Practicing Utopia: The Mensch Meier Collective in the Time of COVID-19
Walking into the Mensch Meier with the lights turned on rarely occurs. Although a proper night of dancing at any techno club in Berlin continues past sunrise, the Mensch Meier’s labyrinthine interior remains dark as long as the base notes are roaring and the people are spinning. During these long nights, visitors might catch a glimpse of a few shoes, a cuckoo clock, or a photo collage hanging on the club’s intensely decorated walls, but the darkness and the proximity of people preclude extended observation.
However, the COVID-19 pandemic changed everything for clubs in Berlin. The Mensch Meier now offers guided tours of its retrofitted warehouse to compensate for lost revenue during closures. It’s one of many strategies adopted by the club community. I donated and signed up for a tour, eager to study the multitude of objects I knew existed but had scarcely seen.
Like most clubs, the Mensch Meier stands on the east side of the city in an industrial neighborhood (Figure 1). Wide streets, wholesale grocery stores, and storage centers define the area. The Mensch Meier blends in, with an overgrown lot and few external markings to distinguish it from the next abandoned building.
Figure 1. Side exterior, Mensch Meier, Berlin, 2021. Photograph by Kiersten Thamm.
My small tour group waited outside the worn-down structure for our guide to appear (Figure 2). We could hear the passing cars zoom by until the front door began to open. Smoke, colored lights, and the thumping of techno came spilling out. Our guide, a tall, disheveled person named Jona, welcomed us and turned down the music while we relished our first glance of the overwhelming interior. Standing in the large entry space, we tried to decipher the countless signatures and scribbles on the walls while Jona happily explained the club’s history and the collective that created and maintains it.
Figure 2. Entry front, Mensch Meier, Berlin, 2021. Photograph by Kiersten Thamm.
The Mensch Meier collective works to create an egalitarian community that incorporates anyone regardless of skin color, sexuality, expressions of gender, class, nationality, or religion. It not only welcomes everyone to coexist but asks them to participate in shaping the community.
The collective explains itself this way:
We are a venue. A platform. A collective. We are all about grassroots democratic solidarity. We are Mensch Meier. And you are, too, when you are here. We want to create a space in which we can relate to and shape reality in a self-determined way. Unfortunately, this is not an achievable goal under capitalism or patriarchy. But we decided to do it anyway, treating this goal as our path to and for the future. This is a space designed for inspiration, intervention, movement, and for Culture-Arts-Party-Politics [Kulturkunstpartypolitik]. We use the tools of criticism and the weapons of art to create an undisciplined theater for all.
The equality espoused by the collective originates from a focus on the shared experience of humanity. Even the title of the club suggests this. “Mensch Meier” is the German equivalent to “John Doe,” implying that the details that may create the appearance of difference between people—and which are often used as the foundation for social divisions and hierarchies—don’t matter here. To embrace this shared experience of humanity in culture, arts, and parties is political, which generates a levity in everything the group does.
Jona is the official Keeper of the Walls. He suggests how to decorate them, mediates disagreements associated with them, contacts people interested in contributing to them, and scrounges up materials for them.
In one room, someone had nailed a pair of well-worn shoes to the wall. When I asked Jona about them, he declared that they were his old shoes. He loved these shoes. He had worn them for years and made so many significant memories while wearing them that tossing them into a garbage heap seemed impossible. Here on the wall, they brought him joy. They also brought the collective joy, because other members had participated in making those memories. The shoes might not always be visible in the dark, but everyone knew they were there.
Jona pointed out objects around the room that carried similar stories, such as a pair of shoes that succumbed to a dropped paint can and a standard-issue GDR curiosity cabinet. While the paint-covered shoes had something to do with a group renovation project, the GDR cabinet reminded the members of their youths. In the office, objects hung from the formation of the group. A thick frame encased a large sheet of butcher paper with a list of names written by different hands. Jona explained that this was the shortlist of names for the collective. Everyone wrote down the possible titles, discussed them one by one, and ultimately reached a unanimous agreement on the name Mensch Meier. He talked about how this process and the need to reach a unanimous decision epitomized the ideals of the collective. The group treasures that list now as their founding document—something to remind them of their origin and hopes.
It is not only the members of the collective that leave their marks on the structure. Some objects on the walls came from visitors. On the club’s opening night, the collective asked everyone who came to contribute a piece of art instead of the proposed €10 entrance fee. Everything had to have a personal connection to the person bringing it—maybe the visitor made it, or it hung on their grandparents’ wall. After the evening ended, and without any aesthetic coordination, installation began.
The collective continues to invite visitors to participate in adding to the physical space. Though an entrance fee is now required, visitors can bring markers inside the club with them. This right is unusual for Berlin clubs; it is customary to leave everything at the door. But the collective treats the physical space as a bonding mechanism. Putting a name on the wall is not about possessing it, or about increasing your social capital. With phones checked at the door, neither photography nor text updates on social media channels are possible. The experiences people create within the walls of the club are inextricably bound to those walls. The drawings, signatures, and scribbles that people add to the Mensch Meier walls operate as an act of belonging.
“The collective treats the physical space as a bonding mechanism. Putting a name or a mark on the wall is not about possessing it, or about increasing your social capital.”
Jona takes seriously the right to self-expression. Toward the end of our tour, he brought us to the lower section of an out-of-the-way wall. Someone had written a jumble of indistinguishable, green letters against a sky-blue wall. Jona explained that the words once formed an epithet. As the Keeper of the Walls, he had the responsibility of deciding what to do. In general, Berlin clubs offer an open community where anyone that wants to dance is welcome. Epithets like the one written on the wall are few and far between. Jona, with much reluctance, painted over it. But the insult was someone’s contribution, and Jona regretted his actions. A few weeks later, someone rewrote it. This time, Jona extended the epithet by enough letters to write a phrase about taking a nap. That portion of the wall hasn’t changed in years.
These markings and the objects in Mensch Meier help carry the load of maintaining an egalitarian community. This material culture is all the more critical now, as the systems that impact the community bear down.
In a typical year, the Mensch Meier only barely avoids bankruptcy. The collective keeps entrance fees and drinks as cheap as possible to maintain an open community. Bottles of beer and Pfeffi shots come at just a few euros each. Simultaneously, rent costs more than €14,000 per month, even though the current owner, a developer from West Germany, bought the building from the reunified German government in the early 1990s for one D-Mark. Building regulations don’t make exceptions for people trying to create a miniature utopia; the group fell €160,000 in debt bringing the building up to code before it first opened. The collective also deals with unexpected expenses like broken audio equipment. Many of the members have lived in the warehouse, because the small salaries they receive go first when money is tight. They also endure German cultural norms, which celebrate those who work in regulated professions with robust savings accounts.
The Mensch Meier now struggles to withstand the long-term closures of the COVID-19 pandemic. But the collective continues to practice their utopian ideals with the support of the materials they have thoughtfully crafted, chosen, and conserved over the past decade. They have yet to close their doors or give up their way of life. Every shoe, cabinet, and scribble strengthen Jona’s resolve. And the building, now on display to visitors like me, offers hope in the darkness.
