Browsing: Nationalism

The publicist Eike Geisel, born in 1945, wrote about anti-Semitism, German politics of remembrance and forgetting, and worked as a historian, for example, on the Berlin Scheunenviertel and the Jewish Cultural Association.

In 1979, the publicist Henryk M. Broder, together with Michel R. Lang, publishes a book: “Fremd im eigenen Land. Jews in the Federal Republic.” Some thirteen years later, three young musicians from Heidelberg are unable to find a label for their songs, so without further ado they self-publish their single in 1992.

Berlin-Mitte. Some of those present wear beige trench coats, floppy hats, mirrored sunglasses. In the entrance area of the Maritim Hotel: light blue garbage bags filled with shredded files.

The track by Berlin rapper Quio (“Qu for quatsch, I for Eisbein, O for Otto-Motor”) tells of national belonging, cultural representations and essentialist notions of “German” culture – and of how crumbling it all is.

The duo consists of Ghanaian and Ghanaian-Romanian musicians M3nsa and Wanlov the Kubolor. They do “Gospel Porn” – making them, in their own words, “the most celebrated Ghanaian music duo in the world due to their most unconventional way of entertaining with ingeniously tasteful shock lyrics, revolutionary performance art & indulgent progressive sounds.”

While thousands of people drown in the Mediterranean Sea or are deported by force, Germany’s political and cultural establishment celebrated itself as cosmopolitan, humane and liberal on Friday, June 12, 2015 in a small circle of invited guests.