Fiona Laughton takes a tour of Berlin’s legendary Hansa Studios…
Standing in the Hansa Studio’s neoclassical Meistersaal—a lavish 650-square-metre space with polished herringbone floor, elegant coffered ceiling studded with chandeliers, and heavy red drapes that run all the way up to the six-metre high ceilings—it’s impossible not to feel the twin vibrations of sound and history.
Diffused afternoon light filters through the windows and the room seems to gently hum with the possibility of creation; closing your eyes, you’re reminded of the artists who have left traces of their personal and musical history here. Robert Fripp’s feedbacking guitar, Bono’s complaints about Berlin’s “gloominess”, Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt’s “Oblique Strategies” creativity cards, and Einstürzende Neubauten’s unorthodox use of a chainsaw as musical instrument.
The building has a fascinating and chequered past. Built in 1913 as a guild for the Berlin Builders society, then used as a concert hall for chamber music, it became an active cultural hub in the Weimar era—the Marxist publishing house Malik-Verlag (founded by Wieland Herzfelde) moved into the ground floor, Kurt Tucholsky held readings here, and a Dada art gallery (Galerie Groz) hosted regular exhibitions by Groz and his contemporaries like John Heartfield, Heinrich Maria Davringhausen and Otto Schmalhausen.
Then the Nazis arrived, confiscated all the Malik-Verlag titles as part of their book-burning campaign and turned the Meistersaal into a venue for the infamous Reichsmusikkammer (Reich Music Chamber); SS officers swayed through the space to State-approved ‘good German music’.
Used briefly as a cabaret hall after the war, it became isolated until the early sixties—undesirable for most uses, but perfect for a use as a studio, initially for Ariola Sonopress classical recordings and then for Schlager artists such as Mireille Mathieu, Marianne Rosenberg, Udo Jürgens and Roland Kaiser.
In the beginning of the seventies, the Meisel brothers founded the Hansa Studios and acquired the building, operating no fewer than five studio rooms in the building; the Meistersaal became the now-legendary Hansa Studio 2.
We are here courtesy of Thilo Schmied of Berlin Music Tours, a Bowie aficionado and sound engineer, who runs the only official tours of the still-operating studios. Full of enthusiasm and rock trivia, he leads us around the building (including the spiral staircase where Depeche Mode once posed for …