2023-04-17 19:24:44
The allegations of anti-Semitism surrounding the documenta fifteen art show made waves last year. After several reports, the public prosecutor’s office does not see any starting points for criminal investigations.
After the anti-Semitism scandal in connection with the works of art shown at documenta fifteen, the public prosecutor’s office in Kassel refused to initiate preliminary proceedings. There was no “initial suspicion of a prosecutable crime”, the public prosecutor said on request. The “Hessisch/Niedersächsische Allgemeine” had previously reported on the subject.
According to its own statements, the authority had taken action ex officio in response to media coverage of allegations of anti-Semitism regarding the works “People’s Justice” by the Taring Padi artist collective and the work “Guernica Gaza” by the Eltiqa artist group. A soldier with a pig’s face was featured on the large Taring Padi banner, which was taken down shortly after the opening of the art show due to the allegations. A total of 25 people or institutions reported to the police headquarters in North Hesse and the public prosecutor’s office and filed criminal charges. It was essentially about the accusation that the works of art in question were to be attributed an anti-Semitic or hate speech, it said.
In addition to the artists, the criminal charges were also directed against the organizers of the exhibition and those responsible for documenta fifteen, i.e. curators and those responsible for politics, including in particular the Lord Mayor of Kassel, Christian Geselle (SPD).
StA: Disturbance of the public peace can hardly be proven
A 20-page press release from the public prosecutor’s office said, among other things, that the fact that the large painting by Taring Padi was created in 2002 in the Asian cultural area and had previously been exhibited in other countries “rather speaks against a reference to the domestic Jewish population was intended”, even if parts of the local population – for example Jews living in Germany – feel a special connection to the State of Israel “for understandable reasons”, according to the authorities.
A disturbance of the public peace can hardly be proven. In addition, an “incitement to hatred” in the sense of hate speech “cannot (yet) be seen in the visual representation,” it said. A call for violent or arbitrary measures is not sufficiently clear from Taring Padi’s work. The same applies to other works of art against which the ads are directed.
Artists come from “completely different cultures”
A “prosecutable insult as well as incitement to hatred” also stands in the way of the fact that it cannot be ruled out that the artist group and curators are subject to “an unavoidable error of law”, that the representations are covered by freedom of art and freedom of expression, since they have been distributed worldwide for years were exhibited at various locations “without there ever having been any complaints relevant to criminal law or even discussions,” according to the public prosecutor. In addition, the artists and curators against whom the advertisements were directed are “without exception foreigners who do not speak German” who “only stayed temporarily in the Federal Republic of Germany and who come from a completely different culture” on the occasion of the art show local regulations is not comparable. Alongside the Venice Biennale, the documenta is the most important exhibition for contemporary art. (dpa)
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