In the long version of the controversial Rammstein-Videos singer Till Lindemann distant, almost striking from nationalism and has clamped the protests of Jewish organizations for their own marketing.
By Sonja Zekri and Felix Stephan
at the end of the year, has praised Michel Houellebecq Donald Trump. An Essay in the American Harpers Magazine bore the title, “Donald Trump is a good president”, and in the Text, many Similarities between the French writers and the American President. A few weeks later, Houellebecqs Roman “Serotonin” appeared, and who had also always believed that to be able to date ignore to Houllebecqs Trump-homage that was hardly possible.
On Tuesday evening released the Band Rammstein, a 35-second-long scene from the Video for their new Album. It shows the Band members in the striped uniforms of concentration camp prisoners with a yellow star on the chest. You are on a kind of gallows and wear a sweater around the neck. Till Lindemann, the singer is bleeding. After that, white on black, under a kind of runic-like or iron cross-like Logo appears in the fracture, the word “Germany”.
Then two things happened: the Fans also hope that it will give, for the concentration camp scene, a plausible, or at least kind of tolerable explanation, once one has seen the whole Clip grew with the anticipation of the new Album. In the case of very many others, especially in the Jewish associations, outweighed the disgust. Central Council President Josef Schuster criticized the fact that the Holocaust will need to be “marketing purposes”. His predecessor, Charlotte Knobloch, spoke of a “trivialization” of the Holocaust. The anti-Semitism commissioned by the Federal government, Felix Klein, and warned that a scandal-mongering for sales purposes could cross a “red line”, but was willing to be surprised, should be included in the Album “songs against the hatred of Jews”. And the Director of the Foundation of Bavarian memorials, Karl Freller (CSU) invited the Band to Dachau, to inform “about the Nazi atrocities”.
As the Video went online, it was, at least, the question of the context answered quickly: The post-modern image jugglers Rammstein throw in it a dozen motives from 2000 years of German history in the air, and then March with a serious facial expression and rolling R in the Collage, which extends in front of your feet. In the Video there are allusions to the Reformation, Walhalla, colonialism, Sigmund Jähn, Erich Honecker, the RAF, the V-2 rocket, and also Auschwitz. The Text, however, is unambiguous: “Germany, your love is a blessing and a curse/Germany, my love I can’t give you,” sings Rammstein singer Till Lindemann, for his standards, downright striking dissociation of Patriotism and nationalism.
The love for Germany is today, even for Rammstein a subject that the Band would not want to be misunderstood. A Central figure of the clip is a black woman, the colonial Germany feeds in one place and graze. Without any difficulty the Video as a tour through the German extrusion to read history. However, the fact that the Band has decided to advertise for this Video, with the Central motif of German perpetrator-victim-reversal, and as a German Band, the Uniform of Jewish concentration camp inmates, slap on a prophylactic, this fact remains. The Band knew exactly what she was doing there, and speaks that she has also had every other image for the Teaser can use, but for this to be decided. The question now is not whether you can, but what she was thinking, the expectable, but not less legitimate protests harnessing of Jewish organizations for their own marketing. Perhaps it was the Reflex of the reactions, perhaps in order to picture ambivalence, and moralism. But perhaps no one benefited from this excess is also easy, except for Rammstein.
