»That's Just How We Were«

Director and photographer Oliver Päßler talks with Tim Ra about their shared time in the Berlin music and art scene of the 1990s and 2000s.

It is about Berlin's living-room club scene as techno's intimate bastard child, about Jutta Weitz and a Berlin freedom that no longer exists in this way, about the path from Wohnung to No Underground and about all-nighter sessions at Club Maria — and about why the first Wohnung album is only being released after thirty years.

They tell of a raid on an East German hair salon, of the secret video shoot for »Donna« in a cemetery—complete with a self-ordered funeral wreath—of the counter-demonstration against Chilly Gonzales’ candidacy for the presidency of the Berlin underground, and of radical actions with machine guns in front of the Reichstag. And of course, of a massive golden penis.

At the end is the shoot for one of the most beautiful German-language love songs on an island in Lake Tegel — including a love scene in the bog. A conversation about a city where everything seemed possible, about music, art, friendship, and the wild paths of a decades-long collaboration that eventually even led to a shared family.

The conversation was recorded in August 2026 at the Lovelab Dreamspace. It contains numerous previously unreleased original recordings from that era.

Chapter

• 00:00 — Laid-back beginnings with Wohnung
• 01:48 — »Everything was possible«
• 02:46 — The living room scene: techno's intimate bastard child
• 03:26 — Jutta Weitz and the Berliner Freiheit
• 04:39 — After 30 years: the first Wohnung record
• 05:38 — From Wohnung to No Underground
• 06:34 — The raid on the hair salon
• 08:36 — »Free Transform«: No Underground and the Underground
• 10:29 — All-night sessions at Club Maria
• 11:10 — Chilly Gonzales and the Presidency of the Underground
• 12:59 — »Donna«: Sex shop, cemetery, and funeral wreath
• 16:30 — Splatterdandy: Hip-hop against the establishment
• 17:43 — Polylux, Steve Morell and the queer electro scene
• 18:23 - Radical actions: with machine guns at the Reichstag
• 20:00 — The Golden Penis and the Artificial Heart
• 21:51 — »Wüstenwinde«: A Love Song
• 22:41 — Love scene in the moor
• 23:46 — From the underground to the family