The Pfefferberg in the nineties

In the cultural-historical interim period of post-reunification Berlin, the Pfefferberg buildings were used by a fluctuating, colourful mixture of different cultural producers, service providers and tradespeople.
The clubs and the romantic, morbid beer garden with adjoining hall on Schönhauser Allee were popular and played a decisive role in the city’s youth culture history in the 1990s. The summer open-air concerts and performances here explicitly promoted the collective feeling for the new eastern part of the city, which was characterised by a sense of new beginnings and apocalyptic associations in equal measure.

The Pfefferwerk Verein zur Förderung von Stadtkultur e.V. was in charge of this area. It organised around 200 cultural events per year and attracted thousands of visitors. Initially, the concert activities focussed on world music. Over time, the curators increasingly focussed on Francophone sound projects. Artists from the Maghreb and Black Africa were also present on the stages of the Pfefferberg. Eastern European and Latin American groups were also popular. The annual flamenco festival achieved cult status. In addition to the purely concert performances, the “Dance Days” were another successful large-scale project.

Electronic music experienced its creative heyday in Berlin in the early nineties. The Pfefferberg clubs became laboratories for the new movement. DJs collaborated with visual artists to fuse sounds with projections and light designs to create spatial installations. In the warmer months of the year, the projects sometimes moved upstairs from the basement and transformed the beer garden into a futuristic environment.

The area adjacent to Christinenstraße behind the venues initially remained largely unknown to the general public, but the few visitors hungry to discover it were always impressed by its post-industrial, ruinous splendour. 

History could be read directly from the buildings. Half-bombed houses were rebuilt with rubble stones.

Further open spaces opened up at this location, which were utilised over time by a heterogeneous, diverse tenant community. From 1996, the Pfefferbergareal on Christinenstraße was home to the offices of Pfefferwerk Stadtkultur gGmbH, which has since been heavily involved in work with children and young people, promoting dialogue between the generations, designing activities for migrants, running workshops and carrying out labour market and employment projects. Other non-profit organisations and initiatives were also active there, such as mob e.V., WeTeK e.V., Förderband e.V. and the Intercultural Network, which expanded the socio-cultural spectrum with a variety of offers.

In addition to the companies in the Pfefferwerk group, artists’ studios, stone carving workshops, an architect’s office, small craft businesses, a Dutch beer wholesaler and a few temporary party organisers were set up, the legality of which could still be debated posthumously. Synergy effects quickly developed between the tenants at the time, similar to those that are still present in the newly developed Pfefferberg. Many companies and initiatives that were in their infancy at the time have since developed into renowned companies. Alexander Mende’s Pinguin Druck GmbH and orange architekten, who have also developed a post-industrial building in Marienburger Strasse, as well as the stone sculptors Hamann and Lucker, who have restored large parts of the Museum Island with their Oberbaum GmbH, may serve as examples.

The work on and in the individually used rooms of the Pfefferberg took place in the awareness of an immediate time limit, as no permanent rental contracts could be negotiated due to the situation.