How Bowie united Berlin just for one day
A LOT has changed around Hansa Studios. When David Bowie was in Berlin between 1976 and 1978, Hansa was surrounded by wasteland. The Berlin Wall could be seen from the control room window.
When Bowie sent his producer and backing singer out so he could concentrate on his lyrics, he spotted them canoodling by the Wall. The guns being shot above their heads may have been a bit of artistic licence, but them kissing as though nothing could fall was immortalised in Heroes.
The guides at Berlin Musictours make no apologies for being avid Bowie fans, and their excursions around the star’s old haunts aim to show how he was changed by his time in the city.
He had arrived from Los Angeles, ravaged by drugs. Stopping by Bowie’s apartment in Schonberg, and the low-key cafe down the road that he frequented, it becomes clear that the relative normality of life in West Berlin saved him. He could go about undisturbed and pull himself back together again.
But what makes the tour special is that it also delves into Bowie’s impact on Berlin – it morphed from isolated outpost into a cultural hotspot.
The place where this manifested itself most clearly was on the lawn outside the Reichstag. The German parliament building stands next to where the Wall ran. Not much else was built nearby, so the open space was used for concerts. Some speakers were positioned facing east, enabling those on the other side of the Wall to hear. Usually, the East German
authorities were relaxed about this but on June 6, 1987, as Bowie was playing, they brought out stun guns and water cannon. The star would later say that he could hear people on both sides of the Wall singing to Heroes. The loudest cheers came when he offered his best wishes to ‘our friends on the other side of the Wall’. This also became the first time that chants of ‘down with the wall’ were heard. The heroes of both sides had been united, just for one day.