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
Dimitri Hegemann is a techno pioneer and culture manager from Berlin.
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.
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.
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.
