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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. The club evolved from the gay scene in Berlin in the nineties. 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. That’s the theme in any good club: diversity, friction. My people all have their own personalities, and you can see their sensibilities reflected in the crowd over the course of their shifts. They have to understand what Berghain is all about first, and I try to give them that foundation. Only a few of my guys are allowed to select guests at the door. 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. And last weekend I actually wore all white at the door, to mess with everybody. Some of my colleagues have entire rooms filled with New Balances. 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. 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. The skulls ring is from a label, though, Wildcat in London.īerghain is now associated with that sort of aesthetic-black, gothic, minimalist. Most of them aren’t from major fashion labels or anything, they’re just associated with personal memories. 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. The one I’m wearing today, for example, is from Preach, a label based in Dusseldorf. Right now it’s definitely about leather jackets. So I’d wear them everywhere, even when I went to the supermarket. For example, there was a time when I really loved bow ties-just the way they looked against my face tattoos. That’s how I got my first job as a doorman.ĭo 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. 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. I hadn’t been too interested in all that at first, but I needed to make some money. 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 was completely sucked into it.Īt the time my younger brother, Oliver, was becoming a big part of Berlin’s electronic-music scene. It was this phenomenal, fascinating, vibrant feeling.
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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. At the same time, though, almost anything was possible. I’d been shooting for Sibylle, an East German fashion magazine, but that kind of work really dried up.
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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. 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.
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He may be the only bouncer in the world who has also done a menswear collaboration with Hugo Boss. Marquardt, while not working the door, is a distinguished photographer who has published three art books and a memoir, Die Nacht ist Leben. 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. Many folks wait hours and then, with no explanation, get politely asked to step aside and go elsewhere.
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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). 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. 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.
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