Center for Political Beauty

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"Lethe bombs" campaign in front of the Reichstag building , 2009

The Center for Political Beauty (ZPS) is an association of around 70 action artists and creatives (as of December 2011) under the direction of the philosopher and action artist Philipp Ruch .

Self-image and goals

Nina van Bergen, the “Informal Chancellor” of the Center for Political Beauty, 2009
Philipp Ruch , 2017
Stefan Pelzer, 2017

The members of the Center for Political Beauty see their group as a think tank that aims to combine human rights with action art. The aim is to use artistic interventions (“awareness”) to draw attention to “humanitarian issues” and the “protection of human life”. Genocide, refugee movements and political inaction are the preferred themes of the ZPS. The artists' recognition features are faces blackened with charcoal; the ashes are intended as a warning symbol to remind us of lost civilizations.

Ruch assumes that “the political hopes in Germany are so manageable. A cynicism has spread that says that we are better off if we wander around without a vision ”. The humanitarian disasters in Syria and North Africa are not getting enough attention and the willingness to help is insufficient. Therefore “[we] build moral high pressure chambers at the center. And heads can burst, yes. Because dying just continues at our external borders. "

The approach of the ZPS is to judge the value of an action not according to the current benefit, but from the perspective of future generations. The members of the ZPS, according to their own admission, are concerned with questioning “the human drives in the richest and most powerful country in the European Union: Germany” and thinking about “what really big goals are and what political ventures look like that are more radiant for posterity Beauty can appear ”. The aim is to “create an awareness of the privileged condition in which people live within Western civilization and to remind them of the obligations attached to this privilege”. Therefore, the ZPS is "a forge of ideas, feelings and actions for people who are concerned with how they can do something beautiful and great".

In the book “End of Patience”, published in 2019, Philipp Ruch explains the functional principle behind the ZPS's actions as follows: “Art can create counter-reality. She is expected to be fiction. That is why so many experts in the arts are outraged by the Center for Political Beauty. We are an upside-down Claas Relotius case for art: where fiction is expected, with us there is reality. "

The group achieved a wide media coverage with its campaigns: For example, Kulturzeit ( 3sat ), Spiegel TV , daily newspapers, online offers and several radio programs reported. The day of remembrance for the victims of the Srebrenica massacre in 2009 generated international press coverage.

Actions

The first action “The Re-Formation of History” began on May 8, 2009 with a “theses attack on the German Bundestag” and then involved people in the queue in front of the Reichstag building. Among other things, the intention was announced to “forge an alliance of the arts that will help politicians to put the highest form of all the arts into practice: good and beautiful politics.” The group reached 2009 with a planned eBay auction by Chancellor Angela Merkel and Federal Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier public attention. During the Styrian Autumn Festival 2012, the group presented the performance Chancellor gone underground , which deals with the general failure of European refugee policy.

"Lethe bombs"

In 2009 the group used dummy bombs (so-called " Lethe bombs") to remind the Reichstag that the crematoria in Auschwitz had not been attacked by the Allies. The action also investigated the background to the military fall of the UN protection zone of Srebrenica in the Bosnian war in 1995. Fictitious “preliminary studies on the state of society” were enclosed in a time capsule . A fictional CDU / CSU parliamentary group leader from 2034 appeared at the “Forum of Lost Hope” .

"The Pillars of Shame"

In 2010, the ZPS initiated the memorial project “The Pillars of Shame”, which - according to the group's point of view - is intended to remind people of the Western co-responsibility for the Srebrenica massacre : The plan is to erect a concrete sculpture about 8 meters high and 16 meters wide. This would consist of 16,744 shoes (for 8,372 victims) in the shape of a "U" and an "N" (abbreviation for United Nations ). Philipp Ruch described the sculpture or its project as "a media weapon": "The more pain it causes, the more respect we can expect from the UN for the mothers of Srebrenica ."

In an open letter to the Secretary General of the United Nations , the team said: “If we want to continue to live in the moral certainty that we have learned something from the worst events of the 20th century, we can no longer watch your machinations. [...] The UN is the only instrument we have to stop genocide. People like Raphael Lemkin are heroes of history. You have created acts of inconceivable political size, scope and beauty. But what the UN did in Bosnia shatters the dream that today we would be able to prevent the construction of Auschwitz. "

"Reward: 25,000 euros"

The “Reward: 25,000 euros” campaign started on May 21, 2012. The center offers 25,000 euros to those who help to bring the family who own the Krauss-Maffei Wegmann company (“Panzerfamilie”) to prison without parole. Burkhart Braunbehrens , one of the owners, then wrote an open letter to Federal President Joachim Gauck . Shortly afterwards, according to media reports, he was voted out of the company's board of directors. In June, the ZPS announced on the campaign's website that a lawsuit had been filed against the art project. This was preceded by a warning and the threat of a lawsuit by Rüdiger von Braunbehrens against a Stuttgart law firm. The client's reputation had been degraded in the population, the encroachment on general personal rights was not covered by freedom of expression and artistic freedom , it said there. The activists then signed a declaration of discontinuance - according to Philipp Ruch for purely financial reasons.

"Sarcophagus Oberndorf"

In September 2012, the group advertised the erection of a concrete sarcophagus modeled on Chernobyl over the "death zone" of the armaments company Heckler & Koch based in Oberndorf am Neckar, which is described as comparable . The ZPS argues that “the weapons company 'Heckler & Koch' has claimed 375 times as many lives as the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in the last 25 years, apart from all the headlines, so they want the same sarcophagus that holds back the radiation in Chernobyl over the weapons factory build in Oberndorf so that no deadly 'products' can escape. "

"Federal Child Transport Aid"

In May 2014, the ZPS published commercials, advertisements, brochures, a website with application forms, forms and legal texts. In order to save 55,000 Syrian children from the war, Manuela Schwesig was supposedly looking for foster families to take them in on behalf of the Family Ministry . Interested parties could get advice over the phone, six actors took the calls. According to the ZPS, well over 1,000 families registered within the first 48 hours to take care of a Syrian child. The ZPS describes the action itself as "not a fake , but a ready-made concept for the rescue of 55,000 Syrian children, they want to give the federal government a 'turnkey aid program' which they only have to implement." also advertised under 1 out of 100 , since, according to UNICEF, 5.5 million Syrian children were in acute need of help, of which one percent, i.e. 55,000, were to be temporarily admitted.

"First fall of the European wall"

On the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War , the group wanted to draw attention to refugees and thousands of deaths at the EU's external borders in autumn 2014 . Memorial crosses of the Berlin Wall victims were stolen, but a short time later they were reinstalled in a renovated condition. Photos of reproductions of the crosses were taken together with refugees at European external borders. At the same time, a crowdfunding campaign was initiated to raise money for bus rides. The organized buses should drive to the European external borders in order to “dismantle” the fences there. A little later, two buses actually drove to the European external borders in Bulgaria and Greece . The local authorities, however, forbade getting within sight of the border installations.

In Germany in particular, the group sparked a highly emotional debate. International media also reported on the project. The criminal investigation into the group for removing the memorial crosses ended in April 2015.

"The dead are coming"

Burial of a Syrian refugee at the Gatow landscape cemetery , numerous members of the federal government and the interior ministry were symbolically invited.

In June 2015 the group went public with another campaign aimed at drawing attention to the consequences of European refugee policy. For the “Die Totenommen” campaign, refugees who had died at the European external borders were exhumed and transferred to Berlin with the consent of their families (including a Syrian woman who drowned in the Mediterranean with her two-year-old child). The first burials in a Berlin cemetery took place on June 16, 2015. The campaign also generated wide media coverage internationally.

A crowdfunding campaign by the group on the Indiegogo website with the aim of raising the costs for the transfer reached the targeted minimum amount of 14,900 euros on the first day. The Center for Political Beauty takes the view that the European refugee policy and therefore the federal government is indirectly responsible for deaths at the external borders, since the refugees are not allowed any other way to enter. The motivation for the campaign was given to give the consequences of the refugee policy more visibility and to enable the dead to be buried in human dignity.

At the same time as the funerals, the center announced a demonstration in front of the Federal Chancellery on June 21, 2015 , at which the dead were supposed to be carried along. The police forbade the carrying of corpses and issued conditions not to allow the demonstration march to march in front of the Chancellery as planned. On June 21, 2015, well over 5,000 people gathered and marched in front of the Bundestag. The initially fenced off area was stormed by the people gathering in front of it. About 100 graves were symbolically excavated. Police arrested 91 protesters.

The Berlin-Mitte district office announced the next day that around 10,000 euros in damage had been incurred from sowing the lawn again and repairing the fences. As a result of the action, supporters and sympathizers dug symbolic graves across Germany to draw attention to the situation of the refugees.

As part of the campaign, she also called for the “killing” of the Swiss journalist Roger Köppel . For this purpose, she had a full-page advertisement placed in the street magazine Surprise .

"The bridge"

On September 29, 2015, a crowdfunding project on Indiegogo called “The Bridge - Save Europe's Humanity” was launched, which apparently wanted to build a bridge that would connect Europe with Africa. This bridge should be completed by 2030 to allow a safe escape route from one continent to another.

The plan to build a bridge turned out to be satire or art action. In fact, the money was used for a firmly anchored rescue platform in the Mediterranean . The target amount for the campaign was 19,600 euros. By the end of the campaign on October 7, 2015, 632 people had donated a total of 21,687 euros. On October 5, 2015, the rescue platform was anchored in the Mediterranean.

"Eating refugees - hardship and games"

On June 16, 2016, the ZPS opened a Roman -style arena with four tigers in the center of Berlin for the 2016 European Football Championship . The arena had been built for weeks unnoticed by the public. The ZPS urged refugees to "let themselves be eaten in resistance to Germany's deadliest law". It was about a single paragraph in the German Residence Act (Section 63, Paragraph 3), which is supposed to make it impossible for people on the run to board planes for Europe. Subsequently, the ZPS announced that the federal government would decide on the life and death of the reported refugees and let the German Bundestag vote on whether the legal norm of the Residence Act would be abolished. Both then actually occurred: Environment Minister Barbara Hendricks refused to vote for the federal government in the Bundestag, and the corresponding paragraph was confirmed with the votes of the CDU and SPD . It was the first time that artists managed to get the Bundestag to vote directly on a bill. The Syrian actress May Skaf subsequently announced that she would be eaten in Berlin.

Meanwhile, the ZPS chartered an aircraft with 100 Syrian war refugees who would have been entitled to asylum in Germany at the time, and threatened to have people in need of protection flown into Germany from Turkey . Shortly before departure, Air Berlin canceled the charter contract. The federal government had to admit at a press conference that it had put pressure on the airline through the federal police and the German embassy in Turkey.

Reactions

The action received heavy criticism. The Federal Ministry of the Interior publicly accused the creators of having carried out the campaign “on the backs of those in need of protection”. Christian Jakob also writes in the taz : “Anyone who thinks up campaigns like 'Eat refugees' has been infected by the brutalization of the refugee policy.” At the same time, Jakob also pays respect: “The idea for 100 Syrian refugees from Izmir simply anyway Charter a plane to Berlin and at the same time letting the Bundestag vote on the regulation on the transport ban would be the stuff of a textbook on civil disobedience, in case someone should write that. "Ines Kappert says:" When people in front of the camera and quite legally If the right to life is withdrawn without society standing upside down, then the obscenely glowing contempt for humanity does not arise from the ego of the artistic director of the ZPS, [...], but has hijacked the everyday life of the majority society. ”The FAZ says:“ Subversion with changing identities - not for terrorist purposes, but to society with its universalistic lips to take confessions at their word. In the most recent campaign […], the ongoing refugee tragedy in the Mediterranean was staged as a circus game, which the well-meaning people who remained inactive delighted. ”And Jens Bisky also sees the campaign more positively in the Süddeutsche Zeitung :“ People have often accused 'refugees eat' of cynicism ; the Federal Ministry of the Interior speaks of 'tasteless' and an instrumentalization of the refugees. Big words, like planning, are thrown about problems that you don't want to look at very closely. The action, an appeal to empathy and imagination , was a success. She organized attention, blocked the way out to indifference as best she could. "

"Scholl 2017 - Distribute your leaflet in a dictatorship"

On the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the first four of six White Rose leaflets in June 1942, the campaign was devoted to the question of what Hans and Sophie Scholl would do today. As a kick-off, on June 26, 2017, the ZPS sent all Bavarian high schools materials for history lessons and information for a special kind of Bavarian state school competition: Pupils and students between 14 and 24 years of age were invited to submit a leaflet based on the model of the White Rose to write to a dictatorship of their choice and fly to the country in question "at the expense of the Bavarian state government" to call for the overthrow of the regime. The Bavarian Free State tolerated the action, as well as the use of national coats of arms and names. A double-decker bus, the so-called “student registry” and stage, toured through Munich to recruit young people. The Münchner Kammerspiele invited to free “substitute lessons” - the historian Wolfgang Benz gave the opening speech. At the evening events, young candidates who had volunteered to distribute leaflets in a dictatorship were introduced and interviewed. They weren't actors, but actual volunteers. Other locations in Munich were played, e.g. B. the Sophie-Scholl-Gymnasium and the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität .

On June 30th, at least 1,000 copies of the winning leaflet, written by Kurdish youths, fluttered into Istanbul's Gezi Park . It called for the overthrow of the Erdoğan regime and "death to the dictator". But not the young people who had volunteered for active resistance, but a unit of the ZPS distributed the leaflet. For this purpose, a technical device with a printer was leaned against a hotel room window and the print job was triggered via cloud print. The Turkish police then searched for a German citizen. The Turkish news agency DHA distributed footage of the crime scene being cordoned off and investigated.

"Build the Holocaust memorial in front of Höcke's house!"

Replica of the Berlin Holocaust memorial in Bornhagen

On November 22nd, 2017, the ZPS artist collective unveiled 24 steles that protrude two meters from the ground on a leased neighboring property within sight of Björn Höcke's house in Bornhagen, Thuringia, under the project name “Build the Holocaust memorial in front of Höcke's house!”  . The installation is a scaled-down replica of the Holocaust memorial in Berlin.

With the art campaign, the ZPS protested against Höcke, who in a speech in January 2017 in Dresden had called for “a 180 degree change in the politics of memory” and said: “We Germans, that is, our people, are the only people in the world to have a monument who has planted shame in the heart of his capital. ”The speech was unanimously condemned in the media and in politics. The Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora Memorials Foundation spoke of a defamation of the commemoration of the murder of European Jews, Charlotte Knobloch said that the "national agitation" was "unbearable". The AfD is poisoning political culture in Germany with “right-wing extremist, racist and anti-Semitic theses and tirades”.

The action was a project of the Berlin Autumn Salon, which was organized by the Maxim-Gorki-Theater . It was financed through crowdfunding . By November 23, around 90,000 euros had been received. The ZPS had calculated 28,800 euros to secure the maintenance of the stele campaign for one year.

The action also included staged, alleged surveillance of the house in which Höcke lives with his family. In a video clip of the ZPS it was said: “The Thuringian constitution protection covered and protected the terror of the NSU for years . That is why we founded the civil society protection of the constitution in Thuringia ”. According to its own information, the ZPS had already started observing Höcke and collecting information ten months before the steles were erected. It installed cameras on several trees on the neighboring property, which broadcast recordings from Höcke's house to a room known as a “surveillance room”. In response to objections that the ZPS used Stasi methods here, Philipp Ruch replied : “Against Nazis , we only use Nazi methods.” The ZPS published a film on the website dein-stele.de that began with the sentence: “Imagine yourself before, in your country a right-wing radical is rushing again. ”Höcke's house and property in Bornhagen was faded in. As a result, the official YouTube channel of the ZPS, including the live stream of the campaign, was temporarily blocked on November 22, 2017. After numerous protests, the lock was lifted. The ZPS initially announced that it would continue monitoring until Höcke “fell on his knees in front of the memorial like Willy Brandt and sincerely asks forgiveness for the German crimes in World War II”, but later dropped this demand.

After death threats against the group of artists, the field of stelae was no longer open to the public for security reasons, according to the ZPS. It remained unclear whether the artists actually monitored Höcke. On December 1, 2017, the ZPS announced that it had obtained the sources for the alleged ten-month surveillance of the AfD politician "essentially from his own publications on social media". If you follow the presentation of the ZPS, according to Spiegel Online, “Höcke and parts of the public have been caught in a precisely planned confusion”.

Reactions

At a conference of the right-wing populist magazine Compact in Leipzig on November 25, 2017, Björn Höcke said about the campaign and its makers: "Anyone who does something like this is a terrorist in my eyes." The ZPS is not an artist group, but a "terrorist association" . The surveillance of his family is a deep interference with the "feeling of shame of a person". The Thuringian state parliament president Christian Carius ( CDU ) criticized the action: Spying on MPs and their families using the same Stasi methods and was not justifiable, the “overall action of the ZPS has nothing to do with art” and is an “attack on the freedom of Mandate and the integrity of the family ”. He also accused the ZPS of "blackmailing and threatening a member of parliament" and called for "more solidarity". The AfD member of the Bundestag Jens Maier filed a criminal complaint against the ZPS, he sees in the observation an "absolutely unjustifiable interference" in Höcke's private life. The ZPS, in turn, had Jens Maier sent a declaration of cease and desist with criminal penalties, because he had claimed that Björn Höcke's children were also photographed during the surveillance by the ZPS, which the artist group denied.

The state spokesman for AfD Thuringia , Stefan Möller , spoke of " psychological warfare " against Höcke and his family. According to Möller, Höcke intended to take legal action against the action. In the Bornhagen community itself there was support for Höcke from AfD supporters and a negative response to the campaign. The police investigated suspected stalking, coercion and theft. There are indications that the ZPS had a drone fly over the Höckes' house, and the disappearance of one of the household's paper bins could also be related to the group's activities. The public prosecutor's office in Mühlhausen announced on November 27, 2017 that they were investigating the artist collective on initial suspicion of attempted coercion .

The ZPS, for its part, filed a complaint with the State Criminal Police Office in Berlin after receiving several death threats. In e-mails, excerpts from Deutschlandfunk , the writers threatened with gassing, slaughter and drowning. A caller who posed as a representative of the “AfD-Totenkopfstandarte” threatened to shoot the activists if the steles in Höcke's neighborhood did not disappear. The Erfurt police also investigated property damage to the steles and two ZPS cars.

According to the decision of the Heiligenstadt District Court in December 2017, Philipp Ruch was only allowed to approach the Höcke family home within half a kilometer. According to his own statements, the arrangement made it no longer possible for him to enter his apartment in a neighboring house and to get to the art object. After a few weeks, the court revoked its verdict because there had been no de facto spying by the performance artists. Philipp Ruch was able to re-enter the site of the art campaign from mid-February 2018. According to the court order of December 18, 2017, the steles were not allowed to be removed by the landlord of the neighboring property from Höcke's property. On December 21, 2017, there was a warning of 80 demonstrators through Bornhagen, organized by ZPS sympathizers. The permanent police protection in front of Höcke's house was ended at the beginning of January 2018.

reception

The art action was controversially discussed in the first comments. The art historian and university professor Beat Wyss defended the project in an interview with Deutschlandfunk Kultur . He thought the action was an owl dish of our time. Art is allowed to do anything "because it is, as it were, the fifth power in society to be defeated by powerlessness". You have the task of "being a prince mirror ". The campaign also received support from the Greens in the Thuringian state parliament and the journalist Lea Rosh , who campaigned for the erection of the Holocaust memorial in Berlin. The Jewish state community of Thuringia welcomed the ZPS art campaign to place Björn Höcke a replica of the Berlin Holocaust memorial next to his house. The AfD politician must be disenchanted and seen for what he is: “a danger to democracy”. The chairman of the community, Reinhard Schramm, rejected the concrete form of the action. The ZPS went too far at this point, as this action affected people who were not to blame themselves.

Jan Heidtmann from the Süddeutsche Zeitung considered it an "important contribution" to confront the AfD and Höcke with his statement on the memory of the Holocaust. Knut Cordsen said on Bayerischer Rundfunk that the Center for Political Beauty came out as a “Center for Political Folly” because it helped Björn Höcke to be able to portray himself as a victim. Andrian Kreye criticized the art campaign as "a political gift to the AfD" in a comment. Björn Höcke, of all people, who had already been marginalized in his party, should now stylize himself as a persecuted person. “But the AfD's victim whispers did not miss the opportunity: They complained about the left-wing incitement to sympathy and the excessiveness of the action.” Harry Nutt commented on the art action in the Frankfurter Rundschau . The ZPS “deliberately went beyond the limits of good taste”. It responded to the radicalization of political conditions by tightening up aesthetic means. What the Center for Political Beauty does is art, wrote Georg Diez in his SPON column, and he criticized the way in which different spheres were mixed up in the media debate about the current action. This only shows "how disappearing the knowledge about the essence of art and thus the freedom potential of our society seems to be". The lawyer and journalist Milosz Matuschek, who is a donor for the field of stelae, praised the action as crossing borders in his NZZ column, which sheds light on a lot: “that parts of the AfD and Höcke fans are also ready to use violence. That the protection of the constitution in Thuringia sometimes seems blind in the right eye. That the self-titled decent in society have made themselves comfortable in the position of 'responsible silence' of the reluctant ascent from the right, only to then exclaim all the more shaken in retrospect and award prizes for courageously shaking the head. "

Discontinued investigation

In April 2019 revealed inquiry by the faction of the Left in the Thuringian Parliament on that the prosecutor Gera under number 173 Js 39497/17 since 16 months, a criminal investigation on suspicion of forming a criminal association ( § 129 Penal Code) against the artist led. The responsible public prosecutor, Martin Zschächner , initiated it ex officio on November 29, 2017. According to the public prosecutor's office, the group had accused itself of a crime by announcing "organized [...] wiretapping and spying measures" against Höcke. The public prosecutor's office in Mühlhausen / Thuringia also opened a procedure on suspicion of joint coercion. After it turned out in December 2017 that the action was satire, she stopped the investigation while it continued in Gera. At the time, the artist group was one of the twelve cases in which an investigation was carried out in Thuringia under Section 129 of the Criminal Code, including alleged members of a group of Holocaust deniers , right-wing extremist hooligans and alleged members of IS . Zschächner apparently assumed “that the artist group is similarly dangerous and was founded to commit serious crimes”.

Several media accused Martin Zschächner of unilateral investigations and questioned his neutrality. With a view to Zschächner's further legal decisions, the FAZ spoke of a “Waterloo of a reason”. According to research by Zeit Online , he is said to be close to the AfD Thuringia , which is in charge of Höcke. Among other things, he donated 30 euros to the party in April 2018. Heribert Prantl commented on the investigation in the Süddeutsche Zeitung: “This public prosecutor initiated the investigation a few days after Höcke said in a speech that the artist group was not an artist group, but rather 'a criminal, yes a terrorist organization'. That was on November 25, 2017. By return of post, on November 29, the public prosecutor's office began the investigation. This creates the impression that the Gera public prosecutor's office in the form of the public prosecutor Zschächer is making Höcke's henchman. "

Marlene Grunert wrote in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung that there is no known case in which such investigations have ever been conducted against a group of artists . So far, such investigations have only been conducted against groups of artists from the extreme right. Looking at earlier proceedings, the question arises as to the motives of Martin Zschächner, who as a public prosecutor is obliged to be neutral. She reported several cases against the AFD, partly because of sedition , which Zschächner adjusted in favor of the accused or had not even registered. The lawyer and notary Peter Raue made a similar statement: “I don't know of a single comparable case! I don't know of any group that is looking for an intellectual confrontation that has been pursued under Section 129. "

Prime Minister Bodo Ramelow criticized the investigation, but pointed out that initially there were indications that the ZPS had actually observed Höcke. Justice Minister Dieter Lauinger refused to intervene with the public prosecutor's office on April 4, referring to the independence of the judiciary. According to a communication from the State Ministry of Justice on April 8, 2019, the Gera public prosecutor and the Thuringian attorney general agreed to immediately stop the investigation against Philipp Ruch and the “Center for Political Beauty” . Until the allegations against Zschächner have been clarified, he will be entrusted with other tasks in the Gera public prosecutor's office. He is also no longer active as press spokesman for the authority. The judicial policy spokesman for the AfD parliamentary group criticized the termination of the investigation, while the CDU criticized the manner in which the proceedings were terminated. The culture minister of Thuringia, Benjamin-Immanuel Hoff , told Deutschlandfunk that the effect of the entire procedure on the politically non-conforming art was "devastating". The impression arises that “politically active artists are criminalized very quickly”.

The artists of the ZPS demanded an official apology from the politically responsible. They criticized that the correctness or legality of the procedure was still assumed. In protest against the investigation of the Gera public prosecutor's office against the ZPS as a result of their art campaign, the director of the Berlin Maxim-Gorki-Theater , Shermin Langhoff , initiated an appeal. In an open letter, more than 100 artists rated the investigation as an attack on freedom of expression and artistic freedom , and critical art should not be criminalized. The signatories included musicians such as Herbert Grönemeyer and Bela B. , the actors Katja Riemann and Edgar Selge , the authors Sibylle Berg , Robert Menasse and Deniz Yücel , Lea Rosh , the directors Dani Levy and Aelrun Goette as well as the TV satirist Jan Böhmermann and the human rights activist Peter Steudtner .

“We call on the public and civil society to protest loudly when our fundamental rights are attacked or even undermined. We are stunned, but not disconcerted! We turn and defend ourselves in every form against a tendency to the political-ideological criminalization of art, which endangers the community and the free democratic basic order, and against a mind-based instrumentalization of criminal law. "

- Open letter for the freedom of art. In: Spiegel Online. April 11, 2019.

"Soko Chemnitz"

Since the beginning of December 2018, the Center for Political Beauty has been calling on the “Soko Chemnitz” website to “record right-wing extremism 2018”, to identify “suspicious” participants in the riots in Chemnitz in 2018 using an image recognition database and to report them to their employers. The activists directly call for work colleagues, neighbors and acquaintances to be denounced . Some of the activists used non-public photo material from other websites, such as the Jewish Forum, which was deleted after a declaration of discontinuance. In an interview with Frankfurter Rundschau , Philipp Ruch from the ZPS explained the motivation for the campaign:

“We are now doing the work of the state. The Free State of Saxony only exercises presumptuousness. They assume an office and suggest to the population that something is happening. But in reality right-wing extremism is only spreading and has already overturned the majority in large parts of Saxony. "

- Philipp Ruch from the ZPS : Interview with the FR

On December 5, the activists announced that the website had been shut down and that it had served as a honeypot to collect and analyze data entered into the website's search function.

Reactions

The office set up specifically to track Chemnitz demo participants was vacated by the Chemnitz police on December 3, 2018, a few hours after the action became known, and the landlord terminated the rental agreement with immediate effect. The Saxon Interior Minister Roland Wöller accused the ZPS of endangering social cohesion with the action. For the ZPS there could be criminal consequences for insult, violation of the art copyright law and data protection; the latter because the people depicted in the mug shots were not people of public interest . Cesy Leonard from the ZPS spoke to the MDR Saxony , took up Wöller's criticism and defended the action as a whole:

“As for the political reactions, I would like to say something about the reaction of the Saxon interior minister. He said that the action led to the division of society. I must definitely say that it is not the action that leads to this split, but the criminal behavior of fellow citizens who refuse to embrace democracy. "

- Cesy Leonard from ZPS in conversation with MDR Saxony

The head association of German cultural associations, in the person of its managing director Olaf Zimmermann, described “Soko Chemnitz” as “a problematic art campaign that does not contribute to clarification, but only promotes the division of our society” and criticized the means used with the words: “It plays it does not matter whether the pillory is real or fake, and certainly not the goal of this means. "

After a photo showing the Gotha AfD politician Birger Gröning at the Chemnitz demonstration was published by the ZpS with the signature "caught", he sued for an injunction. On April 15, 2019, the Erfurt Regional Court prohibited further publication of the photo under threat of a fine of 250,000 euros, against which an appeal is possible.

reception

On December 4, 2018, Jens Bisky expressed the view in the Süddeutsche Zeitung that the “Soko Chemnitz” campaign was a reminder of the calls for denunciation by individual AfD regional associations against teachers: “Soko Chemnitz” could easily be included in an advertising platform against foreigners, leftists or gays transform in the neighborhood without changing a lot linguistically. The ZPS speaks of " traitors to the people ", "people with disorientation", "traitors to the fatherland", "right-wing haters of Germany", "slackers" and contrasts these with the "normal people". According to Bisky, this language would have been called “fascistoid” in the 1980s. Everything is formulated under the "art" reservation. This “satire” or “action art” confirms the logic of exclusion and intimidation against which it is allegedly directed. Instead of putting the opponents of the open society politically, they would be pathologized, instead of understanding democracy as a constant conflict, it is staged as sectarianism.

Markus Reuter, on the other hand, emphasized on netzpolitik.org that “the outcry from the right and right-wing radicals” was hypocritical in view of the controversial public search after the G20 summit in Hamburg and the denunciation portals of the AfD. It is true that the action is wrong from the point of view of data protection and is going "in a direction that is not desirable for our society and also possibly justiciable"; But precisely by using the methods of its opponents, the portal would make "social lines of conflict and deficits" visible.

Kolja Reichert from the FAZ received: "The center now sounds like a group at the transition to extremism, in which the vocabulary of criticism, in this case satire, tips over into a totalitarian vocabulary of self-assertion ."

"Look for us!"

On December 2, 2019, the Center for Political Beauty erected a memorial column in front of the Reichstag building in Berlin . It contained a drill core from the soil from the area around one of the extermination camps and, according to the ZPS, should have contained ashes from murdered Nazi victims. The installation known as the “Resistance Column” and the accompanying essay “The Paths of Ashes. A source-critical chronology for the area of ​​interest Auschwitz ”by the historian Hinnerk Höfling commissioned by the ZPS is the result of more than two years of systematic research by the ZPS on the whereabouts of the ashes from the crematoria of extermination camps. The courtier explained where the ashes in the column came from, he could not say; he is only concerned with their cultural and historical significance.

The pillar was erected on the site of the former Kroll Opera House , which was used as alternative quarters for Parliament after the Reichstag fire . There, in 1933, bourgeois parties signed the Enabling Act and thus handed democracy over to the National Socialists . The lineup at this location is directed against conservatives from the CDU and CSU , who are considering working with the AfD , which is partly right-wing extremist .

In the associated fundraising campaign , so-called "oath cubes" were available which, according to the ZPS, contained soil samples from the excavations that had tested negative.

The Holocaust researcher Götz Aly told the Spiegel : "The subject of the exploitation of the murdered has been taboo for an indefinite period of time". In an interview with the MDR , he described the campaign as "thankful". However, he considers the connection to the AfD a bit questionable and would not use it against the current AfD.

Even Lea Rosh , initiator of the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe , supported the action; it is "deeper than our Holocaust memorial it is".

The action also met with broad criticism. The Central Council of Jews described the action as problematic, as it violated the Jewish religious law of the peace of the dead. The federal government's anti-Semitism commissioner, Felix Klein , also called on the artists to observe Jewish religious laws. The Green politician Volker Beck filed a criminal complaint for disturbing the peace of the dead .

Christoph Heubner , vice president of the International Auschwitz Committee , ruled on the action: "Auschwitz survivors are dismayed that their feelings and the eternal peace of the dead of their murdered relatives are violated with this memorial." The Orthodox Rabbinical Conference Germany condemned the action in the strongest . With the action "the deaths of millions of people are used for an obscene art spectacle". Numerous other Jewish organizations also rejected the action.

The artist group then apologized for the action. The window through which the drill core in the memorial column was visible was covered and a rally planned for December 7, 2019, called a "civil society tattoo against the AfD", was canceled. According to the ZPS, the remains were handed over to the Orthodox Rabbinical Conference for burial.

The heirs of Stephan Hermlin , whose poem “ The Ashes of Birkenau ” was used for the action, distanced themselves clearly and reserved legal action. Andrej Hermlin , the poet's son, spoke in this context of an "abuse" of the poem. Stella Hindemith, Hermlin's granddaughter, called the "memorial stele" a "ruthless game of emotions."

The Berlin-Mitte district office set a deadline of December 20, 2019 for the removal of the pillar, for which the collective had poured a concrete foundation in a nightly action. The group announced that they would not remove the pillar and placed the same Day contradiction. If the objection is rejected, which has suspensive effect, the ZPS can take legal action.

On January 6, 2020, activists who call themselves the Action Artists Committee (AKK) tried to remove the column, as "no art and politics" should be made with the ashes of Holocaust victims. The AKK supported the ZPS's request to warn the parties and “especially the Union” against working with the AfD, but this action was “characterized by ignorance of Jews living today”. The police prevented the dismantling. A complaint had been made for property damage.

A complete dismantling of the “memorial” was initiated on January 16, 2020 at the ZPS's expense.

"Franz von Papen reappeared!"

In December 2019, the ZPS brought the grave slab of the Reich Chancellor and later NSDAP member Franz von Papen von Wallerfangen to Berlin and deposited it in front of the CDU federal headquarters. Von Papen had negotiated a coalition government with the NSDAP in the mistaken belief that the government could tame it. In its web presence, the ZPS stated that von Papen “would like to discuss with the Union the dangers of getting involved with fascists and whether enemies of democracy can even be domesticated, unmasked or contained by power”.

Philipp Ruch from the ZPS said that the action was the continuation of “Looking for us!” And should shake people up; it is "about the dangers that threaten democracy if you get involved with fascism." The CDU has not distanced itself sufficiently from the AfD. There are forces there who want to “make democracy with fascists”.

The tombstone was secured by the police; a preliminary investigation has been initiated.

reception

In December 2015, the ZPS was one of the first to receive the Amadeu Antonio Prize from the Amadeu Antonio Foundation .

Web links

Commons : Center for Political Beauty  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

literature

Individual evidence

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  153. ^ Soko Chemnitz. In: soko-chemnitz.de. Retrieved December 6, 2018 .
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  155. ↑ a b Interior Minister: “Soko Chemnitz” endangers cohesion in society. In: Free Press . Retrieved December 4, 2018 .
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  157. ↑ Criticism of “Soko Chemnitz” is growing. In: hurriyet.de . December 4, 2018, accessed December 4, 2018 .
  158. ↑ Fabian Klaus: Gothaer AfD man is in a clinch with “Center for Political Beauty”. In: Thüringische Landeszeitung . 2nd April 2019.
  159. ↑ Redaktionsnetzwerk Deutschland, Deutsche Presse Agentur: “Center for Political Beauty” is not allowed to publish a photo of AfD man. In: Ostsee-Zeitung . April 15, 2019.
  160. ↑ AFP, dpa, dt: Other AfD regional associations are planning a reporting platform against teachers. In: zeit.de. October 8, 2018, accessed December 4, 2018 .
  161. ↑ Provocation successful: #SokoChemnitz starts investigations. In: netzpolitik.org, December 3, 2018, accessed December 4, 2018.
  162. ↑ Kolja Reichert: Pillory for rights in Chemnitz: rush now. In: faz.net. December 4, 2018, accessed April 25, 2019 .
  163. ↑ Hinnerk Höfling: The ways of the ashes. A source-critical chronology for the Auschwitz area of ​​interest. In: Political Beauty, 2019 (PDF)
  164. ↑ Arno Widmann : Ashes of Nazi Victims? New campaign by the Center for Political Beauty. Berliner Zeitung of December 2, 2019, accessed on December 13, 2019.
  165. ↑ Hannah Bethke: You are really all fascists. In: FAZ . December 2, 2019, accessed December 17, 2019 .
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