Tresor (German for safe or vault) is a techno nightclub in Berlin and a record label.
The club was founded in March 1991 in the vaults of the former department store Wertheim at Leipziger Strasse 126-128 in Mitte, the central part of East Berlin, next to the Potsdamer Platz.[1] The history of the club goes back to 1988 when the electronic music label Interfisch opened the Ufo Club in Berlin. Ufo was the original centre of Berlin house and techno, but due to financial problems that club closed in 1990.
After Ufo closed, Interfisch's head, Dimitri Hegemann, and some investors in the club found the new space in East Berlin. This was advantageous timing, as it was only a few months before Germany unified. The vaults under the Wertheim department store proved to be the perfect location for a club, and Tresor quickly became the place to be in Berlin. Tresor continued to be a popular club, having expanded and reconstructed continuously several times to include an outdoor garden area, and a second "Globus" floor. The Tresor floor in the basement was reserved specifically for hard techno, industrial and acid music, while Globus was featured mainly more mellow house sound. The record label Tresor Records was founded soon after the club first opened, in October 1991. Featured artists on the label include Jeff Mills, Blake Baxter, Juan Atkins, Robert Hood, Drexciya, Stewart Walker, Joey Beltram, DJ Surgeon, Pacou, Cristian Vogel and many others.
In 2004 the documentary "Tresor Berlin: The Vault & the Electronic Frontier" was released. Directed by Mike Andrawis, it features interviews with Hegemann, Carola Stoiber, and DJs & artists associated with the club & label.[2] The film covers the period from Hegemann's involvement with the Fishladen and UFO clubs in Berlin-Kreuzberg to the final months prior to Tresor's closure.
Tresor closed on 16 April 2005, after several years' prolonged short-term rent.[3] The city sold the land to an investor group to build offices on the Leipziger Straße location. It was open for each night of April 2005, with the final event starting the Saturday night with queues stretching all the way down the road, and still going Monday morning.
Tresor reopened on 24 May 2007 in the decommissioned southern tract of the combined heat and power plant Heizkraftwerk Berlin-Mitte in Köpenicker Straße.[4]
Since November 2019 the club has a subsidiary in the city of Dortmund called Tresor.West.[5]
In September 2022, Tresor published a photobook,Tresor: True Stories, to document the past 30 years of its history.[6]
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