Hush – Berliner Clubs in Zeiten der Stille

42 Berlin clubs, 45 portraits, 42 special places at special times, 42 pictures, 45 stories about the places.

They are synonymous with dancing, sweat, closeness, freedom and loss of control for a while, but an unintentional silence has settled over the city's once noisiest venues since the pandemic began. For their book, Staggat and Stein visited more than 40 Berlin electro clubs from April to December 2020 and interviewed the often forgotten faces of this crisis: the club manager, the bartender, the booker, the DJ, the person in charge of the toilets, the cleaner, the bouncer,...

During their quarantine tour of the clubs, they came across people who are not only fighting for their jobs, but who are also afraid of losing their homes. They met them in places that were certainly created for people, but also seem to be quite devoid of them. "HUSH" is at first sight a book about clubs in the midst of the Corona crisis, but on closer inspection it is a book about what the City can also be. Staggat and Stein met enterprising, desperate, but crisis-resistant characters who willingly gave insight not only into their situation, but also into their premises. They descended into old breweries, entered power stations, suburban train arches, park roofs, individual houses, signal boxes, backyards, vaulted cellars, boats and sheds. Lost places with a history - spaces that were mostly created in the eastern part of Berlin after the fall of the Wall. At a time when party pioneers exploited wasteland industrial landscapes as places of creativity and freedom. this book gives an exclusive insight into a unique subculture. "HUSH" retains what the Corona crisis has jeopardized, in this diversity.

About the authors

Marie Staggat's love for music and Berlin is undeniable. At the age of 21, she started working at the legendary Tresor and photographed all the German and international DJs, her photos illustrating record and magazine covers. In 2019, she participated in the "ELECTRO" exhibition at the Philharmonie de Paris, which has been on display at the Design Museum in London since 2020. In 2016, she published her first book 313ONELOVE about the Detroit electronic music scene.

Journalist Timo Stein was editor and reporter for the online news portal Watson from 2018 to 2020 and ensured that Watson was established in Germany through exclusive reporting on the AfD scene and interviews with leading politicians. From 2010 to 2016, he was an editor at Cicero. He has also published texts in the Jüdischer Echo, Rhein-Zeitung, the music magazine Spex, SWR and 11 Freunde.