---
title: "To Be Free, You Have to Set Free"
canonical: "https://banuucak.com/en/ozgur-olmak-icin-ozgur-birakmak-gerek/"
date: "2018-10-29"
author: "Banu Uçak"
description: "David Bowie takes my hand in Berlin, at Hansa Studios, where he became anonymous and free, and where Heroes is said to have helped loosen the Wall."
categories: ["essays"]
lang: "en"
---

Last night, as I stepped into a time capsule, my hero David Bowie took my hand: the man who left his mark on Berlin, who found his freedom in Berlin, and who in return set Berlin free.

Already a star known the world over, Bowie made three albums in the late 1970s in Berlin, the city he had moved to in flight from his fame, from his drug habit, and from a life he felt had lost its meaning. He recorded them in the building you see behind me, at Hansa Studios. Remaining from the Weimar years, and standing directly opposite the Berlin Wall, where the Nazis once waltzed, Hansa Studios has the silhouette of the new Berlin on its horizon today.

Cities changed Bowie too, just as their ghosts shape the life of every one of us. Berlin, the Wall, and the many cultures of the city worked their way into the music he made then.

![](https://banuucak.com/_astro/7aab8-1ih1eaqx2gpxpdk5emp3wta.DTUr5NYz_Z1BDqur.webp)

Smoking a cigarette on the very spot where this photograph was taken, David Bowie wrote the famous song "Heroes", inspired by a romantic kiss between his producer Tony Visconti and Antonia Maass, one of his vocalists, in front of the Berlin Wall, where skyscrapers stand now.

Bowie became anonymous in Berlin, and free, even while he was a star across the world. The concert he gave in West Berlin in 1987, for the album "Heroes", is believed to have been a catalyst for the social dimension of the Wall's fall. The German government even thanked him in 2016 for his part in the bringing down of the Wall. In short, "To remain free, you have to set free."

"For many years Berlin had appealed to me as a sort of sanctuary-like situation. It was one of the few cities where I could move around in virtual anonymity. I was going broke; it was cheap to live. For some reason, Berliners just didn't care. Well, not about an English rock singer, anyway"

D. Bowie