2023-07-28 18:30:31
Under public pressure, a Protestant church has closed an exhibition of paintings by gay artist Rosa von Praunheim. Soon the pictures will be shown elsewhere – but no longer in a church.
Nuremberg.
The church exhibition “Jesus loves” by the gay artist Rosa von Praunheim, which was closed after controversy, will be shown in Munich and Hamburg in the future. From the beginning of October she will be on display in the Bavarian capital, and then in Hamburg in December, von Praunheim told the German Press Agency on Friday. The show on love, sex and homosexuality in Christianity was stopped shortly after it opened in Nuremberg due to negative reactions.
Von Praunheim announced that “Jesus loves” will henceforth be shown in galleries and not in a church again. The closure was to be expected. He was “thrilled” that attention was paid to the topic as a result. The curator, Pastor Thomas Zeitler from the Nuremberg Egidien parish, was very courageous. Now it is “time for the church to change in general”.
A few days after the opening on July 20, the exhibition was temporarily closed after hostilities. The community spoke of reactions ranging from serious criticism to hatred and hate speech. “Numerous people felt their religious sensibilities were hurt,” said the Egidien community. Shortly thereafter, the church council of St. Egidien and St. Sebald decided not to reopen the show.
The ecumenical working group on homosexuals and the church criticized that the church had caved in the face of public outrage. Despite all the modernizations of the past decades, the evangelical church is “not a safe place” for homosexuals, said the group’s spokesman, Thomas Pöschl.
The Bavarian Ministry of Art announced that it was not responsible and would therefore not comment. However, leaders of the Evangelical Church in Bavaria welcomed the premature end. The Nuremberg regional bishop Elisabeth Hann von Weyhern called the decision of the cultural church St. Egidien on Friday “really evangelical”. Everyone involved is aware that any decision “offsets some group,” said the church district of Nuremberg. The exhibition with provocative images “does not do justice to the mission of the church”. Nuremberg city dean Jürgen Körnlein declared that the exhibition could not achieve its goal “in an atmosphere of anger and hatred”. He demanded that the Evangelical Church should review their behavior towards homosexuals. (dpa)
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