SO36

SO36, 1978

SO36, 1984

Soilent Grün concert at SO36, 1981

Location of SO36

Description of SO36

Our sixth stop is SO36, a music club located on Oranienstrasse in the centre of east Kreuzberg. The SO36 club has been a fixture in Kreuzberg since it opened in 1978. It was first established during Kreuzberg’s squatter’s movement, when its founders occupied the empty building where the club is still located. In the 1970s, Kreuzberg became a major hub for liberal lifestyles, including the emergence of an increasingly popular underground club scene with leftist sentiments. SO36 began as a music venue focused largely on punk music, a genre that had become prominent in the neighbourhood because of its distinct connection to the growing alternative subcultures and anti-authoritarian causes. The emergence of political punk music and the punk movement in Kreuzberg was made easier with venues like SO36, and by the pre-existing radical and alternative subcultures in the neighbourhood. By the 1980s, punk music in Germany had started being referred to as Deutschpunk, characterized by its simple lyrics and leftist messages. The political punk genre rose steadily as a counter to the events occurring in Berlin at the time. Punk music in Kreuzberg during the 1980s often centred on the Wall dividing East and West Berlin, and resentment towards the Berlin government. Slime, a popular Kreuzberg-based band in the 1980s, who often played shows at SO36, had several of their songs banned in West Germany for promoting anti-authoritarianism and violence against the state. However, SO36 gave Slime, along with numerous other bands and concertgoers, the opportunity to express themselves, their beliefs, and their lifestyles. During the 1970s, SO36 became the hub for punk bands emerging in West Berlin.The clubs popularity peaked in the late 1970s when David Bowie and Iggy Pop frequented it during the time they spent in West Berlin. However, SO36 continued to play a crucial role in propagating the political punk genre across Berlin and remained a symbolic part of Kreuzberg’s counterculture in the late 20th century.

Selected bibliography

Chichanowicz, Lily. 2016. "A Brief History of Berlin's Famous SO36." The Culture Trip. https://theculturetrip.com/europe/germany/articles/a-brief-history-of-berlins-famous-so36/.

Chichanowicz, Lily. 2016. "A Brief History of Germany's Punk Music Scene." The Culture Trip. https://theculturetrip.com/europe/germany/articles/a-brief-history-of-germanys-punk-music-scene/.

Hockenos, Paul. 2017. Berlin Calling: A Story of Anarchy, Music, the Wall, and the Birth of the New Berlin. New York: The New Press.

2016. "SO36." 60 by 80: Queen Sized Travel. https://www.60by80.com/berlin/nightlife/gay-clubs/so36.html.

2016. "The Club." SO36. http://so36.de/the-club/.

Why is this site important?

During the 1970s and 1980s, Kreuzberg served as the centre for alternative lifestyles, social unrest, and protest against societal norms and conventions.^{^[1]} It was considered by many to be the epicenter of counterculture in Berlin, especially as it had become home to an increasing number of unconventional young people.^{^[2]} Kreuzberg's cafés and bars, like club SO36, functioned as central places that bound its young population together, allowing for alternative subcultures to grow steadily throughout the neighbourhood.^{^[3]} The emerging punk movement, in particular, thrived in Kreuzberg because of its youth and their commitment to politicized social movements.^{^[4]}

The bands and music that developed during the punk movement of the 1970s and 1980s, highlighted the dangers and excitement of living in Berlin. Kreuzberg's new population particularly found that punk distanced themselves from Germany's past wrongdoings.^{^[5]} Both the music and culture gave them the freedom to voice their anxieties and opinions, despite the Wall still dividing Berlin.^{^[6]} One of West Berlin's early punk bands, PVC, exemplifies the politicization of punk music and the new alternative appearance of Kreuzberg's society. Their song, "Wall City Rock", reflects the rebellious subculture of West Berlin in the 1980s, "It's so unnatural but it still has an atmosphere, you just have to watch the people living here, only if you're tough you might survive."^{^[7]} PVC's rise to fame in Kreuzberg, alongside numerous other punk bands in the 1970s and 1980s, reveals the prevalence of counterculture in the neighbourhood.

By the late 1970s, Kreuzberg was no longer a district for the migrant-working class. The Berlin government's urban renewal policy had made it so they barely existed in the neighbourhood. Young people from across Germany took advantage of the situation and gathered in Kreuzberg to experience the emerging counterculture and freedom of the neighbourhood.^{^[8]} Journalist Michael Sontheimer, who grew up in West Berlin during the height of its punk subculture, describes the reality of Kreuzberg's new population, "If you wanted to pursue an above-board, paying career, then you'd go to another city, but not to West Berlin. This was a great thing about West Berlin. [The working class] left for West Germany."^{^[9]} The migrant working class, while still a part of Kreuzberg, no longer made up a majority of the neighbourhoods population. By the mid-1980s, Kreuzberg's society was filled with punks, student rebels, and artists.^{^[10]} Their alternative lifestyles had encompassed the neighbourhood and subsequently made its former migrant-working class irrelevant. With the growing popularity of clubs like SO36, and the emergence of counterculture in the 1970s and 1980s, Kreuzberg quickly became the neighbourhood of West Berlin's alternative society.

Endnotes

[1] Bastian Heinsohn, "Critical Voices from the Underground: Street Art and Urban Transformation in Berlin," in Envisioning Social Justice in Contemporary German Culture, ed. Jill E. Twark and Axel Hildebrandt (New York: Camden House, 2015), 120.

[2] Barbara Becker-Cantarino, ed., Berlin in Focus: Cultural Transformations in Germany (Newport, CT: Praeger Publishers, 1996), 18.

[3] Paul Hockenos, Berlin Calling: A Story of Anarchy, Music, the Wall, and the Birth of the New Berlin, (New York: The New Press, 2017), 79.

[4] Serhat Güney, et al., "The Existential Struggle of Second-Generation Turkish Immigrants in Kreuzberg," Space and Culture 20, no. 1 (2017), 47.

[5] Paul Hockenos, Berlin Calling: A Story of Anarchy, Music, the Wall, and the Birth of the New Berlin, 71.

[6] Jeff Hayton, "Crosstown Traffic: Punk Rock, Space and the Porosity of the Berlin Wall in the 1980s," Contemporary European History 26, no. 2 (2017), 357-9.

[7] Paul Hockenos, Berlin Calling: A Story of Anarchy, Music, the Wall, and the Birth of the New Berlin, 74-75.

[8] Barbara Becker-Cantarino, ed., Berlin in Focus: Cultural Transformations in Germany, 18.

[9] Paul Hockenos, Berlin Calling: A Story of Anarchy, Music, the Wall, and the Birth of the New Berlin, 12.

[10] Ibid., 11.

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