The controversial poem "Avenidas" by Eugen Gomringer has recently been emblazoned on two facades in Berlin - and only two kilometers away from the Alice Salomon University. It had been removed there more than a year ago because students found it sexist.

The poem consists of 20 words in a row and tells of a scene on the Ramblas in Barcelona, ​​which the poet Eugen Gomringer observed in the fifties. They are translated as: "avenues / avenues and flowers / flowers / flowers and women / avenues / avenues and women / avenues and flowers and women and an admirer".

The university's Asta had already complained about the poem three years ago: "A man who looks out to the streets and admires flowers and women." This poem not only reproduces a classic patriarchal art tradition in which women are only the beautiful muses inspire male artists to do creative work, "the student representatives said. "It's also remotely reminiscent of sexual harassment that women are exposed to everyday."

Housing Cooperative "Green Center" Hellersdorf

"Avenidas"

The housing cooperative "Grüne Mitte" Hellersdorf now shows it in German and Spanish at about eight by ten meters on the facades and even illuminates it when it's dark.

The board of the cooperative, Andrej Eckhardt, has decided it so. "I'm really annoyed in the city that everything is permanently considered negative," he told the SPIEGEL. His poem broke his collar. He absolutely could not understand what is supposed to be sexist about it. Eckhardt is of the opinion that the students went too far.

He had already thought then: "people enough, get it!" One could discuss everything, but "do we want to hang the smile of the Mona Lisa?" Eckhardt says that the cooperative wants to show its flag.

The 93-year-old poet Gomringer had sharply criticized the planned overpainting of his poem at the university facades: "This is an intervention in the freedom of art and poetry." It goes to those responsible for the removal of a "not softened poem" in the sense of a misunderstood political correctness.

Also Minister of State Monika Grütters (CDU) rebuked the removal of the poem also sharp. "The decision of the Academic Senate of Alice Salomon University to paint over the Gomringer poem is a frightening act of cultural barbarism."