The Bear DJ
Plays until the sun comes up · Keeper of the Spree
A bear has stood on Berlin's coat of arms for centuries. In 2024 Germany named Berlin's techno culture part of its living heritage.
The legend
A bear has stood on Berlin's coat of arms for centuries. The city's name probably comes from an old Slavic word for marshy ground, not from the German Bär, but Berliners kept the bear anyway. In 2024 Germany added Berlin's techno culture, its clubs and its all-night dancing, to its list of living heritage.
“One slow song for a paper plane, please.”
Where it comes from
The keeper is inspired by two Berlin traditions: the city's bear and its techno clubs.
Bears appear on Berlin's seals, coins and signet rings from the late 12th century. A seal from 1280 shows bears standing on either side of the arms of Brandenburg. The bear only became the main figure on the city's own shield in 1709. Today's arms, a black bear with a red tongue and red claws on a white shield, were fixed by law in 1954.
The first Love Parade, in July 1989, was about 150 people dancing down the Kurfürstendamm under the slogan "Friede, Freude, Eierkuchen", or "peace, joy, pancakes". In March 1991 the club Tresor opened in the old vaults of the Wertheim department store and soon released records by techno artists from Detroit.
Where to see it
From 1939 the city kept live bears in the Bärenzwinger, a bear pit in Köllnischer Park, where more than 50 bear plaques by Otto Lessing already decorated the site. The last city bear, Schnute, died in 2015, and the old pit at Rungestraße 30 is now an art space. Since 2001 life-size painted Buddy Bears, arms stretched out in friendship, have stood outside hotels and embassies; two are at Kurfürstendamm 21. Tresor now plays inside a former power station on Köpenicker Straße, and Berghain, near Ostbahnhof, usually stays open from Saturday night until late Monday morning.
In the game
The bear pulls one ear cup on, nods to the beat and drops the needle on a record. The record skips, and the bear stops nodding for exactly one beat. The bear lifts his paw off the record, nods once and plays the plane out.
