On the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, Laura Snapes looks at how the former East Berlin’s newly deserted buildings became havens for an electronic musical revolution.

Flights for a week’s break in Berlin departing by budget airline on 9th November and returning a week later will only set you back about £80, even if you forget to book well in advance. A shared room in a kitchsy, cheap hostel in Kreuzberg will cost about €8 a night, and entry to the famed Tresor techno club off Berlin’s historic Potsdamer Platz around €10. Go back to early 1989 and tell someone about the notion of exchanging a unified European currency for unrestricted travel and non-government approved music, and chances are they’d laugh in your face.

9th November 2009 marks the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, an event which led to Germany being officially united almost a year later for arguably the first time in its long and often difficult history. It also brought about the explosion of techno in Germany, and more specifically Berlin.

The fall of the concrete barrier and the resulting transgression of East Berliners to the West left over 25,000 deserted apartment blocks, supermarkets and factories in the former East Berlin – around a third of the city’s buildings. In the wake of liberation from stifling government ideology, state approved music and living in fear of the Stasi, a wave of unlicensed, hedonistic parties sprung up in the empty shells, in a similarly spontaneous vein to the rise of acid house in British clubs during the 80s.

Born in the GDR in 1971, DJ Paul Van Dyk once stated that techno was the first area of the social life of Germany where unification took place. It’s not hard to believe – there were no rules, no discrimination between Ossies and Wessies, class or origin. The gay club scene boomed, and there were no difficult Western lyrics to understand or distract from partygoers’ new found shared German nationality – the only discerning quality required to integrate into the scene was a willingness to dance until sunrise.

Hundred of clubs popped up, some lasting longer than others – from UFO in a vacant Kreuzberg cellar (to become Tresor in 1991) to the recently closed Bar 25, a former squat, and Planet Nights in the empty warehouses along the bank of the Spree river, where sound, light and abstract performance combined to add to this new feeling of unhinged reality.

The diverse range of club  nights and innumerable kitchen sink record labels founded was in stark contrast to the cultural monotony that had existed prior to that point.

There had been one state owned record label, AMIGA, founded in 1947 by Ernst Busch, which operated on thoroughly socialist principles – all record sleeves, irrespective of genre, had plain artwork designed by a government agency, and label releases were played on DDR Rundfunk, the national radio station.

The content of the music was subject to censorship by the government, so naturally any potentially subversive records did not see a legal release, although selected Western albums were put out on the label. To own one was considered a privilege, resulting in vast queues stemming from the record shops that were selling such holy relics.

Robag Wruhme of the Wighnomy Brothers grew up in a small East German town and told techno- bible Resident Advisor about covertly recording a Depeche Mode concert in Berlin broadcast on West German radio whilst he stayed with his grandparents.

“This was the way of getting into music back then; if the Communist system had continued, this whole club culture would not have existed, it would not have been possible. We had no contacts in the West, so we had no real idea about what was going on. Once the wall came down, we were in paradise, we spent every penny we had on records.”

This newfound wealth of freely available music led to a great diversification in the scene – hardcore, gabber and ambient sounds developed, and a symbiotic appreciation for the Detroit scene blossomed.

Techno quickly became Berlin’s cool currency – the first Love Parade in 1989 attracted 150 revellers; in 1999, 1.5 million, steadily increasing to 1.6 million on its last appearance in Germany in 2008.

Today Berlin is one of the coolest cities in the world. International DJs flock there in droves – Chilean world renowned DJ Ricardo Villalobos is now based there, along with Richie Hawtin, born in England and raised in Detroit, amongst many others.

Its status as the capital of club culture has inevitably attracted corporate attentions, and none so more potentially damaging than the Mediaspree, a €165 million creative industries project aimed at the “Intergration von Kunst und Medien” [integration of art and media] – a misleadingly inclusive motto.

East Berlin is still a haven for cheap living – predominantly for aff ordable housing in hip areas such as Kreuzberg; home to some 150,000 people of multiple ethnic origins. The area’s alternative credentials and low rent have led to a group of communications and arts conglomerates attempting  to muscle in to bathe in its credible aura.

On the banks of the Spree where one of the last stretches of the wall stood, O2 are building a huge arena to seat 17,000 people and MTV Europe and Universal Music amongst dozens of others are establishing offices.

Christian Meyer, director of the Mediaspree enterprise, gave a statement to the volunteer-based news website Café Babel.

“We’re doing a lot to promote this neighbourhood. MTV is among one of our clients for instance. We want to have attractive and young tenants who watch MTV and Viva! and can be defined as ‘sexy’.”

The influx of mainstream media practitioners in their incongruously glossy buildings has led to a spike in the formerly cheap rates of the area, leaving its inhabitants at risk of being priced out of the market.

The exploitative gentrification and naïve idea that the organically creative neighbourhood needs promotion from capitalist organisations has seen a number of protests from local residents, but it doesn’t seem likely that that the Mediaspree can be stopped.

Perhaps another social uprising is in order – it certainly worked last time.