If you want to know why teens from Moscow to Los Angeles know the group Rammstein and no other artists of the German tongue, you will not find the answer in their music. The answer lies in the way Rammstein knows how to stage himself - and her Teutonic origin - more professionally and radically than any other colleague.
It was not until a stir, then for excitement and finally for indignation that the teaser provided the video for the first single of the upcoming album: "Germany". To elegiac descending keyboard cadenzas are the faces of the band members to see how they, the rope around the neck and in the striped prisoner uniform of concentration camp inmates, waiting for their execution. At the end "Germany" appears in fracture. And a note in Roman numerals on the date on which the entire video is first unlocked. That's how you create tension.
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Excerpt from the video: Band members in striped prisoner uniform of concentration camp inmates.
It also creates a scandal even before the video itself is seen. On the basis of the 35 seconds criticized the Central Council President Josef Schuster, the Holocaust was abused for "marketing purposes". Felix Klein, the anti-Semitism commissioner of the Federal Government, suspected a scandal for sales purposes and thus the crossing of "red lines".
If you just ask me quickly and what the person is saying, if the warning and warning is one of his tasks anyway. Anyone who stylizes himself as a German group in concentration camp clothing to the victims of the Nazi dictatorship, so who throws himself in such an outrageous pose, it has targeted these just these outraged reactions. He has calculated and received them. And rightly so.
Especially as there are good reasons to subject the handling of the brown past - and the present - to a very precise examination, even in the context of pop culture, beyond the present excitement of our society. Are there the "red lines" shifted? Can it be said and shown in 2019 what would have been unthinkable in 2009 or 1999?
Triggers the concerns of the misunderstander
But unthinkable, was that really? In 2018, did not two rappers, Farid Bang and Kollegah, have been awarded the "Echo", which in every sense held mutilated lines like "a body more defined than that of Auschwitz inmates"? Did not Rammstein pay homage to the aesthetics of a Leni tire steel in "Stripped" back in 1998? And then pointed out any closeness to right thought?
It is interesting to see how differentiated and prudent a spokeswoman for the Holocaust memorial Jad Vashem in Jerusalem reacted to the provocation. Remembering the Holocaust should not be just a "mere tool" to sell a product or, as in this case, a public interest in a video. Nevertheless, "artistic works reminiscent of Holocaust images" are not generally to be condemned. So you first sniff a stick, instead of jumping over it in reflex.
A "honeypot" is a dummy intended to distract the enemy from the actual target. A trap. And such a "honeypot" is, in a twisted way, also the trailer for "Germany". He triggers the concerns of the misgiving - but then plays the full video with start in the hands.
It is a megalomaniac ride through a history of 2000 years of German history. In the postmodern iconoclasm, films as diverse as "Iron Sky", "Gladiator", "Prometheus", "Babylon Berlin", "The Lives of Others", "The Name of the Rose", "Alexander Nevsky" and, that too, " Schindler's list "cited.
Iconic images of the German past, from the destruction of the Varus to the Teutonic Knights, from the wars of liberation to the end of the Hindenburg, from Sigmund Jähn to the RAF, from the Anabaptists to the riots on May 1, of Bismarck to Marx, from to Hammer to sickle.
The temporal levels are fragmented, sometimes several centuries run through a scene. Once the church and the SA are in each other's arms. Swastikas are not visible, but the concentration camp is one of them - not Auschwitz, but Mittelbau-Dora, marked by rising V2 rockets. The joy of detail extends to the correct representation of the historic Jewish stars. A Muslim who also waits for his execution carries the "pink corner" of homosexuals.
Delirious meditation on identity
Such illustrations of national sexual neuroses may be found to be ridiculous or boring. An advertisement for fascism is "Germany" but not. On the contrary, it is an orgiastically staged ragging with Germany: "Germany, my heart in flames, wants to love and condemn you", drones singer Till Lindemann and concludes: "Overpowering, superfluous, supermen weary".
As clear as here, Rammstein have never before distanced themselves from nationalism. Not to be ruled out that on the upcoming tour in stadiums worldwide "Germany!" barking, with fists stretched, as in football.
Unlike football, there is at least a bit of ambivalence here. Germany? "I can not give you my love", Lindemann rolls the R like Sisyphos rolls his stone. Although this remains simple-minded, but is not an essay by Klaus Theweleit. But pop, music for the masses. A delirious meditation on identity - a few years ago Jan Böhmermann played with his Rammstein parody "Be Deutsch". Identitarian and other racists will not enjoy it.
This is because of the actual clou, which is more effective than the clumsy pathos of the lyrics - the cast of the allegorical Germania by Ruby Commey, actress at the Berliner Ensemble.
Because it is a black who waits there in the Teutoburg Forest for the Roman legions. A black, where the colonialists graze cannibalisch. A black woman who is released from German shepherd puppies. A black woman who wears golden armor, a spiked helmet or, even that, wears an SS uniform and will survive all the haunting.
It is, if you will, "an artistic work" that, among other things, invokes the Holocaust as part of history. Clear that the 2019 in Germany causes negative or ambiguous feelings. Clear that the calculated taboo break will serve the sales of the plate. Rammstein, that 's how they work.
The verdict of the international trade press - about music, not about national sensitivities - is just coming in. They will find "epic".