In itself, a look at the website says a lot about the current situation. The Harry Klein For example, the “Program” tab currently lists what was possible in 2021. Summer outdoor events in the “Collective Garden 3000” in Weissenburger Park. Autumn club nights as part of the short opening phase. And of course a plethora of archived live streams, which meanwhile form an impressive collection on YouTube. Previous program points for 2022: a “vaccination week at Harry Klein” and a “rapid test center at Harry Klein”.
Elsewhere, people are less nostalgic. the Red sun admits that there is not much to see here at the moment and that the break is being used to redesign the website. The neighboring Pacha, how Harry Klein is currently converting into a test center, draws attention to the ongoing emergency situation under the campaign title “Silent Nights”. And the Blitz club announces that the in-house food truck now offers lunch dishes without animal ingredients. Common Google Maps status: temporarily closed.
“We feel forgotten and without prospects.”
In fact, in this “temporarily” is the whole tricky misery of the clubs. After all, this lies in an almost endless waiting for something to pass that just won’t pass since March 2020. In just over a month – if you disregard the eight-week interim opening in Bavaria and all kinds of open-air improvisations – there will be a forced break of around two years, and there is still no end to be thought of in view of the incidences in excess of a thousand. The clubs, so much can be prophesied, will be the last to be allowed to open their doors again and the first to have them closed again if necessary. Distance and hygiene rules, that’s just not something that can realistically be implemented on the dance floor, the virus is just too sneaky for that.
So there is a corresponding amount of frustration when Peter Fleming, Managing Director of Harry Klein, looks into the near future. “We’re actually not very optimistic,” he says. “If you look at the reports from the cabinet meetings of the Bavarian state government, for example, you won’t find any mention of the club scene for weeks. You can ask yourself whether the state government is even aware of the club culture. We feel forgotten and without prospects.” The prospects are not much rosier a few hundred meters further along the former “celebration banana” at Maximiliansplatz. “April or May at the earliest, rather later,” he expects the clubs to be allowed to open again, says Roman Lehmann, who runs the Pacha.
Great effort for a short opening phase in autumn – then everything was reversed
Both look back with nostalgia on the opening phase in autumn. Fleming speaks of a “permanent state of happiness”, Lehmann of the “fulfillment of a long-awaited normalization”, which, however, brought more effort than benefit. “We started the whole machine again, ended short-time work, hired staff, booked artists, ordered goods and implemented effective control systems for compliance with the Corona rules. We had to reverse all of this after a very short time, and primarily we were allowed to pay for it our employees, whom we again had to lay off on unemployment or short-time work.”
Powerlessness and hopelessness sound there, they are based on the ongoing dependence of an industry on government regulations and grants. Because even if the neglected treatment by politicians is clearly a thorn in the side of the club operators, they have no choice but to sit it out and hope for a better future. “We’ll keep the situation going as long as there is government aid,” says Roman Lehmann. “If the aid stops, I see no chance of being able to keep the business running economically.”