I've slowly been building up a fascination with Cold War Germany and most specifically Berlin from the late 70s to early 90s, probably because of my obsession with pop, punk and new wave genres. One thing I've seen often sort of shown in a lot of media about the city (that I have also been able to find little actual information around) is that the night life of West Berlin was apparently freaking wild in about that stretch of time. Artists going bohemian like Bowie, drugs, rock and roll and LGBT clubbing everywhere, punks and leftists and street gangs all in the midst of this divided and occupied city. Of course famously everyone remembers the images of those same punks then taking the pickaxes to the wall itself.
Is there any evidence that West Berlin did in fact have a particularly popping night life? Or was this just the general vibe you'd find in most cities of the time? And how did a city that was so divided and at the literal front lines of the Cold War become a hotspot for culture? Did that have any contribution or effect on the unrest that would bring the wall and the east down?
The short answer is yes, West Berlin did have a uniquely wild nightlife and there were several reasons for that. First is the geography. West Berlin was surrounded by East Germany and was essentially isolated from the West. This gave it the feel of a small island and thus made it easy to form artistic and social connections. One quote from the time sums it up: “I knew all these people and saw them every day. Everyone permanently spent their nights in the same happening bars. At one point you’d sit next to someone and you’d have an interesting conversation. And when you saw him again two days later, he probably would have been awake the whole time."
Second was the nihilism. Across Europe in the late 1970s and 1980s there was a general feeling that nuclear war was imminent and that feeling was amplified in Berlin by both its location and the state of the city which still showed extensive damage from the Second World War. If the world was going to end then you might as well party now. The sentiment was reflected in the lyrics of the time - “Bis zum Kollaps night viel Zeit / Drei Jahre noch” - “Not much time until the collapse / Just three more years”.
The third factor was the people. West Berlin attracted a certain type of person, primarily because if you lived in West Berlin you avoided having to do military service. In the words of Alexander Hacke and Jochen Arbeit from the West Berlin band Einstürzende Neubauten. West Berlin was “a place for people who wanted to hide because they had escaped from places where they couldn’t develop freely”. These people “lived in this city and didn’t know what to do with themselves so… they became musicians and artists”. Of course these kinds of people are exactly who you need to kick off a wild nightlife.
There was an absence of industry in West Berlin but these people didn’t have to worry too much about money. The rent was really low for a start (around 90DM a month, or free if you lived in a squat). Also every West Berliner received a ten percent supplement on their salary to make West Berlin artificially attractive. This meant that life was cheap and you didn’t have to work much at all.Finally there were the drugs. Speed was the drug of choice but there was also an abundance of cocaine. The former was of high purity and smuggled in from the East. People would regularly stay up all night (or for days at a time) moving on from one bar or club to the next. Places like the Risiko, Dschungel and SO36 were popular nightspots. The Risiko was sparsely decorated - a yellow bar room with stools and a red back room with benches. Often there wouldn’t even be anyone behind the bar so customers just poured their own drinks.
Hopefully that gives you an idea of the unique circumstances that gave rise to the nightlife of West Berlin. All of the above quotations were taken from “No Beauty Without Danger” which is a collection of interviews with Einstürzende Neubauten by Max Dax and Robert Defcon where they talk extensively about what (night)life was like in the city. I would highly recommend watching the documentary B-Movie: Lust and Sound in West Berlin 1979-1989 (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4291066) and the drama Punk Berlin 1982 which gives a great feel for the city (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3397082). Also, searching out interviews with Mark Reeder (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Reeder) is well worthwhile.