Every weekend, as dawn breaks over Berlin, a line of several hundred people curls back from the hulking shell of a former East German power plant. Inside is Berghain (pronounced Berg-HINE), an electronic-music club famous for supremely good techno, round-the-clock debauchery (the beats pulse from midnight Saturday until noon Monday), and, to the chagrin of many in line, what may be the world’s strictest, most inscrutable door policy. There are no reservations, no bottle service, and no way to get on a guest list (unless you are deep in Berlin’s electronic-music scene). Many folks wait hours and then, with no explanation, get politely asked to step aside and go elsewhere.
Who decides who gets in and who doesn’t? That would be this man, Sven Marquardt, 52, who has run security at the club since it first opened in 2004. But he’s no dumb muscle. Marquardt, while not working the door, is a distinguished photographer who has published three art books and a memoir, Die Nacht ist Leben. He may be the only bouncer in the world who has also done a menswear collaboration with Hugo Boss.
Recently, we sat down with Marquardt at a coffee shop in Berlin, where, through a translator, he talked about his photography, his personal style, and, somewhat reluctantly, what it takes to get into Berghain.
GQ: So, Mr. Marquardt, what’s your typical week like?
Sven Marquardt: My week is split between night and day. I spend two nights a week working the door at Berghain—Friday and Saturday, when the club is in full swing—and the rest of the week I wake up naturally at 7:30 A.M. and I’m working on photography projects. Right now I’m planning a shoot for a small fetish label here in Berlin called Cyberesque. After this interview with you, I’m headed to the Hackesche Höfe [a commercial area in Berlin], where I’m shooting some photos for Jan-Henrik Scheper-Stuke, a menswear designer who used to own a fashion label called Edsor Kronen that specialized in ties, bow ties, and handkerchiefs. I have no idea what he’s up to now. I’ll let him surprise me. And then a few hours from now, my life switches to nightlife once again.
You grew up in East Berlin, and Berghain itself seems to be a very East German sort of place—it specializes in minimalist German techno, it exists in a massive East German power station. Does your upbringing influence how you look at the world?
The eighties in East Berlin was a very weird time. On the one hand, everything seemed so quiet and peaceful—you kind of forgot that there was this weird political party that controlled and governed everything. On the other hand, a couple of times a year there would be these parades where tanks rolled down the street, and all these people you didn’t recognize would be there cheering—I think they were shipped in, actually. And of course we weren’t allowed to leave the country.
I felt like we were always looking beyond the wall—what’s out there? We couldn’t actually have any of it, but we were trying to soak it up, sense what was different and new and let it inspire us. Then we’d get creative with what we did have.
What led you to photography?
I grew up in a bourgeois household—my mom was a laboratory assistant, my dad was an engineer, and my grandparents ran a little bakery. But at the same time there was a punk and new-wave scene rising up in Prenzlauer Berg [a residential neighborhood in East Berlin]; all these kids spiking up their hair and wearing eyeliner. People opposed the dictatorship and wanted to somehow express their point of view. I found it fascinating and wanted to be a part of it. I had this analog SLR camera, a Praktica, and I just started photographing the people on the scene. My work was discovered by my friend’s mother, actually—the photographer Helga Paris. She became my mentor throughout the eighties.
So how does a professional photographer end up running the door at Berlin’s most famous nightclub?
After the wall fell, East Berlin was almost anarchistic. Companies just didn’t exist anymore. I’d been shooting for Sibylle, an East German fashion magazine, but that kind of work really dried up. At the same time, though, almost anything was possible. You could break into empty apartment buildings or empty warehouses and just do what you wanted: install a makeshift bar, open up a club, celebrate and party until dawn. It was this phenomenal, fascinating, vibrant feeling. I was completely sucked into it.
At the time my younger brother, Oliver, was becoming a big part of Berlin’s electronic-music scene. He had always been the DJ at school dances—back then it was with tapes and cassette players—but all of the sudden, as techno took off, he was organizing these big parties professionally. I hadn’t been too interested in all that at first, but I needed to make some money. He was organizing a party at an old shoe store—around the block from here, actually—that would run for three consecutive weekends, and asked if I could help out. That’s how I got my first job as a doorman.
What was nightlife like after the wall fell?
Nothing was very permanent. A club would be in one place, then relocate, then relocate again. The first permanent doorman job I had was at a building called Bienenkorb [Beehive]. There was a whorehouse in the front, and the club was in the back, called "Suicides." At some point I started working for a party called Ostgut—it was a gay fetish party—and that moved around for a while, and at a certain point moved into the power station and became Berghain. The company that runs Berghain is still called Ostgut GmbH, in fact. We still have fetish parties once or twice a year.
Do you dress differently for work than you do at home?
How I dress depends a lot more on my general mood than on where I’m going. For example, there was a time when I really loved bow ties—just the way they looked against my face tattoos. So I’d wear them everywhere, even when I went to the supermarket. Right now it’s definitely about leather jackets. The one I’m wearing today, for example, is from Preach, a label based in Dusseldorf.
Where did you get those rings? The one on your middle finger…is that a big pile of skulls?
I’ve collected all my rings over the last 20 years, my necklaces, too. Most of them aren’t from major fashion labels or anything, they’re just associated with personal memories. The skulls ring is from a label, though, Wildcat in London.
Berghain is now associated with that sort of aesthetic—black, gothic, minimalist. If you suddenly wanted to switch up your style and start wearing pastels and boat shoes, could you?
No way! Honestly, I don’t like pastels and I’ve never worn boat shoes. I’ve never once worn sneakers. My colleagues tease me about it, like, hey, Sven, why don’t you dress more colorfully so the guests will stop wearing all black? But really, black just happens to be in fashion with the new generation, too. And honestly, I think sneakers are cool. They’re just not my style. Some of my colleagues have entire rooms filled with New Balances. And last weekend I actually wore all white at the door, to mess with everybody.
So what do you tell your guys working the door to look for in the line when they decide who comes in?
It’s subjective. Only a few of my guys are allowed to select guests at the door. They have to understand what Berghain is all about first, and I try to give them that foundation. Beyond that, there are no set rules. My people all have their own personalities, and you can see their sensibilities reflected in the crowd over the course of their shifts. You always want friction, though. That’s the theme in any good club: diversity, friction.
When you say you teach them "what Berghain is all about," what do you mean, then?
I feel like I have a responsibility to make Berghain a safe place for people who come purely to enjoy the music and celebrate—to preserve it as a place where people can forget about space and time for a little while and enjoy themselves. The club evolved from the gay scene in Berlin in the nineties. It’s important to me we preserve some of that heritage, that it still feels like a welcoming place for the original sort of club-goers. If we were just a club full of models, pretty people all dressed in black, it would be nice to look at for a half an hour, but god, that would be boring. It would feel less tolerant, too.
Despite your club work, you don’t photograph nightlife or street fashion. In fact, you shoot everything with natural light, predominantly in black and white, and most of your work is posed and produced. Why?
I like to start from a question: Is there a story we want to tell? As far as the film and lighting, that has more to do with my upbringing. It was really difficult to get color film in East Germany, and what was available sucked big time. Now I feel like black and white photography creates a different drama, and has a soberness to it that I like. I still use analog film, too.
I’d love to hear about your tattoos. Which was your first?
A cross of thorns, on my leg. I saw a picture in a magazine of Tony Ward, one of Madonna’s former lovers, and he had a cross like it on his forearm. This was 1983, I was 20 at the time. It was such an adrenaline rush. I got addicted to the feeling. I got more and more tattoos until they were creeping up my chest, my neck, and finally I got tattooed on my face. Usually tattoo parlors won’t go there. I had to convince them.
Do you feel like the face tattoo changed the way people look at you, how they interact with you?
I’ve never regretted it. I mean, it was pretty much clear I wasn’t going to go into banking.
When was the last time you got a new tattoo?
Just two days ago, seriously. But before that it had been more than ten years.
Wow. What happened?
I stopped ten years ago because the pain of being tattooed just started getting on my nerves. The adrenaline kick wasn’t there anymore—it was just exhausting. But last summer, I was working the door in short pants, and one of my colleagues pointed out, "Hey, you have stars on your calves!" I’d forgotten about them! But there they were—three stars facing up on one calf, and three facing down on the other. Anyway, they were just so ’90s. They had to go. I had them covered up with two chopped-off wings. It has nothing to do with flying—quite the contrary. It has to do with being grounded. Since it had been so long, I experienced the pain like when I got my first tattoos. But I didn’t wriggle or anything. I just totally relaxed.
"How to Get Into Berghain" has become a subject of fascination on the Internet. There are many sites that speculate on the many and various things one should do to get in.
First, let me say I don’t read that kind of stuff. Myself, I only started using the Internet three years ago. Up until then people had to fax me.
You only started using the Internet three years ago?
I find the anonymity of the social networks annoying…all these spineless, no-name jerks posting their dumb-ass bullshit. My colleagues read the stuff that’s posted and sometimes share it with me, and we joke about it. But I don’t personally care to read it.
I’d like to read you a few of the tips that have been posted online, and get your reactions to them.
[Marquardt looks stone-faced] I’m listening.
Go early. Don’t try to cut the line. Know who’s DJ-ing that night. Dress casually—jeans and a T-shirt is best. Don’t go in a big group. Don’t be too young. Don’t joke or laugh in line. Don’t speak in the line. Or if you must, speak German.
[Laughs, shrugs] We’ve heard all those things, too. But like I said, it’s subjective.
Special thanks to Damian Kastil and Daniel Regut
