Homage to West Berlin bars: Accompanied by ghostly laughter

Berlin nightlife has been canonized in a number of books in recent years. Style-forming clubs from Zodiac to Jungle and Metropol treasureBar 25 and Berghain have been extensively recognized in numerous coffee table books since Nico Mesterharm founded the discipline of Berlin dance floor research with the book “Berlin Technology” in 1997.

The Berlin bar scene has received less attention so far. This may have something to do with the fact that the West Berlin bars are less connected to underground music cultures than to stupid bards like Insterburg & Co. and the Blattschuss brothers, who wrote the fitting evergreen “Kreuzberger Nights”.

But as the book “Really progressive to completely crass. The unconventional bar culture of West Berlin 1968-1989” by Marcel Nobis shows, the bars have played an important role for Berlin’s art and culture scene. It starts with shops like the Kleine Weltlanterne or the Leierkasten, a meeting place for Kreuzberg’s 1960s bohemians, where artists like… Kurt MühlenhauptRobert Wolfgang Schnell and Günter Bruno Fuchs.

Ideals of the student movement

Stamps, pints and other beer feasts have, of course, played an important social role in the proletarian German capital since the Empire. But Nobis is concerned with the bars that emerged after 1968: “It is probably not too much to say that in the bar scene described, the ideals of the student movement found their development towards the middle of society.”

In the walled city, where there was no curfew, but there were many Bundeswehr refugees and other bohemians and bon vivants, there was no lack of audience for pubs furnished with bric-a-brac and plush with names like Tarantula, Walhalla, Black Corner, Tremens or Beautiful Balloon.

But don’t worry, Nobis’ book is not an academic treatise, but rather a material-rich, life-filled alphabet of the most important Berlin bars, which was created from participant observation at their bars. Nobis claims to have visited all of the almost 100 pubs described, some apparently almost every evening.

He was assisted in the research by an extensive counter team who contributed anecdotes, vague memories and also historically valuable photographs to his book.

Sock Paul and Taxi Elke

And so a long-lost world of cigarette-smoke-filled guys with mats and full beards, fur coats and Bundeswehr parkas emerges from the book, with nicknames like Sock Paul or Taxi Elke, The Countess or The Suspender. They did it West Berlin myths like the “ruin” on Winterfeldtplatz turned night into day: “Not only was the house a ruin badly damaged by the war, the lives and health of some guests had long since been shattered and were finally ruined here, accompanied by ghostly laughter,” writes Nobis.

In addition to classics such as Ex & Pop or Exil, Yorkschlösschen or Quartier Latin, SO 36 or Zwiebelfisch, some of which still exist today, Nobis scores with completely forgotten stoner bars from the early 1970s such as the Unfathomable Shelter for Travellers, Mr. Go or the Delirium.

The punk and new wave period is also represented with some extremely short-lived establishments such as Shizzo or Chaos; The squatters’ barracks come up a little short. But what he writes about early locations in the Berlin queer scene such as Blocksberg or Pelze or his research into serial pub bar Jürgen Grage – that is real, hitherto untold city history.