Tacheles

Formerly a department store, office of the SS and holding place for French POWs. Now a collection of bizarre techno bars, art spaces, shops and even a cinema. And without a doubt my favourite place in Berlin.

A quick history of the place alone lets you know you’re somewhere pretty special. Originally a department store located on Oranienburger Strasse, the former Jewish quarter of Berlin, the building was used increasingly by members of the NSDAP during the 1930s, eventually becoming the central office of the SS.

During the Second World War, French war prisoners were even held in the attic.

After the war, after being moderately damaged by bombing, the building was left to deteriorate, as the GDR government didn’t have the funds to restore it, and had other plans for the space in any case. Eventually in 1980, demolition of one side began, to make room for a new road connecting the two major Berlin streets, Oranienburger Strasse and Friedrichstrasse. The demolition was scheduled to be completed in April 1990.

Two months before said demolition, the artists moved in. The building was occupied, and the Artists’ Initiative Tacheles group registered for the building to be protected as a Historic Landmark... And in 1992, after engineers confirmed that the building was in fact structurally sound, this status was confirmed. The artists had won, and Tacheles was born.

‘Tacheles’ is in fact a Jewish word roughly translating as “straight-talking”. In the former GDR, where freedom of expression was a long-forgotten liberty, this suppressive nature also translated into their arts, literature, film and music, where opinions and ideas were only ever alluded to, but could not be expressed outright.

So what name could be more apt for this collection of exhibitions, workshops, bars and cinema located in modern-day East Berlin?

Climbing the graffiti covered stairs higher and higher, I found it pretty difficult to imagine that this place had ever been home to members of one of the most radically dangerous political parties of the 20th century, and a key location to Nazi efforts in World War Two. Not least when I turned the corner onto the second floor, and found myself with a choice of a bar overlooking the back courtyard, playing a standard Berlin selection of sick techno to the left of me, and a tiny cinema with about 30 lounge chairs, showing the Marx Brothers classic Duck Soup to the right of me.

Surreal. 

Every square inch of the place is filled with colour, probably hundreds of times over. Graffiti, posters, paintings and flyers occupy every wall and ceiling of Tacheles. Upwards and onwards to the third and fourth floors, and you reach the workshops and exhibitions, where the mood doesn’t get any more normal. Most times I’ve been up there, the artists are just musing in the corners of the room, working on their next masterpiece, with a ridiculous Berlin soundtrack that must surely get the creative juices flowing.

Favourites include Alexandr Rodin’s mind-bending designs, some of which span from wall to wall of his exhibition – not one to try and work out whilst under the influence...  

The best is yet to come however. Walk back down to the cellar and step outside, and you find yourself in the back courtyard of Tacheles, complete with beach-bar sand floor, even in the middle of winter - (and I cannot WAIT to do this all in summer). The main bar includes a multi-tasking barman slash DJ who ensures a disgustingly good soundtrack in between pouring pints.

There’s also the back seating area of Café Zapata, a caravan which is actually a bar (whose bargirl invited us all in for tequila shots with her mates), and a random truck in the sand which we one week commandeered on behalf of Manchester. Standard Berlin.

Now here’s the sad part. The 10 year lease that the artists negotiated with the owners – for 50 cents a year – ran out in 2008. No new lease was negotiated, and the owners reportedly have their eye on the development of a series of luxury apartments, restaurants, and a hotel on the site. This is no surprise here in Berlin, where the gentrification process has caused no end of upset amongst advocates and supporters of the city’s alternative subculture, since the reunification in 1990.

The recent closure of Bar 25 and the Anti-Media Spree campaigns surrounding it are clear evidence of the opposition to this movement. Anyone who’s been to Tacheles would agree that the demolition of the building, an iconic symbol of post-reunification, alternative Berlin, would be a travesty.

But I can’t see this lot going anywhere without a fight.