Millions of ravers and DJs from around the
world passed through this door.
The Tresor Club helped to make Berlin a hub
of the international techno scene.
Germany's capital became world-famous as a
party venue and all the big-name DJs appeared
there.
Including Jeff Mills from Detroit.
Some now world-famous stars even launched
their careers here.
Like German DJ Paul van Dyk:
"First, you entered a kind of antechamber.
There was a bar and in the beginning, the
DJ was there.
And there was a metal barrier and the sound
system was behind that, and that's where all
the partying went on."
Paul van Dyk remembers back to the early days:
"That was the first time I'd ever appeared
in front of people.
So, in that sense, I was at home.
I turned the bass down low.
There was this enormous Bose bass subwoofer
system.
So I heard things in my music I'd never heard
before.
I thought, 'Yeah, this is what I want to do.'"
From 2020, the door of the club will be part
of a permanent exhibition.
01:14
It will be the first exhibit of the Berlin
Exhibition at the Humboldt Forum, the reconstruction
of the Berlin Palace.
Chief curator Paul Spies brought the door
to the museum for an exhibtion about how globalization
and social change are transforming Germany's
capital.
"It is a symbol of a hundred years of Berlin
history."
In the early twentieth century, the door protected
the vault of the Wertheim department store,
at the time the biggest and most elegant in
Europe.
The Nazis later expropriated its Jewish owners,
three of whom were murdered.
The building was partly destroyed during the
Second World War and then completely demolished
during the socialist era.
"I think it's a beautiful thing.
I don't know about you, but I see a certain
aesthetic in it.
That's this industrialism.
The rust is wonderful.
I love this patina of history on it."
It was Dimitri Hegemann who first discovered
the department store's intact cellar - including
the vault - after the fall of the Wall.
He and some friends had gone looking for new
spaces for clubbing in former East Berlin.
They stumbled across the subterranean chambers
and ended up at the inter-German border.
"We discovered the cellar stairs behind some
shelves.
Wow!
We stood there, holding up our lighters.
We were all very moved.
We entered this enormous cellar complex, and
it led to this steel chamber.
That was something very special.
I realized immediately that this place offered
the potential for setting up something really
big."
And soon the Tresor became the nucleus of
Berlin's techno scene, attracting ravers from
all over the world.
Today, the parties there are the stuff of
legend.
The dry-ice fog machine helped.
"Usually, you couldn't even see who you were
there with, because it was so full of fog.
You could just lose yourself in the music,
and that made for an atmosphere, visually
as well.
If you couldn't see anyone, you could just
close your eyes."
The Tresor wrote music history.
And though the legendary cellar no longer
houses it, the club lives on in a converted
heating plant.
Without its now legendary door.
