Hansa Tonstudio Berlin: History, "Heroes" and the Hall by the Wall
Hansa Tonstudio is the recording studio at Köthener Strasse 38 in Berlin where David Bowie made "Heroes" in 1977. Its big room, the Meistersaal, is a hall from 1913 that stood within sight of the Berlin Wall, which is why Bowie called it the big hall by the Wall. Iggy Pop recorded Lust for Life there, Depeche Mode made most of Some Great Reward there, and Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds and U2 followed. Hansa Studios still works in the building, and the Meistersaal is now an event venue that also hosts recordings.
The most famous minutes in the building's history are the last ones of "Heroes". Bowie starts close to the microphone and ends up shouting, and the hall opens up around him, because Tony Visconti had gated microphones waiting further down the room. The reverb on that vocal is the hall itself, played by the singer.
Hansa Tonstudio at a glance
Address: Köthener Strasse 38, Berlin-Kreuzberg, near Potsdamer Platz.
The building: opened on 6 October 1913 for an association of Berlin building firms. The Meistersaal was the hall where master craftsmen received their certificates, hence the name.
Hansa: the label and production company founded in 1962 by the brothers Peter and Thomas Meisel.
The Hall by the Wall: the Meisels took over the building in the mid-1970s and turned the Meistersaal into Hansa Studio 2.
Rooms: Studio 1 (1973, in Halensee), Studio 2 in the Meistersaal, and a mixing studio added in 1980.
Consoles: Visconti tracked "Heroes" on a Neve in Studio 2. Hansa later bought three custom SSL 4000 E desks in its own "Hansa blue".
Key records: Bowie's "Heroes" (1977), Iggy Pop's Lust for Life (1977), Depeche Mode's Some Great Reward (1984) and Black Celebration (1986), Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds' The Firstborn Is Dead (1985) and Your Funeral... My Trial (1986), and the start of U2's Achtung Baby (1990).
Today: Hansa Studios still records in the building, and the Meistersaal has been an event venue since 1994.
One studio name, several rooms
"Tonstudio" is German for recording studio, so Hansa Tonstudio, Hansa Studios and Hansa by the Wall all point to the same company. But "recorded at Hansa" can mean different rooms. Studio 1 opened in 1973 in Halensee, in the west of the city. Studio 2 is the Meistersaal, the big hall in Kreuzberg next to the Wall. Iggy Pop's The Idiot was mixed in Studio 1, so it is a Hansa record without being a Meistersaal record. When people talk about the Hansa sound, they mean the hall.
The Meistersaal before Hansa
An association of Berlin building firms, the Verband der Baugeschäfte von Berlin und Vororten, bought the plot at Köthener Strasse 38 in 1910. The building opened on 6 October 1913 with the Meistersaal as its centrepiece, a hall for guild ceremonies that also hosted readings (Kurt Tucholsky read there in 1921).
The building was heavily damaged in the Second World War and only patched up afterwards. From 1961 it stood right by the Wall, on the edge of West Berlin and far from the city's centre. The Ariola record company started recording in the hall in the 1960s, drawn by its acoustics and its quiet location. Hansa rented space there from 1965, and the Meisel brothers bought the building in the mid-1970s (1975 in Hansa's own account, 1976 in the Meistersaal's). The official Meistersaal history and Hansa's history page cover the dates.
Why did artists come? West Berlin in the late 1970s was cheap and cut off from the rest of the music business. Nobody from a label dropped in, so the room was all that mattered.
David Bowie and "Heroes" at Hansa
Bowie and Iggy Pop moved to West Berlin at the end of September 1976, and Visconti came with them to finish Low. The three albums Bowie made with Brian Eno in those years are called the Berlin Trilogy, but only one of them was made mainly at Hansa. Low was recorded mostly at the Château d'Hérouville in France, with sessions continuing at Hansa in October 1976. "Heroes" was recorded at Hansa Studio 2 in July and August 1977. Lodger was recorded at Mountain Studios in Montreux and mixed in New York. Bowie came back to Hansa in 1981 to record the Baal EP.
How Visconti recorded the "Heroes" vocal
Visconti explained the setup to Richard Buskin in a Sound On Sound Classic Tracks feature in 2004. The first microphone was a valve U47 in front of Bowie, compressed hard because Visconti expected him to shout. A U87 stood about 15 feet away, gated to open at a set level. A second U87 sat at the far end of the hall and opened only when Bowie really sang loud. All three went onto one track, because the 24-track tape was nearly full, and the take on the record is probably the third. In Visconti's words: "That reverb on his voice is therefore the room itself".
The performance controls the space: quiet lines stay close and dry, shouted lines open the hall. An automated reverb send can copy that curve, but it cannot react to a singer the way the room did.
Fripp, Eno and the lyric
Robert Fripp came in at Eno's suggestion and recorded his guitar parts in three days. For the long sustained line on "Heroes" he worked with feedback, standing at marked spots on the floor where each note would feed back from the amplifier, with his guitar running through Eno's EMS Synthi. Eno's own Synthi AKS adds the shuddering texture that builds through the song.
The lyric came from the studio window. Bowie saw Visconti and the singer Antonia Maass kiss by the Wall. He first said the song was about an anonymous couple, to protect Visconti, who was married at the time, and confirmed the story in 2003. Accounts from the sessions also describe border guards on the other side watching the studio through binoculars.
Iggy Pop: The Idiot and Lust for Life
Bowie worked on both of Iggy Pop's 1977 albums, and together they show the difference between Hansa's rooms. The Idiot was recorded at the Château d'Hérouville and at Musicland in Munich in the summer of 1976, then mixed by Visconti with Bowie and Pop in Hansa Studio 1. Lust for Life was made in the Hall by the Wall in May and June 1977, produced by Bowie, Pop and Colin Thurston under the name the Bewlay Bros. Pop later said it was written, recorded and mixed in eight days.
The band was mostly Pop's touring group, Hunt and Tony Sales on drums and bass and Ricky Gardiner on guitar, with Carlos Alomar added on guitar. Gardiner credited that tour-hardened band for a more live feel than The Idiot. The drums are physical, and the bass and drums lock together the way they do when players react to the same air. We have written about why that matters in recording a band live in a room.
Depeche Mode and the room as an effect
In the 1980s Hansa became Depeche Mode's second home. They mixed Construction Time Again there in 1983. For Some Great Reward they started at Music Works in London around Christmas 1983, ran out of booked time and moved to Hansa, where most of the album was recorded. That is the record with "People Are People" and "Master and Servant". Black Celebration was started at Westside Studios in London in November 1985 and finished back at Hansa early in 1986. Daniel Miller and Gareth Jones produced both albums with the band.
A reverberant hall sounds like the wrong place for synthesisers, and Jones used that. At Hansa he experimented with recording atmospheres: instruments were played through large amplifiers in the room and recorded with microphones, which gave electronic sounds air, reflections and weight. Our guide to re-amping covers the same idea for guitars and synths.
The next album, Music for the Masses, was made in Paris and London and mixed at Puk Studios in Denmark, and the band went back to Puk for Violator.
Nick Cave, U2 and the years after the Wall
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds recorded The Firstborn Is Dead (released 1985) and Your Funeral... My Trial (1986) at Hansa. Wikipedia's list of Hansa clients also includes Killing Joke, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Wire, Pixies and Manic Street Preachers.
U2 flew into Berlin on the eve of German reunification in October 1990 to start Achtung Baby in the Meistersaal. The studio had been neglected, equipment had to be brought in, and the band came close to splitting during the sessions. The turning point was "One", which grew out of two chord progressions The Edge played back to back. U2 came back briefly in January 1991 and finished the album in Dublin. Even in that room, the songs had to come from the band.
The fall of the Wall also ended the hall's quiet location. Studio 2 closed for cost reasons, and in 1993 Thomas Meisel decided to return the building to its old life as a venue. After 18 months of restoration the Meistersaal reopened for concerts, theatre and readings in October 1994, and since 2009 BESL Eventagentur has run it as an event location. Hansa Studios kept working in the building, and R.E.M. recorded parts of Collapse into Now there in 2011.
What made Hansa sound the way it did
The room: a high-ceilinged 1913 hall with a long, musical decay that flatters drums and vocals.
Distance miking: gated far microphones that answered how hard Bowie sang.
Playing together: a touring band cutting Lust for Life fast.
The room as an effect: instruments played through amplifiers in the hall and recorded from a distance.
Distance from the business: no label visits, nothing to do but work.
What Hansa teaches about recording rooms
You do not need a converted concert hall next to a Cold War border to make a great record. The lesson is that the room takes part in the music, in ways you cannot fully control. Visconti did not know exactly what he would get when he gated a microphone at the far end of the hall to Bowie's volume. He had a theory and experience, and then he responded to what happened.
Our opinion, which some engineers will argue with: most modern recordings are too afraid of the room. People treat every surface, close-mic everything and add fake space later. A real room with a real reflection is a decision, and decisions are what make a record sound like somebody. The famous valve U47 was the ordinary part of the "Heroes" setup; the far microphones made the record, which is the argument of the U47 won't save you. We think about this when we record a band live or on location in a difficult room. More in the room as an instrument and room and ambient mics for recording.
How to get some of the Hansa sound in your own recordings
Put up a far room mic and use it. Gate or compress it so it opens on the loud parts, the way Visconti did. More in room mics as evidence of the performance.
Record the band together. Bleed between instruments is part of the glue on Lust for Life.
Play sounds back into a space. Re-amp a synth or a drum machine through an amplifier in a big room, as Depeche Mode and Gareth Jones did.
Commit while tracking. The Hansa records were not rescued in the mix. Why that matters.
Treat added reverb like a room. If the space did not happen at tracking, add it with the same restraint, as in taming reverb.
What an earlier version of this article got wrong
This page merges two older Tapetown posts about Hansa, and both had errors.
The old "Hall by the Wall" post said Bowie made much of the Berlin Trilogy at Hansa. Only "Heroes" was made mainly there; Low was recorded mostly in France and Lodger in Montreux.
It said Iggy Pop recorded The Idiot at Hansa. The Idiot was only mixed there, in Studio 1.
It said Visconti opened the far microphones as Bowie got louder. Noise gates did it, triggered by Bowie's voice.
It credited Hansa's SSL consoles for the Hansa sound and for drawing 1980s bands. "Heroes" was tracked on a Neve, and we found no source for the SSL claim.
Two of its links pointed to Google searches for posts that do not exist.
Our earlier "About a Studio" post on Hansa once said Lodger was mixed at Hansa (it was mixed in New York), that The Idiot was recorded there and that Music for the Masses was made there. We corrected those in 2026.
Several books call the Meistersaal a Nazi-era ballroom. The building's own history only mentions heavy war damage, so we leave the claim out.
Hansa Tonstudio FAQ
Where is Hansa Tonstudio?
Hansa Tonstudio is at Köthener Strasse 38 in Berlin-Kreuzberg, near Potsdamer Platz. Its big hall, the Meistersaal, stood within sight of the Berlin Wall when Bowie recorded there.
What albums were recorded at Hansa Studios?
The best known are David Bowie's "Heroes", Iggy Pop's Lust for Life, Depeche Mode's Some Great Reward and Black Celebration, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds' The Firstborn Is Dead and Your Funeral... My Trial, and the start of U2's Achtung Baby. Bowie's Low was partly recorded there, and Iggy Pop's The Idiot was mixed there.
How did Tony Visconti record the "Heroes" vocal?
He used three microphones: a valve Neumann U47 close to Bowie and two U87s further down the hall on noise gates. The far microphones opened only when Bowie sang loud enough, so the reverb on the vocal is the room itself.
Why is Hansa called the Hall by the Wall?
Because the Meistersaal stood within sight of the Berlin Wall. Bowie called it the big hall by the Wall, and Hansa by the Wall became the studio's nickname.
Is Hansa Tonstudio still open, and can you visit?
Yes. Hansa Studios still records in the building, and the Meistersaal is an event venue that also hosts recordings. Berlin Music Tours runs guided tours, which you can book through the Hansa Studios website.
Keep reading
Recorded your band in a room with character and want a mix that keeps it? We mix indie rock, post-punk and shoegaze for artists everywhere, and we have written about how we mix live recordings. Send us the rough mix.
