You can’t bake an egg in Berlin

Sven Regener, frontman and singer, trumpeter and bestselling author, 61 years old, a man with humor, an original. Everyone knows him, he is one of the most popular Berliners because he sums up the local attitude to life so precisely. In his songs, as the author of the “Herr Lehmann” novels. I currently have a single question for Sven Regener, sitting in front of me, in his black shirt, with his black glasses, behind his eyes that seem to understand a lot. It’s a very important question. But I can’t ask them right away, not right at the beginning. Let’s start differently.

Now it’s getting dark and cold again in Berlin, and when you sit in the subway in the evening or when the wind in the urban canyons tears at the residents’ coats, which are getting longer every day, you can see the fear of the long and lonely autumn – and the winter months are already flashing in the corners of people’s eyes.

When it gets dark and cold in Berlin, a little consolation is good, and many will turn to their favorite songs and the melancholic supergroup Element of Crime, who, with their melange of dark ballads, chansons and avant-garde sounds, make comforting music that is probably unique in Germany . And this has been the case for an incredible 40 years. “When it gets dark and cold in Berlin,” that’s the name of one of their songs, and that’s also the name of the film that’s now coming to cinemas for its birthday. Half concert film, half portrait of the band, the well-known actor and director Charly Hübner shot it, and a colleague said, I would like to ask Hübner where this should lead when he follows the Eastern punk band Feine Sahne Fischfilet and now the lyrical softies documented from West Berlin. Yes, where is this all going? That’s also what this is about.

Sven Regener, like every real superstar, is smaller in real life than we know him to be. You don’t want to ask him anything about the film, you have to see the film. It’s worth it; However, I would rather tell you why later. If you have someone who understands Berlin in front of you, then it would be wise if he explained to you: What is actually going on here? What is the current situation? Also:

Mr. Regener, the film begins with you standing on stage and saying that you denied where you lived in Berlin for years because no one was interested in Berlin.

Yes. But if you listen to the songs that we wrote back then, they have a lot to do with life in Berlin, be it in West Berlin in the 80s or in the 90s. Although I have to say that in the 80s in West Berlin, East Berlin was always present in a very strange way. How all this was there was inconceivable without the wall. It meant there was another world behind it, the rest of the city. They constantly played together.

Regener talks about Schöneberg at the time, the artistic bohemian movement and “this fermenting humus in which a band like this could emerge.” Because I believe that you cannot separate a band like this from the time and place where it was created.”

He himself was born in Bremen (megasong: “Delmenhorst”), learned to play the guitar at the conservatory and became a communist at the age of 15. Then he played loud no-jazz – in the historical film images, 80s West Berlin glows as confused and dark as you would imagine. Until they were all finally ready for love songs. Regener has lived in Prenzlauer Berg for decades.

But now a very serious question, Mr. Regener: Was everything better before?

No. Why should everything be better? That was a terrible time too. One must not forget that there was a strong social division in West Berlin between the people who had moved there, like me, and the people who experienced the division of the city and really suffered as a result. Berlin was a city that suffered gigantic pain. And at the same time we turned it into a big adventure and playground, which was of course great. And in the end we ignored and denied all this pain, with tremendous coldness. It wasn’t until the fall of the Berlin Wall that a lot changed and improved. This certainly made life difficult for many people. Because certain freedoms no longer existed over the decades. But that’s a topic for a separate film.

Do you enjoy living in the city today? Many complain all the time.

I have lived in this city for over 40 years and will not live in any other. Some people make a fuss about the fact that they were born Berliners. I never understood that. I moved here voluntarily because I thought it was good. I wanted to live in a really big city. And of course Berlin is the only really big city in Germany. That’s how it is. Significantly larger than all the others, and the attitude to life is correspondingly different. You don’t have to idealize it, you can’t guarantee that you live here either. But I always wanted to live in a city like this, and that’s why I like living here.”

But rents, for example, have actually always been lower over the past 40 years than they are today.

That’s just the other side. The fact that a city that becomes healthy again in this way, that is, gets rid of this trauma and closes the vacant lots, can also become the subject of great international speculation and investment. But that is not something that God wants. You can do something about it if you want. However, we as artists have other tasks. We are concerned with what happens to the individual, how the individual comes to terms with his life, and how a person actually comes to terms with his existence. This also includes the tension between the individual and the society that surrounds him. And love songs. And everything else and everything. That’s a lot of material for a lot of songs.

Sven Regener: “Please don’t freak out every time you see something unreasonable”

I then try to explain to Sven Regener why the film put me in such a good mood. But it’s not that simple. I thought of “Liebling Kreuzberg” or this song “Ich mag” by Volker Lechtenbrink. Of well-worn DTV paperback editions with the painted covers by Celestino Piatti, or of the moment when you suddenly came across a program by Alexander Kluge in the night program, of the silence when the cassette in the cassette deck was over, or when you were still in front of America -Memorial Library at Halleschen Tor sat around next to the poor slobs and good-for-nothings. It’s about such a matter of course, such a feeling for the other, that despite all the shit and arguments there is a common ground on which you walk around. And something of that is in this music, in the sound of the trumpet and in Charly Hübner’s fairytale uncle voice. The film exudes a kind of constructive melancholy.

That’s how it’s been going for 40 years: Element of Crime live.Noel Richter/Superfilm

And now I wanted to ask this question that’s been in my head all the time. Namely: How do you stay a cool guy? Because many of your colleagues, many older rockers and many people who are actually smart are starting to say funny things in these feverish times. So the question would actually be: How does it work, how do you not become an idiot?

That’s a very good question. I belong to a baby boomer generation, and now we suddenly realize that we have reached an age where things are getting difficult. Death is approaching. The parents die or are in need of care. The first problems come, the first friends have died. This is a very difficult thing. There is a temptation to clarify the past, there is a temptation to become bitter. What turns out to be a challenge is suddenly perceived as an imposition. A good example is this Covid-19 story. Despite everything that was done politically wrong: Going crazy like these anti-vaccination activists and other swearers can only be explained by complete bitterness and the fact that they have completely lost all sense of scale. Of course you can say: “I won’t get vaccinated and that’s fine.” But to go completely crazy and have the whole state and Bill Gates and the lizard people… – that actually shows that you are in the life situation you are in right now , not clear. And you have to be careful.

What can you do?

I think the most important thing is not to assume that you are always the center of the world. Because of course you also realize that at our age other problems arise, for example new generations grow up who don’t give a shit about what we say and who don’t give a damn about our experiences. We can simply smear all our cleverness into our hair. But that’s not so bad! That’s the normal course of time, we used to be the same way. I don’t know if it makes you cool to think like that. But I don’t think it’s a good idea to freak out at every unreasonable thing.