Obituary for Marco Reckinger: Crazy Superhero – Berlin

It ends with 100 people standing on the sidewalk on a cold, wet January evening and saying goodbye to Marco. There are neighbors from the street, people from the Neukölln neighborhood, the Späti owners. You can’t believe that Markus died. This lanky guy, 33 years old, with the tousled black hair. He had been living on Herrfurthstrasse for two, maybe three years, most recently in a covered entrance, wrapped in his sleeping bag, only his eyes looking out.

Markus, that’s what he called himself. Marco was his real name. He talked to himself, scolded the voices in his head, sometimes loudly, sometimes softly. He drank a lot, often and often in the morning. But he wasn’t one of the U-8 station junkies. He never sat with the other drinkers either. Marco was in his own world.

But when he was clear, he helped the Späti owner clearing the boxes. Danced out of its speakers to loud hip-hop music. Greeted the schoolchildren with raised thumbs. Had an infectious laugh to give away. The neighbors liked him. And they worried about him, brought food, tea, blankets and mattresses, or called an ambulance if they thought things were going badly for him. But Marco refused.

No hospital, not even the emergency shelter that the homeless workers sometimes offered him. He sought refuge in the “Syndicate”, a left-wing pub around the corner. Here he was allowed to hide for the last hours of the night, had his corner, his pillow. In August, however, the pub was cleared and his refuge was a thing of the past.

Pain, love, anger

Why did Marco end up on the street in the first place? Was there a time when he could still have been helped? The three friends who have known him since he was a child in Luxembourg have no answer. If you talk to them, you hear pain, love, but also anger.

There’s Max. He went to summer camp with Marco every year. Marco was crazy, knew all breakdance moves, could rap, knew everything about hip hop. Once Max and Marco went for a walk, Marco reported for two hours that you could not only rhyme at the end of the lines, but also at the beginning or in the middle. Once they drew a comic in which Marco was the crazy superhero. He was given Ritalin to help concentrate better at school. If he didn’t take it, he would race down the most dangerous slopes on his snowboard, completely fearless. Max remembers that.

There is Dominique. She grew up with Marco on the same street, in Dudelange, Luxembourg. He often stood in front of her door, asked if she wanted to come out, playing in the playground, romping around in the cemetery, skating in the park. “He never wanted to be alone, he invited me and other children over, preferably with an overnight stay, preferably even longer,” she says. Later, his basement was the meeting point. Here they all hung out, listened to music or made some themselves. A large Brazilian flag hung on the wall.

“I was his Brazilian sister,” says Dominique. She comes from Brazil like Marco. His Luxembourg parents adopted him when he was five months old. While the white Dominique did not attract any further attention in Dudelange, Marco was the only black boy on the street, at school, in the summer camp. “There was a great longing in him for Brazil and also the question of who his birth parents were.” He talked about it again and again. “One day we wanted to go to Porto Alegre together, where he was born.” She also reports that Marco was very afraid of doctors and hospitals.

Finally, there’s Chris from elementary school. As children they sat in Marco’s closet with the Fisher Price tape recorder. Marco hit the record button and told his stories, one at a time. When they were 18 or 19 they met again in the “Why not” café in Dudelange.

Marco had since dropped his Abitur. Maintaining discipline, sitting quietly, learning things he didn’t enjoy was not his thing. Instead, he went to Munich to train as a sound engineer. Now he was back again. Chris remembers the moment they met again exactly. How Marco came in, how they hugged and Marco started talking breathlessly: he was planning an electro project. He still needs a partner if Chris doesn’t want to join in. As a drummer, he knows a lot about rhythms.

The computers, synthesizers, drum pads and microphones were in Marco’s basement studio. Marco showed him in three or four hours how it all worked, how to build a beat, how to play the melody and mix everything together. “Marco had such a magic, you wanted to do something with him.”

“CRCKSN” – son of crack

They called themselves “Cristal and Crack”. They released an EP, performed in clubs and at concerts. Marco with the microphone in the middle of the people who freaked out. Their kind of “Live Electro”, not just playing, but letting the music develop live, did not exist in Luxembourg before. Newspaper articles, music videos, they had their biggest gig in front of 3,000 people. At some point during this time Marco got a tattoo, big on his arm. It is the likeness of the actor Thierry van Werveke. A legend in Luxembourg, also because of alcohol, drugs and excesses. He died when he was 50.

Marco wanted to go out into the world, to Paris, to Berlin. Especially to Berlin: Electro Mecca, where the nights never stop, where he and his music were needed. Or so he thought. He called his solo project “CRCKSN”, like Crackson, like son of crack. He was in Berlin for the first time on November 13, 2011. Called Max, who already lived in a shared apartment in Neukölln. Whether he could sleep with him, just a few days, just a mattress in the corner.

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He stays for three or four months. Completely intoxicated with Berlin. Celebrate to the power of three. New friends! New clubs! A bottle of whiskey a day – can happen. He is doing an internship in a recording studio, everything is going great, he tells Max. A few years later, Max meets the studio owner: No, Marco was only there once, then never again. It’s a shame, she thought he was very nice and talented.

Dominique is also in Berlin. Marco keeps opening up to her, looks exhausted, sleepless, then she puts him in the bathtub, makes him a soup, listens to him as he talks about his music. She says she is going to Brazil soon. “I’m coming to visit you,” says Marco. And continues to build on his tracks, plays in Munich, in Berlin, in Luxembourg, so it says on his Facebook account. But is that also true? Friends get insecure. Stories, dates, events do not match. You talk to him, want to help him, ask him to come back to Luxembourg. It works once.

Homecoming. Withdrawal. A newbeginning? Rather not. Marco has to go back to Berlin. It’s like a compulsion, a suction. Unlimited boundaries in the boundless city. 2016, 2017, 2018, the traces are lost. Marco posts confused videos on Facebook. He speaks of persecution. He was a Rockefeller. He declares himself dead. Once he went to a Berlin hospital for rehab, but after a few days he was out again.

Chris comes to Berlin to look for him again. Max meets him by chance at the Boddinstrasse underground station. “It hurt so much to see my boyfriend like that.” In the Schillerkiez, Marco now lives on the street, however he got there, whatever has become of his music. He doesn’t want any help. “I do exactly what I want to do,” he says to Max.

Marco is now to be buried in Luxembourg. His friends and parents are waiting for the ballot box.

[Wir schreiben regelmäßig über nicht-prominente Berliner, die in jüngster Zeit verstorben sind. Wenn Sie vom Ableben eines Menschen erfahren, über den wir einen Nachruf schreiben sollten, melden Sie sich bitte bei uns: [email protected]. Wie die Nachrufe entstehen, erfahren Sie hier.]