauty of the venue, and its nostalgic, vintage charm merged with the power of the techno music to create a new reality. A parallel world emerged inside Tresor, in which the borders between East and West, past and present, became blurred. And the steel door became the gateway to this new dimension. It was more than an entrance – it was a symbol. It was a gateway into an age when young people were seeking expression, a feeling of belonging, and the untamed energy of music. It stood for the dawn of a new era, the merging of past and future, and the attitude of a city that was reinventing itself.
My own memories of the Tresor Club
I recall very clearly the moment when I set foot in the vault for the first time in early 1991. It was as though I had gone through a doorway into a pyramid and suddenly found myself in a magical place where I felt like the walls were talking to me in the dim candlelight. We all stood very still and awestruck before the sight in front of us. Despite all the fascination, I realised straight away that this was a place where something really special would happen. And it did.
From 1991 to 2005 the Tresor Club was housed at this location steeped in history on Leipziger Strasse. But when the venue was no longer fit for purpose, it was forced to move to the Kraftwerk at Berlin Mitte. Yet the steel doors remained. They were kept as a monument to the beginnings of a movement, and as a window into another era. Today, one of the doors is at the Humboldt Forum in Berlin, while its counterpart, which could easily be confused with similar bulky exit doors, has been lent to the National Museum Zurich for the TECHNO exhibition.
This door has many stories to tell. It is a relic from pre-war Berlin, a silent witness to the city’s deterioration during its divided years – and a monument to the cultural awakening after the fall of the Berlin Wall. It is more than metal and history; it is an icon of Berlin’s techno scene. It wasn’t only hundreds of thousands of clubbers who passed through this door, a whole generation went with them. They took forward the spirit of change, and accompanied the emergence of a unique night-life culture that upended Berlin’s DNA. Tresor Club’s steel door – a symbol of the transition to a new musical era.In front of the Tresor Club, circa 1995.GvH, Tresorarchiv, Berlin
Techno is more than just hard bass: along with the music, techno culture embraces fashion, graphic art, design and dance – and is a living tradition in Switzerland thanks to the Zurich Street Parade. The exhibition shines a spotlight on a culture still embraced enthusiastically by millions of people around the world today. Video and audio installations in a setting designed to look like a record shop take visitors on a journey through the evolution of electronic sound and let them explore the social, political, economic and aesthetic dimensions of techno culture in Switzerland.
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