Lost Freedoms: Was 90s Berlin the Last Great Era of Pre-Digital Expression?

After the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989, East Berlin was the epitome of an adventurous, unhinged playground; a magnet for rebellious young people with nothing to lose and everything to gain.

As the Soviet soldiers and officials withdrew, the ownership of buildings was left undecided and unclear, leading to large areas being taken over by adolescent squatters seeking community and fresh starts.

At 17, Christian Stemmler dropped out of school and moved into the squat scene. He took pictures of what he saw around him: kitchen raves, makeshift clubs, and close-knit communities that went beyond any kind of aesthetics or clique. Berlin was open and raw, its culture being forged by dropout kids just like himself.

Now, Stemmler is dropping a new photography book based on the images he took of the time. ANFANG/BEGINNING: BERLIN 1994-99, published on IDEA, is an unfiltered time capsule that takes us back to a time that changed the world—how we listen to music, the club experiences we seek, the freedom we idealise.

It captures rare, candid moments shared between the youth who started it all by not giving a fuck about precedent, embracing the unknown to forge their way as underdog architects in a city rebuilding itself, positioning themselves at the heart of its transformation and embedding themselves in the city’s DNA.

"We never wanted the party to end"

“We were so curious. Hungry for adventure. We wanted to dance, to hug, to scream. We never wanted the party to end," recalls Christian. "We weren’t aware that our way of living and clubbing would inspire so many and become the blueprint of how people would party for the decades to come."

He also reflects how the internet curtailed this sense of freedom—that this era in Berlin reflects a time that is simply ungraspable in the modern age; not just for socio-political reasons, but for how we function and socialise. "It was the peak and yet the beginning of the end of subcultures in the last years before the internet. An adventure that now seems like an exceptionally beautiful indie movie.”

ANFANG/BEGINNING: BERLIN 1994-99 is now available for purchase on IDEA, with a launch party scheduled in Paris. Click for here more information.