In 1962 brothers Peter and Thomas Meisel of
Edition Meisel & Co. founded Hansa Musik Produktion company and the
Hansa Records label. The label's name (and the name of the related recording studio) was inspired by the
Hanseatic League, a medieval Northern European maritime trade network. Beginning in 1965, Hansa rented
Ariola Records' production facilities at the historic
Meistersaal located within the building at Köthener Straße 38. The company built its own recording studio at its offices in 1969, before establishing
Hansa Studio I on Nestorstrasse in Berlin's
Halensee neighbourhood in 1973. In 1975, the Meisel brothers bought the Köthener Strasse building from Ariola and assumed management of the Meistersaal studio, which they named
Hansa Studio II, In 1976,
David Bowie and
Iggy Pop came to Berlin to complete their respective albums
Low and
The Idiot at Hansa's studios before also recording their follow-up albums,
"Heroes" and
Lust for Life at Hansa with producer
Tony Visconti and
Brian Eno. Bowie is said to have written
Heroes at a window of the studio, from which he saw Visconti kiss backing vocalist Antonia Maass, an image that made it into the song's lyrics.
Siouxsie and the Banshees,
Wire, and
The Psychedelic Furs, firmly establishing the studio's reputation in the
post-punk and
synthpop genres. In 1983,
Depeche Mode,
Daniel Miller, and
Gareth Jones mixed
Construction Time Again at Hansa, and returned to the studio to record the band's breakthrough single "
People Are People" and subsequent album,
Some Great Reward, with band member
Martin Gore recording "
Somebody" in the Meistersaal in the nude. The former Hansa mixing room was permanently rented, and serves as headquarters to Swedish producer/engineer Michael Ilbert. Offices for film production companies were built into Studio 3, and in 2010
Emil Berliner Studios relocated to that studio, which is no longer part of Hansa Studios. In late 1990,
U2 began work on
Achtung Baby at Hansa Studios before relocating to a rented house near Dublin to continue work on the album. More recently, Hansa Studios has been utilized for projects by
Manic Street Preachers,
R.E.M.,
Snow Patrol,
Kent,
Living Things and
Go Go Berlin. == References in popular culture ==