Imagine this: It is 1967, and you are standing right here at Kurfürstendamm 202. Before you, glowing in large letters, is the sign: Big Eden. Inside—smoke, champagne, music, beautiful women, elegant men. You are in the city’s trendiest club; its owner: Rolf Eden.
The son of a Jewish family that had fled to Israel to escape the Nazis, he returned to Berlin in the 1950s. At the time, the city paid every returnee from abroad a sum of 6,000 marks. Eden used that money—not for a house, not for a car—but for his very first bar. The rest is nightclub history.
His name was always part of the brand: Eden-Saloon, Old Eden, New Eden—and then, the Big Eden right here on the Ku’damm. He shaped the Berlin party scene like no one else. His female staff worked “topless”—a practice that, at the time, was as scandalous as it was alluring.
And Eden himself? A white suit, a model by his side, always in the spotlight. He was Germany’s most famous playboy—and he made no secret of it. On the side, he appeared in numerous films and cultivated his public persona as a true Berlin original.
In 2002, he sold the Big Eden. None of his successors could ever recapture the glamour of those nights. Today, you will find a hotel here—yet if you listen closely, the glasses still seem to clink, and somewhere in the distance, Rolf Eden is laughing his charming, slightly mischievous laugh.
Image 1: By Maria Krüger – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3701541
Image 2: By © Oliver Mark, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=142075181
