After the trauma of WWI, Berlin residents didn't just want to forget, they wanted to be elsewhere altogether, if not in body, then in mind. As the Kaiser’s regime collapsed into the economic chaos of the Weimar Republic, Berliners fell for a miracle drug that filled the void in their hearts and nostrils: Cocaine.

During this era, Germany was the undisputed world leader in pharmaceutical production, holding a near 80% global monopoly on laboratory-produced narcotics. Companies like Merck in Darmstadt were legally producing tons of high-grade cocaine, much of which leaked directly into the vibrant night veins of Berlin.

In districts like Mitte and Schöneberg, the air was literally and figuratively dusty. At the Eldorado, the legendary queer club where even SA leader Ernst Röhm was a regular, Cocaine was the currency of the night. It was a time of total liberation fuelled by chemical courage, where everyone was invited to dance the night away in a drug-induced haze.

But when Berlin woke up every day with a hangover, another side of reality knocked on the door: the city was also a hub of numbing, where WWI veterans self-medicated their PTSD and terrible injuries with morphine and opium, and where anger and frustration started boiling underneath the surface. The 1920s were a chaotic, groggy tightrope walk between artistic explosion and total social collapse, and we all know where it led to. We connect all the dots in the Chemical City tour.