“Soho House Berlin is, despite its website, built on a foundation of amnesia,” Noam Elcott, a professor of 20th-century art at Columbia University, told me after visiting the property last month. “The building was completely gut-renovated. There’s next to nothing by the way of commemoration, remembrance, or even ‘ostalgie,’ ” a tongue-in-cheek nostalgia for the East. “As you can tell I was not impressed.” In a way he is right. While inside Soho House Berlin, it is not obvious what came before. I had no idea of the history of the building until I randomly sat next to a guy at the bar who told me the story. But if you know what you are looking for, there are a few clues to the building’s past.
The white, plain exterior of the building looks the same as it did when it hosted the Nazis and the Soviets. The grave of Horst Wessel, the image that the Nazis hoped would inspire the leaders of the Hitler Youth, remains visible from the windows. Soho House has even incorporated a few pieces of history into the design: The small dining room, used mainly for club events and private parties, is called the Politburo, after the ruling elite of the SED, and retains its original wood paneling. And the overall style of the interior (black-and-white-tiled floors, ornate furniture, pop art) is inspired by the building’s days as a department store in the 1920s and ’30s.
Yet given the darkness of the history it contains, it is hard to argue with the impulse to break with the past. “Our aim was to lift the mood of the space to reflect an age of optimism,” I was told by Susie Atkinson, Soho House’s interior designer. “Subversively, I wanted to bring a new freshness, with color and excitement, to attract young, aspiring, and creative people and to move away from the darker history.”