Remembering the BRN—Born in a Bar, Raised in the Streets

Every June, the streets of Dresden's Neustadt would erupt in color, music, and mayhem for the Bunte Republik Neustadt (BRN)—an “independent republic” of creativity, chaos, and community. It began not with permits or planning boards, but with squats, spray paint, and a rebellious little pub called the Bronxx.
Back in 1989, just months after the Berlin Wall fell, Alaunstraße 64 became home to a gritty dive bar—originally called Café Hilton, quickly renamed Bronxx after New York's edgiest borough. It was loud, raw, and defiantly punk. Inside, you’d find cracked tiles, graffiti-scrawled walls, and drinks passed across makeshift bars of plywood and crates. And if you stayed long enough, you'd probably stumble into a Latextreff—a surreal gathering of art, gender-bending fashion, and experimental performance.
This wasn’t just a pub. It was a spark.
From that spark, the BRN was born in 1990—a wild, ungoverned street fest that declared Neustadt an autonomous republic of joy. Over the years, the BRN evolved from underground rebellion to a full-blown city-wide celebration, but its heart always beat to the rhythm first set in places like the Bronxx.
That rhythm was suddenly silenced in 1990, when the Bronxx was set ablaze by right-wing extremists on New Year’s Eve—a tragic marker of the cultural clashes during reunification. The building survived, but the bar did not. Its blackened windows became a memorial to resistance—and a reminder that alternative spaces are never guaranteed.
Though the BRN grew and changed, the spirit of the Bronxx never left. It echoed in every handmade banner, punk gig, rooftop stage, and cardboard passport handed out during festival weekends.
Now, five years after the BRN’s final run in 2019—paused by the pandemic and never officially revived—we remember what it meant. Not just as a festival, but as a feeling: that a neighborhood could become a country, that music could drown out fear, and that somewhere behind a rickety wooden bar, a new kind of freedom could be poured by the bottle.