A German foundation withdraws a prize due to calls for a boycott of Israel, a festival cancels an exhibition of children’s drawings from Gaza. Since 7 October 2023, more and more such cases have become known.
The German Schelling Architecture Foundation has withdrawn a €10,000 ‘Theory Prize’ from British artist James Bridle just a few days before the award ceremony in Karlsruhe. The reason is Bridle’s signing of an open letter calling for a boycott of Israeli cultural institutions if they do not take a clear stance against the oppression of Palestinians.
The foundation based its decision on ‘Germany’s national history and the resulting responsibility’. In an email to Bridle, it also referred to the recently passed Bundestag resolution ‘Never again is now’, reports the Guardian. This prohibits state support for organisations that question Israel’s right to exist or support calls for a boycott, they say. Bridle described the withdrawal as an implicit accusation of anti-Semitism and referred to the NSDAP past of the foundation’s founder Erich Schelling. The foundation then accused Bridle of ‘refusing to talk’.
Also this week, the management of the Altonale Kunstherbst in Hamburg announced on social media that the planned exhibition ‘Hearts of Gaza’ with drawings by children from Gaza would not be taking place. The festival’s post stated that it had actually wanted to draw attention to the fate of children, ‘who are not to blame for the outbreak of war – regardless of which side of the conflict they are on’. After intensive consideration, however, the decision was made to cancel the exhibition ‘so as not to give any side or political initiative the opportunity to politically instrumentalise the Kunstherbst’. The room in which the children’s pictures were to be hung will therefore remain empty.
The entrepreneur Jenny Havemann wrote about the cancellation on X: ‘Together we did it!!!’ Havemann, who is also known as a pro-Israeli activist, had previously claimed that the word genocide mentioned in one drawing was ‘an anti-Semitic narrative and a lie’. Another drawing denies Israel’s right to exist, the activist explains, as it ‘shows a Palestinian flag painted on the entire map of Israel’. In October, Havemann and an anti-fascist group had already ensured that ‘Hearts of Gaza’ was banned from a building in the city of Erfurt. The organisations organising the event, ‘Erfurt Unsilenced’ and ‘Jena for Palestine’, criticised this as ‘censorship’.
The cases in Karlsruhe, Hamburg and Erfurt are by no means the only ones in which people and organisations that show solidarity with Palestinians or express criticism of Israeli policy have come under pressure in Germany. Last weekend, the pro-Palestinian ‘Archive of Silence’ published a list of almost 200 cases in which people were disinvited from planned events or broadcasts in Germany after 7 October 2023, lost spaces for exhibitions and theatre performances or were persecuted by authorities. The case of James Bridle is currently the latest entry on this list.
Many of the documented incidents are based on media reports, others on statements from those affected. These are often people with non-German citizenship or Jews. They are accused of one-sided criticism of Israel, a lack of distancing from the Hamas massacre on 7 October, understanding for the armed Palestinian resistance or simply anti-Semitism.
The people affected include rapper Nura, artist Candice Breitz, journalist Malcolm Ohanwe, authors Adania Shibli and Deborah Feldman, politicians Jeremy Corbyn and Bernie Sanders and the organisations Jewish Voice and Forensic Architecture. However, the list also contains numerous previously less well-known events.
In some of the 200 cases, the German-Israeli Society had previously insisted on a cancellation or invitation in social media or to the press. The lobby organisation is ‘of the opinion that anti-Semitism should not be accepted by democrats and democratic institutions, academic and cultural institutions without objection’, said a spokesperson when asked by ‘nd’.
Critics like Wolfgang Kaleck, founder and chairman of the Berlin-based European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights, see the numerous incidents as evidence that Germany is ‘isolating itself internationally without necessity or benefit.’ ‘A year after the Hamas massacre and the ongoing war against the civilian population in Gaza, more nuanced positions should have emerged’, Kaleck told nd.
Published in German in „nd“.
Image: The exhibition ‘HeARTs of Gaza’ with children’s drawings could not be shown in Erfurt or Hamburg (X/ Screenshot).
