Why didn’t Chris and Dan get into Berghain? Pt. 1 (classic)

Two Americans embark on a quest: fly across an ocean to try to get into the most exclusive nightclub in the world – Berghain. A German techno palace where the line outside can last 8 hours, and the bouncers are merciless in their judgments. The club does not explain how it makes its decisions about who can enter, but one foolish podcaster will try to explain anyway. Become a premium member! https://searchengine.supercast.com/

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00PJ Vogt?

  Hello. It is July at Search Engine, which means our team is out of the office. People are hanging out with their families, their loved ones, going on long walks, training dogs, who are behaving like Europeans. Hallelujah. We do it every year, and the same thing happens every year to me, anyway, which is that I spend 11 months feverishly anticipating this break. And then after five days, I have 100 ideas for Search Engine episodes I want to make, and I start itching to get back to work. But anyway, let's talk about you. In our month away, we have some treats for you. We're going to re-air one of our favorite stories when we've never re-aired before. And we're going to share some episodes you have probably never heard from our locked vault, our premium feed in Cognito mode. So stick around for that this month,

• 0:43PJ Vogt?

  and we will be back with brand-new episodes for you in August. The particular episode that we're sharing this week is one of my very favorite stories. It's the first of a two-part story we reported about a very exclusive techno nightclub in Berlin. The story has actually been optioned for a film by Bowen Yang and Matt Rogers, who are both very funny comedians and also podcasters themselves. They host the beloved show Los Culturistas. Bowen and Matt are writing a movie based on the story you're about to hear, so enjoy. I hope at least some of you are listening with sandy headphones somewhere.

• 1:43PJ Vogt?

  I'm not supposed to pick favorite questions. I claim to love all questions equally. But about a year ago, I got a question from two friends of mine. This question caused a rare amount of delight over at Search Engine HQ. So we asked the two of them to come to the studio. Okay, okay. Do you guys want to introduce yourselves?

• 2:04Speaker 01

  I'm Chris. I'm Dan. I guess I'm also a burgher.

• 2:07PJ Vogt?

  Chris and Dan, two very successful, stylish young professionals. They had an annual tradition going back years. These two friends would vacation together, sometimes to exciting nightlife destinations like Berlin, the city they'd just returned from. And what's the nature of these vacations? What is your form of relaxing?

• 2:27Speaker 01

  I would say our form of relaxing is generally not relaxing.

• 2:30PJ Vogt?

  It's like partying.

• 2:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:32Speaker 01

  But, you know, respectful, healthy, wholesome.

• 2:35PJ Vogt?

  Yes. Okay. And so this was your second trip to Berlin to do respectful, of whom I'm not sure. Wholesome. What was the last thing? Healthy?

• 2:45Speaker 01

  Respectful, wholesome and healthy partying. Yeah.

• 2:49PJ Vogt?

  You guys, these are a lot of like daybreaker parties where you drink water and like do yoga afterwards or whatever.

• 2:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, a lot of green tea.

• 2:55Speaker 02

  Exactly. That's the vibe.

• 2:57PJ Vogt?

  Chris and Dan, I should tell you, more conscientious and buttoned up than most people I know. Chris, who I've known much longer, he's the kind of person where when I invite him to a party, I can set my watch to what happens. He and his boyfriend show up exactly on time, bearing a thoughtful gift, and then Chris sneaks out the front door two hours later or half an hour before midnight, whichever comes first. Not a person given to unplanned improvised fun. So I was actually surprised to learn he'd been drawn to Berlin, a city that tends to attract my more late night degenerate friends. So you're going to Berlin and like, how many days were you going for?

• 3:37Speaker 02

  I think it was like 72 hours in Berlin.

• 3:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was a really short trip.

• 3:41PJ Vogt?

  And what was the itinerary?

• 3:43Speaker 01

  There was a very unstructured itinerary, which consisted of absolutely nothing.

• 3:48Speaker 02

  But we knew what the crown jewel of the trip was supposed to be.

• 3:51Speaker 01

  Yes. Keyword supposed to be.

• 3:54PJ Vogt?

  And that was?

• 3:55Speaker 02

  Berghain.

• 3:55PJ Vogt?

  And why Berghain?

• 3:58Speaker 01

  I guess it has this mythical status attached to it, which is no one can get in or very few people can get in. But once you're in, it's like this mystical palace of fun and amazing music and God knows what else because neither of us have ever been inside.

• 4:20PJ Vogt?

  Berghain. At the time of our conversation, rumors about Berghain had certainly reached me 4,000 miles away in Brooklyn. I'd heard the basics. A decommissioned power plant turned into a multi-story nightclub. People talked about this place as a kind of grimy heaven. And like traditional heaven, grimy heaven was also supposedly very hard to get into. It operated according to its own particular value system. Berghain selectively welcomed freaks, rejects, the different. This was the place where my friends had wanted to go.

• 4:55Speaker 01

  And I think part of the whole allure of the venue is because they reject so many people.

• 5:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 5:01Speaker 01

  They have rejected so many famous people.

• 5:04Speaker 02

  Right.

• 5:05Speaker 01

  Actors and celebrities to the Elon Musks of the world. And so it would be one thing if, you know, we're not A-list celebrities. So of course we're not getting into this club. But even the top of the top of society, the top of the top of the business world, even they are not getting into this club.

• 5:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's savage.

• 5:24PJ Vogt?

  I should say, according to Elon Musk, Elon Musk was not rejected from Berghain. In 2022, amidst a bunch of internet chatter about how he'd not gotten in, he posted on Twitter that it was he who'd rejected the club. He said he'd refused to enter. Okay, Chris and Dan, their recent attempt was not their first try. They'd also gone in 2017. Back then, they'd done the same thing. Gone to Berlin, headed to Berghain, waited in the line and ultimately been told, nine. This time around, they were older, they were wiser, and they had at least one new advantage. This thriving corner of the internet devoted to Berghain door policy reconnaissance.

• 6:08Speaker 01

  There are Reddit forums, subreddits completely dedicated to this. There are TikToks dedicated to this.

• 6:14Speaker 02

  In English?

• 6:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:16Speaker 02

  In every language. We were kind of looking back on the last time that we went and we were like, what did we do wrong? And I think the last time we went, we were so ignorant to any of these rules. We showed up in like black American apparel t-shirts and thought that would be adequate for the dress code.

• 6:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, okay, but that's not adequate.

• 6:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, totally, woefully inadequate.

• 6:36PJ Vogt?

  So now, five years later, when Chris and Dan arrived once again in Berlin, they knew they would have to take things more seriously.

• 6:44Speaker 02

  We had a shopping module one day where we went to Kreuzberg and which is like their sort of like funky neighborhood with all their vintage stores. And we were like, we are going to dress like freaks.

• 6:56Speaker 01

  Athletic shorts, tank tops.

• 6:58Speaker 02

  Harnesses.

• 6:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's definitely a look.

• 7:01PJ Vogt?

  The outfits they decide on. For Dan, a black tank top and short shorts, length somewhere between 80s camp counselor and 90s basketball player, black shoes and tube socks. For Chris, black skinny jeans, no shirt, and this black vest that kind of looked like a tuxedo vest. With their outfits ready and mindset prepared, they head to the Burkin line for their Saturday attempt.

• 7:28Speaker 02

  There's this air through the day of like, we're gonna cinch this. Like, it felt that way to me.

• 7:33Speaker 01

  If it was gonna be any moment, it was gonna be that day.

• 7:36PJ Vogt?

  Got it. Okay, so tell me about the line.

• 7:40Speaker 02

  So it's always a fixture. Like, you show up, it's very, very long, three to four hours.

• 7:47PJ Vogt?

  Are you talking?

• 7:48Speaker 01

  A little bit.

• 7:50PJ Vogt?

  From the back of the line, they could see the club, the former power plant looming over the horizon. It was dark, except for flashes of light and silhouettes through the top windows. Very faintly, it emitted the throb of base. As they stood there, waiting, people would walk past them, people who'd already been rejected, glumly leaving. Chris said the sight of these people would actually inspire hope in him.

• 8:15Speaker 02

  When a bunch of people in front of you get rejected, you feel kind of optimistic because you're like, well, they're not gonna reject everyone.

• 8:20PJ Vogt?

  Yeah.

• 8:21Speaker 02

  Just statistically, we're probably in luck.

• 8:25PJ Vogt?

  Way, way, way up ahead, at the front of the line, stood the bouncers. A few of these bouncers, specially deputized to decide who got into the club, those are called selectors. Those were the people sending rejects back out into the night. So how soon can they see you?

• 8:42Speaker 01

  You know, that's up for debate.

• 8:44PJ Vogt?

  Oh, really?

• 8:44Speaker 01

  Some people might say they're kind of watching you the entire time.

• 8:47PJ Vogt?

  This is Santa Claus logic. There's no way they're watching you the entire time.

• 8:51Speaker 02

  No, but people do come back. You see people that are like, kind of like, strolling the line. And then you see them again at the door. That happened at least once.

• 9:00PJ Vogt?

  Oh, so Santa Claus is watching you?

• 9:02Speaker 02

  Yeah. But for the, I mean, I assumed, or I felt like, for the most part, you weren't really scrutinized until you were within like, 20 to 30 people at the door.

• 9:11PJ Vogt?

  Okay.

• 9:12Speaker 02

  And then they're on a pedestal.

• 9:14PJ Vogt?

  They're on a literal pedestal.

• 9:15Speaker 02

  They're on a literal pedestal.

• 9:18Speaker 02

  And they're looking out and you could feel their eyes on you.

• 9:22PJ Vogt?

  Okay. And so what was your strategy for how to behave in the line?

• 9:27Speaker 02

  The conventional wisdom is to be just stone-faced. Now, we tried that. We also tried the approach of being like, let's just be normal. Now, another thing that's interesting is I think that they could tell, to the point of like, scanning you for authenticity, like, we actually are gay, which works in our favor. Because it retains its roots as a gay club, and they're gay at the door.

• 9:48PJ Vogt?

  Oh, the bouncers are all gay?

• 9:49Speaker 02

  The bouncers are gay.

• 9:50PJ Vogt?

  We think.

• 9:51Speaker 02

  What? Yeah.

• 9:52PJ Vogt?

  They seem to be.

• 9:53Speaker 02

  They seem to be.

• 9:55Speaker 01

  After a couple hours of anxious waiting, Chris and Dan found themselves close to the mouth of Berghain.

• 10:00Speaker 02

  There's actually like a physical demarcation. So like, you get to a certain point where like, the line actually has a railing around it.

• 10:07PJ Vogt?

  Oh, okay.

• 10:08Speaker 02

  So, once you reach that point, you're like, whoa, this is game time. Like, then you're within like 20 people of the door. You know that you're with inside of the bouncers. That's when like, you could hear a pin drop.

• 10:24PJ Vogt?

  Everyone's just completely quiet.

• 10:26Speaker 02

  Totally quiet.

• 10:27PJ Vogt?

  That's so funny. And what happens when you walk up? How do you, do you like straighten your posture?

• 10:31Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 10:32PJ Vogt?

  Yeah, okay.

• 10:33Speaker 01

  And so you get up and then there's a number of calculations that are going on in your mind. Do you look at the bouncer in the eye? Do you look kind of at the ground? Do you smile? Do you keep a straight face? Do you say anything? And I think on this try, this was like our Authentics Friendly Selves attempt. And so, you know, I smiled at the guy. He asked how many people were. I said two. I was friendly. I think I asked him how his night was going.

• 11:01PJ Vogt?

  Did he answer?

• 11:02Speaker 01

  No, of course not. One of my calculations was whether or not to look like I was having fun and into the music. So I kind of like was dancing a little bit, but you know. Very like minor movements. And I don't think that strategy worked.

• 11:21Speaker 02

  It didn't.

• 11:22PJ Vogt?

  It's hard because you're like, how do I not look desperate after waiting in line for several hours to get into the most exclusive nightclub in the world? It's like a witch hunt where every person in line is a witch.

• 11:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, and you're constantly making adjustments on how to not appear to be a witch.

• 11:38PJ Vogt?

  Yeah.

• 11:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:39PJ Vogt?

  So you walk up, you say like, how's your night? He says nothing. Is he just looking at you? Is he a he?

• 11:45Speaker 01

  It's a he. There's Sven, the the main bouncer. If Berghain itself is the epitome of what you would think of East German old techno nightclub, then Sven is the epitome of what you would think of as the bouncer, the lead bouncer for that venue.

• 12:00PJ Vogt?

  What does he look like?

• 12:01Speaker 01

  A large man with a large number of tattoos and piercings on his face. That man is.

• 12:09Speaker 01

  He's a unique individual.

• 12:10PJ Vogt?

  Is he intimidating?

• 12:11Speaker 01

  He's extremely intimidating. And there's two others. Apparently, there's some sort of communication between the two of them, some sort of silent communication.

• 12:19PJ Vogt?

  But is that legible?

• 12:20Speaker 01

  There's only one amount of legible communication, and that's the decision.

• 12:24PJ Vogt?

  And how do they communicate it to you?

• 12:26Speaker 01

  It's always one person they pull up at a time or a small group. And sometimes they're immediately rejected, like they don't even get to say a word. The bouncer just puts his hand out and they just keep walking.

• 12:38PJ Vogt?

  Very subtle.

• 12:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:39PJ Vogt?

  Yeah. And they just point towards the street.

• 12:41Speaker 01

  It's not so much a point as an open palm out the direction that you should be going.

• 12:46PJ Vogt?

  So the gesture you're doing is actually the gesture you one used to be like, welcome to my home, but it's welcome to not my home. Like, it's it's the the arm goes out, the palm's outstretched. Like, look at this, you're not going to a nightclub.

• 12:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, so you're welcome to go anywhere else in Berlin.

• 13:04PJ Vogt?

  Chris and Dan did not get the gentle wave inviting them anywhere else in Berlin. Instead, they got a verbal rejection. The bouncer told them, not tonight. And so the next day, Sunday, they tried again. They had a new plan.

• 13:19Speaker 02

  To go during the day.

• 13:21Speaker 01

  And separately.

• 13:22PJ Vogt?

  During the day and separately. Okay. And the idea being during the day, less competition, separately, the bouncer might respect you more?

• 13:32Speaker 01

  So.

• 13:32PJ Vogt?

  Or is it two chances?

• 13:33Speaker 01

  The line was just as long, I would say, if not longer, actually, during the day. And yeah, our thinking was perhaps we would attain that additional level of respect if we pretended as if we were going separately.

• 13:50PJ Vogt?

  On this attempt, Chris and Dan stood in line next to each other for hours and did not talk.

• 13:56Speaker 01

  We acted like we didn't know each other, and I was ahead of Chris. And I get up and one of the bouncers was like, how many? And I say, one, and he just stares at me.

• 14:05PJ Vogt?

  Ah!

• 14:05Speaker 01

  And stares. And I actually thought this was the time I was getting, and I was pretty confident because it was like a solid 20 seconds, I would say, before I was rejected. But as soon as they rejected me, they looked at Chris and immediately rejected him.

• 14:19PJ Vogt?

  Oh, my god!

• 14:20Speaker 01

  So we're pretty sure they caught us in the lie.

• 14:22PJ Vogt?

  Yeah.

• 14:24PJ Vogt?

  It was insane. It felt like an X-ray. But is it the same bouncer from the night before? Yeah.

• 14:30Speaker 02

  It actually was. Actually, as we're saying this, I'm like, we're idiots. Obviously, they knew that we were together.

• 14:36Speaker 01

  Well, that would assume they remembered us out of the thousands of people who are probably trying to get in there.

• 14:40Speaker 02

  But of course they did. I can't believe we had to go on a podcast to like...

• 14:45PJ Vogt?

  You're like, I think he saw into my soul.

• 14:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think we've figured out the answer. Well, it's why we didn't get in, and we're just dumb.

• 14:58PJ Vogt?

  If it seems silly to you that two adult men spent so much time and energy trying to get into a nightclub, if it seems sillier that this reporter would then spend a year of his life thinking about this place that those men never got to see the inside of, I should tell you how I feel about nightlife, which is maybe not what you would expect. I find nightclubs to be deeply meaningful places, borderline holy. I know that sounds a little weird, but in New York, where I live, there's a handful of these quasi-underground little dance bots, smoke machines, shrouded dance floors, usually free to get in, where you can just lose yourself for hours dancing in a throng of strangers.

• 15:39PJ Vogt?

  It's all very corny to talk about, especially on a podcast. But as a person who feels like a full-time resident of my own mind, these are the only places where I escape that. Where even sober, I can just feel like a body, not a brain. Or not a body, just a part of a mass of them. I suspect there might be a human need to gather in a room and surrender to something. And for me, what I discovered pretty late in life is that the room should be sweaty and packed, and the surrender should be to music. Berghain, whatever the hype, the promise was that it was the best of these rooms built by humans. An actual wonder of the world, not some relic.

• 16:21PJ Vogt?

  If somebody was going to sympathize with the plight of two Americans who had failed to pass its door, it was probably going to be me. At the same time, I, like them, also found this whole situation deeply funny. Isn't it weird that you guys went to all this trouble to be like, I don't mean this in like, the Supreme Court is the word, but like, to just be discriminated against?

• 16:47Speaker 01

  Yes. I don't think we think we were discriminated against. I don't want to be here and say, oh, because we're two Americans. We absolutely knew what we were getting into. And it was almost going there and getting rejected was like in fun activity in and of itself.

• 17:07PJ Vogt?

  Right. It's like you're participating in the thrill.

• 17:10Speaker 01

  Let me, let me put it this way. I've gone skydiving before, and the level of anxiety I had just as I was stepping up to be judged was the same level of anxiety I had just as I was about to jump out of the plane.

• 17:23PJ Vogt?

  Really?

• 17:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:26PJ Vogt?

  And then what did it feel like to be rejected?

• 17:28Speaker 01

  Almost a relief.

• 17:29PJ Vogt?

  Really?

• 17:30Speaker 01

  You get it over with. I wish I had gotten in, but.

• 17:33PJ Vogt?

  Yeah.

• 17:34Speaker 01

  And then when Chris was ejected too, I felt really good about myself. Would have been devastating.

• 17:39PJ Vogt?

  So what is like the thing you're trying to figure out about Berghain? Like, what is the question that I can answer?

• 17:44Speaker 01

  So there's a few things I want to know.

• 17:48Speaker 02

  One thing is, say there are some cases where it's cusp-y. And they're like, we want-

• 17:53PJ Vogt?

  Cusp-y like on the cusp of a decision?

• 17:54Speaker 02

  On the cusp of a decision, where they're like, they can't decide when you're 20 people away, whether you're a yes or a no.

• 17:59PJ Vogt?

  Yeah.

• 18:00Speaker 02

  And they want to get a closer look. What are they scanning you for?

• 18:04PJ Vogt?

  Right.

• 18:04Speaker 02

  What are the cues that are gonna, you know, nudge you towards getting in versus kick you to the curb?

• 18:11PJ Vogt?

  Got it.

• 18:12Speaker 02

  The other question that I have, every time we would leave, we would walk around the whole club. I wonder if there's a way to sneak in.

• 18:21PJ Vogt?

  Like, is there just like a fire exit?

• 18:22Speaker 02

  Yeah. Like, is it permeable from any other orifice than this door? I mean, I expect it to be hard, to be clear. I don't think that there's some easy, oh, just go in the back door. I'm just like, if you jump a fence, crawling under a bush, like, I'm like, is there a way?

• 18:39PJ Vogt?

  And would you do it if there were?

• 18:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 18:41PJ Vogt?

  Absolutely.

• 18:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 18:48PJ Vogt?

  Okay. What is the bouncer at Berghain scanning you for if you're on the cusp? And is there some other, perhaps, secret way to sneak into Berghain?

• 19:02PJ Vogt?

  After the break, our investigation begins.

• 19:45PJ Vogt?

  Welcome back to the show. Unsoon's.

• 19:48PJ Vogt?

  When we started all this last July, all I really knew about Berghain was that it was a Berlin techno club and that it was very hard to get into. But I started researching. The club itself maintains a very minimal footprint online. 200,000 people follow Berghain's Instagram account, but the club has only ever posted one photo in 2015, a picture of a sign that says in all caps, "Taking photos is not allowed," the sign presumably from inside the club itself. Berghain, like Vegas, claims that what happens there stays there, except in Berghain, that seems to actually be true. Some information about the club nevertheless

• 20:26PJ Vogt?

  has circulated. The story of Berghain, as I now understand it, begins 30 years ago. In the early 1990s, two Germans, Norbert Thormann and Michael Teufela, had begun hosting a men's-only gay fetish party, sometimes at an abandoned air raid shelter. After a few years, the party outgrew that bunker. The pair took over an abandoned railroad depot. At the railroad depot, they started a club called Ostgut. Ostgut was legendary, open to people of all genders and sexualities, but still a space run by and largely for gay men. A den of hedonism where consenting adults supposedly engaged in all sorts of

• 21:08PJ Vogt?

  unusual behavior. Online, at least one video survives from inside the club. But the video is pretty tame. It's from July 2000. Looks like camcorder footage. A grainily shot DJ hovers over a console, twiddling knobs, while nearby, a crowd of German shadows writhes under a strobe light. Ostgut may have lived forever, except the city wanted to build a big arena, so the railroad depot was knocked down in 2003.

• 21:47PJ Vogt?

  Berghain was its reincarnation. The palace that replaced Ostgut. This time, too big to knock down. A thermal power plant, originally built during the Soviet era. Four floors. On the very bottom floor, a dedicated basement gay club for men only. At the very top, a bar with big windows opening onto a panoramic view of the city. On the levels in between, where the power turbines once sat, an enormous dark cavern, the main dance area. The entire space governed by its own particular rules. Rules that are repeated breathlessly by the internet commentariat.

• 22:23Speaker 03

  Berghain is not a standard posh club with bottle service.

• 22:26Speaker 04

  They make you put a sticker over your phone, no pictures, they'll throw you the [bleep] out.

• 22:29Speaker 05

  There'd be a window where you could buy ice cream and you could order smoothies.

• 22:32Speaker 06

  It's open from Friday until Monday, and most people stay there for 12 hours, 24 hours, or more. Right now, it's 9 a.m.

• 22:39PJ Vogt?

  Berghain is best known for one weekly party, Club Nacht, Club Night. Club Night is a misnomer because while the party starts Saturday evening, it continues all the way until Monday morning without interruption. A few books document the history of the scene that birthed this party. I found Tobias Rapp's Lost and Sound to be particularly helpful. He writes about how, when Berghain opened in 2004, the party was by and for Berliners. But word soon spread internationally. A European budget airline called EasyJet had just opened a new hub in Berlin, and other Europeans started taking EasyJet flights to the city to come party. The legend kept growing. Eventually, it grew large enough to draw Chris and Dan, two of the many Americans

• 23:22PJ Vogt?

  who made the pilgrimage to Technomeka. It was a marvel. A three-day party, good enough to draw thousands of people every weekend, people who would fly to Germany without even a promise they would gain admittance. That was Club Nacht at Berghain.

• 23:40PJ Vogt?

  Most of what people discuss online is not any of this. Instead, they talk about Sven, the intimidating bouncer who Chris and Dan encountered and then cowered in front of. Sven Markhart. Sven Markhart is a tall, imposing man in his early 60s with giant lip rings that look like silver fangs. His hair is slicked back and silver, tattoos of thorns cover much of his face. He looks like a bad guy in a John Wick movie, and he has played a bad guy in a John Wick movie. That was just a cameo one time, though. Sven has run security at Berghain since the club first opened 20 years ago. Sven's backstory: He grew up in East Berlin, the communist side of the wall, before it fell.

• 24:21Speaker 07

  My name is Sven Markhart. I'm born in 1962 in Berlin.

• 24:26PJ Vogt?

  There's this one documentary, Berlin Bouncer, that profiles Sven. In one scene, he gets a talk in front of a crowd. He's wearing all-black tinted glasses. Sven discusses the early chapters of his life, how his teenage years were defined by the feeling of being stuck outside a much more significant kind of door.

• 24:42Speaker 07

  We just wanted to see the other side of the wall. We didn't really want to leave home. We just wanted to find out. What were we being deprived of? What weren't we allowed to see?

• 25:06PJ Vogt?

  Sven has said that as a young gay punk rocker, living in East Berlin was risky. He was frequently picked up by the secret police. He was devoted to his photography career, but after the wall fell, he chose to stay on the East Berlin side, and his art career stalled there. Sven's brother was a DJ and a club organizer, and Sven started working the door at his parties. It turned out, Sven's eye for people worked not just in photography, but also here. He had a talent for deciding who should be let in. He developed a reputation. That's why they chose him for Oscar and later for Berghain. The fact that this much of Sven's biography exists in public, of course, goes entirely against Berghain's secretive ethos.

• 25:50PJ Vogt?

  But Sven has continued to pursue his photography career. And so every few years, when he has a new exhibition or a photo book, he talks to journalists. Questions about his photography, which he wants to discuss, and questions about how to get into Berghain, which he has to tolerate. Those are the terms under which the gatekeepers at places like The New York Times or GQ will allow Sven entry. And, understanding the way of these things, he obliges. Sven, the man with the answer to our question. What was the bouncer at Berghain scanning you for? I should say, I emailed Sven and requested an interview. I've never been less surprised to be ignored. But in the documentary, there's this prickly moment

• 26:34PJ Vogt?

  where the interviewer seems to have directly asked Sven the rules of the door.

• 26:38Speaker 07

  Die Regeln, die es gibt, die braucht man auch nicht noch mal abfragen.

• 26:44PJ Vogt?

  Sven responds, not with helpful tips about what shade of black to wear. Instead, he says sternly, "We don't need to question the rules that are in place." He does allow that, as a selector, his responsibility is to only let people in who, once they join the party, won't impede the freedom and self-expression of the people who are already inside.

• 27:06Speaker 07

  Für die Leute, die da drin so sein kann, wie sie sind.

• 27:12PJ Vogt?

  It makes sense, but it does not provide clues. And in any situation in which official sources remain this tight-lipped, of course, speculation will reign. And it does, online, as Chris and Dan had seen, mainly on TikTok. There, a cottage industry of people who claim to have gotten through the door now style themselves as helpful experts, explaining what exactly they believe Sven is scanning for when he looks at people like Chris and Dan, trying to get inside the mind of a 62-year-old gay, German, ex-punk.

• 27:43Speaker 07

  Be really casual. Don't be flamboyant. Don't speak too much. Don't talk too loud in the queue. And under no

• 27:50Speaker 06

  Those circumstances engage in law term. Literally, just basically be as casual and bland in as possible in order to get in. So we've got.

• 27:58PJ Vogt?

  It's impossible to know if any of these people are actually telling the truth. Again, you can't record inside a Berghain, which means you just have to take their word for it.

• 28:06Speaker 06

  I promise. People say that you need to wear black to get in, but that's not true. It helps, but it's not a must. I know a guy.

• 28:16Speaker 07

  Just be yourself, and if you get in, you get in. And if you don't, try again some other time or call it a wrap. When I went back, I was wearing.

• 28:23PJ Vogt?

  The advice offered by these supposed gurus frankly does not feel all that usable. Try to get in or maybe don't. Wear black, but you don't have to.

• 28:32Speaker 05

  The other thing is like, look sharp, but also like you don't care that much.

• 28:36PJ Vogt?

  My favorite artifact of all the online Berghain speculation is this website called Berghain Trainer dot com that will actually drop you into a surprisingly high res simulation of the Berghain line.

• 28:50PJ Vogt?

  The site takes control of your webcam and then scans your face, analyzing your emotions through your expressions, how angry, sad, euphoric your face is, giving a virtual simulation of Sven's gaze. And then the first person video virtually walks you step by step up to the doors of Berghain. The music gets louder as you get closer. The website warns you that Sven will ask you three questions. So I did it. When I arrived at the virtual door, a German man, presumably an actor playing Sven, asked, is this your first time here? I said, yes. He asked, do you know who's DJing tonight? I said, yes. He asked whether I'd taken drugs.

• 29:36PJ Vogt?

  I said, no. After a moment of scanning, the virtual bouncer told me. Not good today. And then made the hand gesture toward the street, the same hand gesture Chris and Dan had gotten. To be honest with you, this rejection by a fake bouncer, it hurt my real feelings.

• 29:58PJ Vogt?

  I'll tell you something about myself that won't surprise you. I've never been considered cool. I know cool people. I'm not against coolness. I just don't possess it. I'm uncool enough that I often ask the cool people I know to explain to me why certain things are cool right now. How did we decide big pants are back in style? If you have to ask, you're not cool. And I do have to ask, both professionally and just because of my personality. So I'm not cool, and I'm old enough to be OK with that. But this was a little different. At Berghain, where Sven ruled, it seemed to me that the source of his power lay partly in his refusal to explain himself. My job as a journalist was the opposite, to understand and explain.

• 30:43PJ Vogt?

  And I just couldn't resist the challenge of trying to understand something that was designed to obscure itself. That was why, even after all this internet sleuthing and documentary watching, we would continue digging for the better part of a year. We'd talk to lots of people. We'd read too many books devoted to the Talmudic study of German techno, its origins and subgenres. And in the end, we'd emerge with an answer. What was Berghain scanning for and why? How would a place like this come to be? All that after the break.

• 32:06PJ Vogt?

  Welcome back to the show.

• 32:09PJ Vogt?

  In America, in the circles I run in, people complain a lot about capitalism. I don't think they're bothered by the exchange of goods and services. I think it's their shorthand way of saying, everything here is just too driven by profit. Even things that start out good can be squeezed to death by our ceaseless desire to wring out every possible dollar. In Berlin, a place where, until recently, capitalism and socialism both operated, in Berlin, it feels like something else is going on. The nightlife industry there brings in 1.5 billion tourism dollars a year, but they're strange dollars. The crown jewel, Burgheim, operates by turning away thousands of paying customers. And despite demand, it keeps its ticket prices pretty low,

• 32:53PJ Vogt?

  all while existing in a building that is 37,600 square feet in a very hip neighborhood. And not only does this all seem to work, it's worked for a long time. That doesn't happen in nightlife. Clubs don't stick around. Studio 54 was open for less than three years. Burgheim is on its 20th. And people attribute a lot of that success to Burgheim's strict and strange door policy. You can tell the story of that door as a story about culture, about cool, but cool, we know, never explains itself. So let's get inside Burgheim from a different direction. I'm going to tell you the story, not about DJs and bouncers, but about lawyers and lobbyists, about the municipal regulation and policy

• 33:37PJ Vogt?

  that allows this club to exist the way it does. A story that begins in 1949.

• 33:44PJ Vogt?

  Hi, can you hear me?

• 33:46Speaker 07

  Hey.

• 33:46PJ Vogt?

  Hey.

• 33:47Speaker 07

  I hear you well.

• 33:47PJ Vogt?

  How's it going over there?

• 33:49Speaker 07

  Well, well, well.

• 33:51PJ Vogt?

  Lutz Leitz and Ring. I'd first heard about him from one of my best friends, Kay Burke, a nightclub founder herself. People in Berlin called Lutz the mayor of the city's nightlife. Um, so did Kay explain like who I am and what we're up to over here?

• 34:06Speaker 07

  I think she might, but it was also quite some time ago, so maybe you can fill me in again.

• 34:11PJ Vogt?

  Yeah, so I have this podcast called Search Engine where we just try to answer people's questions, no matter how simple or complicated. And we do sort of like all manner of stuff. We do like really serious stuff. Like, we just did something about fentanyl and the drug supply in America. But we also do really silly stuff and kind of like everything in between.

• 34:32Speaker 07

  And what level are we here in this conversation?

• 34:34PJ Vogt?

  We're closer to silly, I think. So we have these friends I want to talk about who just like didn't get into Berghain and are confused about it. But it's sort of an excuse to tell the larger story about nightlife. Like, I think for people in the United States, it's a place you go and you spend $500 on champagne. And like, you know what I mean? It's like-

• 34:52Speaker 07

  Or $10 on a can of beer.

• 34:54PJ Vogt?

  Yes.

• 34:55Speaker 07

  Without a glass.

• 34:56PJ Vogt?

  Exactly. Germans like Lutz call this style of nightclub bottles and models, shorthand for the economic model that drives them. Clubs like these are what most Americans think of when you say nightclub. Spots that tend to make their money by enticing rich people to pay for tables and buy bottles of champagne so that they can feel important. The clubs are like little status factories. In Berlin, though, that same word nightclub describes an entirely different operation, fueled by a different economic model. And Lutz's job is to protect that status quo. He's nightlife's advocate in the offices of city bureaucrats, the spokesperson for Berlin's Club Commission. I wanted Lutz to tell me how Berlin's unusual nightlife scene had come to be.

• 35:40PJ Vogt?

  And that story is the story of two arguments. The first argument takes place in the late 1940s. Argument one is about a very specific rule: curfew. In Berlin today, there is no curfew. Bars and clubs stay open as long as they want. And can you tell me the story of like how Berlin came to be a city with no curfew? Like, what is the origin story of that decision?

• 36:04Speaker 07

  This decision is like almost 80 years old, and it happened right after World War II. So 1949, you had already a divided city between the eastern sector and the western sector. The eastern sector controlled by the Russians, and the western sector controlled by the British, the French, and the Americans. And in the eastern part, there was a curfew at 10:00 PM. So all the restaurants, bars, hotel bars, cabaret bars, they had to close at 10:00 PM in the eastern part. In the western part, it was 9:00 PM, so an hour earlier. And there was this, let's say, representative, spokesperson of the hotels and restaurants of Berlin. His name was Heinz Zellermeier.

• 36:44PJ Vogt?

  Heinz Zellermeier. There was no Club Commission back then. Heinz was instead the deputy director of the Guild of Berlin Hoteliers.

• 36:54PJ Vogt?

  In photos, Heinz has an enormous smile and combed back hair. He looks like someone who held forth at a restaurant or two. Heinz did not like the curfew. He particularly did not like that his side of the city had an earlier curfew. The person to complain to was General Howley of the US Army, the Americans' West Berlin Commandant. A meeting was set, and Heinz supposedly came prepared.

• 37:18Speaker 07

  The story is that he brought a bottle of whiskey to that meeting. So they met, and they were talking about it. And General Howley said, yeah, the British and the French, they're not really supporting any idea of losing this curfew. They say it's a security issue. So you have to give me an argument that I can give to the French and the British. And the problem was that at that moment, in the western part, people had to go out of the bar. And then they went to the eastern sector for another hour, which was also not really liked by the Americans, you know? So he said, if you kick, Germans who are partying at a certain hour, you kick them out of the street, you're gonna have a security issue. So you have to better find a solution for it.

• 37:57PJ Vogt?

  It was a well reasoned argument. The Allies did not want drunk Westerners crossing east in search of a later last call. And worse, there'd been an emerging Cold War of curfews, with each side, the East and the West, repeatedly extending an hour past each other to try to capture all the income from drunk Berliners. Eliminating curfew would solve the security issue and win the night war. Howley was sold.

• 38:22Speaker 07

  He said, okay, let's try this out for two weeks. And since then, 1949, we have no curfew.

• 38:27PJ Vogt?

  Berlin, one of the rare cities that has no curfew at all. In 1949, when the city permanently deleted its curfew, obviously techno music did not exist. Raving was something people did in insane asylums. If anyone was listening to music in a club late at night, it was probably jazz. But this decision set Berlin on a path. Nightlife is funded, more than anything else, via the sale of alcohol. A city without a curfew can have a legal party that runs through the night, even that runs multiple nights. Half a century-ish later, techno will hit Berlin. People will begin to throw raves in illegal spots without permits. This'll happen in a lot of cities at the same time, Detroit, New York, London.

• 39:11PJ Vogt?

  But what makes Berlin different from those places is that here, many of those raves can actually become legitimate businesses, can find permanent homes and clubs.

• 39:21PJ Vogt?

  General Haaland's 1949 agreement is the first precondition for Klub Nacht at Berghain. It sets the stage for a party that can last for three days. But years later, as the scene starts to mature, a second argument takes place. An argument which almost kills these nightclubs. Argument two is about taxes. In the early 2000s, Berghain was a rising young club alongside already established spots like Trissor and the Kit Kat Club. And Berlin's tax authority started to take a closer look at these places. How much money were they bringing in? Shouldn't the city be getting a bigger cut? Government tax agents walk into Berghain, presumably without needing permission from Sven.

• 40:05PJ Vogt?

  They're there documenting everything they see, asking a question: From a tax perspective, what is happening in these rooms? In Germany, if you pay money for a ticket and enter a venue where music is played, according to the taxmen, you may be having one of three different experiences. You might be experiencing high culture, like opera, in which case the city will barely tax the ticket. You might be at a concert, like the Rolling Stones, in which case the city will moderately tax the ticket. Or you might be experiencing entertainment. This happens in casinos, in porn theaters. In that case, the city will take a big tax bite, almost 20%.

• 40:46PJ Vogt?

  Before the tax officials began to take a closer look at the club scene, these venues had been mostly taxed as concert venues. But now, in 2008, the city started to ask pointed questions. Was a DJ really a musician? Was a techno show really like a concert?

• 41:03Speaker 07

  The perception that people in government had says a DJ is not a concert. People are going there to have sex, or to drink, or to whatever, but not because of the DJ. They even sent people to clubs and documented that people were not facing the artist, they were talking to each other.

• 41:21PJ Vogt?

  Oh my god.

• 41:22Speaker 07

  Stuff like that. Yeah, to kind of prove the point that it is not a concert.

• 41:26PJ Vogt?

  Wow. I've been to concerts where people were not facing the artist and talking to each other.

• 41:32Speaker 07

  Exactly, but they said clubs is different. People go there to meet people, not because of the artists. They don't even know who's playing. These kind of argumentations.

• 41:41PJ Vogt?

  Berghain was the club that actually took this case all the way to the high courts. Berghain won. The Berghain, in the government's books, was cemented as a concert venue, a place where people went because they loved techno music. Weirdly, this is one part of the answer to Chris and Dan's questions. What was the bouncer, Sven, scanning for at the door? He needed to ensure they were true techno heads, not people there simply for entertainment. That consideration, a funny side effect of the argument the club had had to make in court years ago. It may have been part of what filtered them out. Chris and Dan, not true techno heads. Berghain's victory in court meant that any German nightclub that could prove it was meeting Berghain's cultural standards could be taxed like Berghain.

• 42:26PJ Vogt?

  Lower taxes meant they could keep their overhead low. The lower the overhead, the less pressure to make money. The less pressure to make money, the more they could continue to keep their nightclubs dedicated to preserving Berlin's strange counterculture. Lutz told me about another one of these battles.

• 42:42Speaker 07

  I don't know if you're aware of zoning, what that means in cities. So there are different zoning laws, which says in certain zones of the city, there are certain allowances. So for instance, you cannot build an amusement venue, like a leisure venue, in a residential area.

• 42:58PJ Vogt?

  Right.

• 42:58Speaker 07

  The problem with this categorization is that you're only fully legal in the very center of the city, where also the prices are very high. So if you want to do it properly, you have to be very commercial to survive.

• 43:12PJ Vogt?

  Oh.

• 43:14Speaker 07

  And now that we are more flexible in what areas of the cities we can establish music venues, we can also maybe turn a former restaurant or bar into a club, possibly, which we could not before because it was in the wrong zone.

• 43:28PJ Vogt?

  It's so interesting, though. It's like you get the government to classify clubs differently. That changes where clubs can appropriately be in the city. Then if the clubs can be in places where they otherwise wouldn't have been allowed, they can have a different profit incentive. They don't have to just make as much money as possible. And you end up with a different culture because of just a change to how the government classified something. That's really interesting.

• 43:52Speaker 07

  Exactly.

• 43:54PJ Vogt?

  We're going to come back to this strange court case and its consequences in the second part of this story, but before I left Lutz, I wanted to ask him specifically about Chris and Dan. What was it about them, the way they looked, the way they dressed, that had signaled they didn't belong at Berghain? Lutz does not represent Berghain, but as spokesperson for the club commission and as a Berghain regular, I thought he might be able to help. Can I show you a couple photographs and you tell me if the person seems like-

• 44:22Speaker 07

  I'm not a selector, so I can only give you my personal opinion.

• 44:25PJ Vogt?

  Yeah, is it okay to ask you your opinion on it?

• 44:28Speaker 07

  Yeah, sure, of course.

• 44:29PJ Vogt?

  Okay, this is one person.

• 44:33Speaker 07

  Well, very friendly, maybe queer person, very soft, happy. He's wearing some kind of top that doesn't really say anything. It's like, what is it?

• 44:47PJ Vogt?

  It's too generic of a top, the vest?

• 44:50Speaker 07

  I think it looks authentic to him, but this person looked very innocent.

• 44:55PJ Vogt?

  Yeah.

• 44:56Speaker 07

  And you also want to save some people for, you know, to getting into something that they maybe don't expect.

• 45:05PJ Vogt?

  Okay, can I show you? So this is the person he went with?

• 45:08Speaker 07

  Yeah. I would probably send them to Schwyz.

• 45:11PJ Vogt?

  What's Schwyz?

• 45:13Speaker 07

  It's our oldest, best-known gay club, and it's the perfect vibe for those two guys.

• 45:19PJ Vogt?

  Because they don't seem like techno guys to you. They seem like gay guys who are going out clubbing.

• 45:23Speaker 07

  They don't look like hard, you know, like standing in the middle of a sweaty club and going for hours and enjoying this. And, you know, they're standing more like having a chat, you know, like, and that's okay to have some of those folks in the venue, but it's really about getting out of your inner self and showing your animalistic side of yourself.

• 45:47PJ Vogt?

  For very good reason, we do not celebrate the idea that you should judge people based on how they look on the outside. Those judgments often lead us astray.

• 45:56PJ Vogt?

  And yet, Lutz, from a photo, could tell that Chris and Dan were after respectful, healthy, wholesome partying, not the sort of darkness that occurs in Berghain's techno dungeons. They didn't belong there. They belonged, he suspected, at another place called the Schwitz. I wondered what Chris and Dan would make of that judgment. So later, I asked. Chris told me, "Schwitz?" They loved Schwitz. It was the club they'd ended up at after being rejected from Berghain. Berlin, this magical city, had somehow sent them to the place where they actually belonged. Lutz was not a selector, but he did seem to have a selector's eye.

• 46:42PJ Vogt?

  Your read is so good. Chris, who I know better, he's a lovely, he's one of my favorite people to spend time with. If I were having a party where it was really important that someone danced in the middle of a dance floor for eight hours, he would perhaps not make the cut for that party.

• 46:56Speaker 07

  That's really... I think the first question you have to ask yourself, are you a participant or are you a visitor? And it shouldn't sound sophisticated or arrogant. It's just like a club, the definition of a club is being part of a club. If you're not part of the club, why should you be able to enter? I think the idea of just buying myself in is the opposite of a club, what it should actually be. A club should bring people together who have similar interests, similar preferences.

• 47:30PJ Vogt?

  A club should bring together people of similar interests. Absolutely. But what if you're someone who doesn't belong but still wants to just go check it out? Is there a way to sneak in? Is there some other way into Berghain that is not going through the bouncer? Lutz did have advice about this.

• 47:47Speaker 07

  My tip that I usually give is make a plan of exploring Berlin, maybe from the outskirts. Go to venues that are not very known. Go to places that are somehow interesting for you because you did your research and you saw some artists that you want to see and they're playing, so go there. And you get in very easy because venues that are not very known don't have this kind of level of selection. Usually there's not even a queue. And then you get friends with the bartenders, you make friends with the DJs there, and you have an amazing time in an unknown venue with

• 48:25Speaker 07

  Unknown artists, basically.

• 48:26PJ Vogt?

  Yeah.

• 48:27Speaker 07

  And the next time you're coming, you're gonna reach out to them. And because they like you or they they connected to you, they will ask you to start in their home with dinner. Maybe you go to a bar, you make them make more friends. And even maybe they make sure that you get in on a guest list of some venue that they're going at that night. But I think it's it's part of that journey that you also have to make to be part of the scene.

• 48:53PJ Vogt?

  Lutz said the process he's describing, this is the real way into Klub Nacht. Make yourself a part of the scene. That line outside Berghain, he said, that's for people who haven't been able to or who haven't known to try. While Lutz was saying this to me, I was nodding yes furiously, my noggin like a broken bobblehead. Of course, it all made sense. And as a person obsessed with belonging and exclusion, I was lapping it all up. We finished our conversation. It's really, it's a pleasure to just get to ask you these questions. Thank you for doing this.

• 49:26Speaker 07

  You're welcome.

• 49:28PJ Vogt?

  We hung up. And then, not long after, this spell of Lutz's idea dissipated. What were we talking about? If you wanted to visit the most exclusive nightclub in the world, go to Germany and start methodically befriending Germans in the city's electronic music scene? Okay.

• 49:49PJ Vogt?

  Normally, that would have been the end of things. And perhaps it should have been the end of things. But not long after this, a friend of mine, an American, asked me a question. They were celebrating a big milestone in their life and they wanted to do it in Germany. In Berlin, actually. They wanted to spend some time there, perhaps even try to see some of the city's famous nightlife. Did that sound like fun? Could I make some time away from work? Yes, it did. No, I couldn't. I bought myself a plane ticket. The myth, hard as it was to believe, was that the door to Berghain, like Excalibur's sword, would be offered only to someone who truly understood techno culture, who understood what the place meant. Could something like that really be true?

• 50:34PJ Vogt?

  Next week on Search Engine, the last episode of our season, tech now.

• 51:16PJ Vogt?

  Search Engine is a presentation of Odyssey. It was created by me, PJ Vogt, and Shruti Panamaneni. Garrett Graham is our senior producer. Emily Multer is our associate producer. Our production intern is Piper Dumont. Theme, original composition and mixing by Armin Bazarian. He also created the techno remix of our theme. Armin Bazarian, just a very talented man. Fact checking this episode by Claire Hyman. Additional production on this episode by Noah John. Our executive producer is Leah Reese Dennis. Thanks to the rest of the team at Odyssey. Rob Morandi, Craig Cox, Eric Donnelly, Colin Gaynor, Maura Curran, Josephine Francis, Kirk Courtney, Vanessa Tinkati, and Hillary Schaaf. If you have a business and would like to advertise on Search Engine, please email us. [email protected]. Subject line: Advertising.

• 51:59PJ Vogt?

  You can also send questions you have that you would like the show to answer to the same email address. [email protected]. If you would like to remove ads from the show, you can sign up for incognito mode, our paid feed. You also get bonus episodes. You will hear some of those bonus episodes for free, though, this month on this feed. Wow, what a deal. You can find incognito mode at searchengine.show. Your contributions there are what help us fund this very podcast. Thank you, as always, for listening. We'll see you next week.

• 52:41Speaker 06

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• 53:25Speaker 06

  for the work they want to get right. And these businesses are helping Anthropic shape what comes next. Build your business with support from Claude at claude.ai/odyssey.