Berlin Journal; Poking Fun, Artfully, at a Heady German Word

Roger Cohen                   March 31, 2000               The New York Times

 

On the western facade of the Reichstag is an old inscription: ''Dem Deutschen Volke'' -- ''To the German People.'' Straightforward enough. But just how charged and divisive those words are has been revealed by an outcry over a proposed work of art for the refurbished parliamentary building.

 

The problem, as usual in this country, is who Germans are. Are they still a ''Volk?'' The word is associated with identity-through-blood, was debased by Hitler with his clamor of ''Fuhrer, Volk und Vaterland'' and was further tarnished by the pervasive ''Volkspolizei'' of the East German Communist dictatorship.

 

Or, with seven million foreigners in their midst and as many restaurants offering ''Turkish doner kebab'' as wurst, have Germans moved beyond a ''volkisch'' appreciation of nationality to a more embracing view of the German soul?

 

That is the central question posed by the work that Hans Haacke, a German artist living in New York, has proposed for the northern courtyard of the Reichstag. Above a trough filled with earth from throughout Germany would appear the illuminated words ''Der Bevolk erung'' -- ''To the Population.''

 

The idea has been approved, twice, by the art committee of the Parliament. According to his contract, Mr. Haacke should have already installed the piece. But a storm of protest, involving suggestions that the work is anticonstitutional, illegal and subversive, has delayed its execution.

The ''Volk,'' of course, is composed of German citizens. The ''Bevolkerung'' includes the 2.2 million Turks, more than 800,000 people from the former Yugoslavia, more than 600,000 Italians and many others who live here.

 

Mr. Haacke has touched a nerve by appearing to suggest that ''Volk'' is a discredited word and by questioning whom the German Parliament represents and for whom it should labor.

The uproar reflects just how sensitive the issue of German identity remains, even after the approval last year of a law making it easier for immigrants and their children to obtain citizenship. The suggestion that Germany is a ''land of immigration,'' a notion strongly supported by the facts, still stirs widespread unease or anger.

 

''Many Germans don't altogether like being part of Germany, so they have a lot of difficulty making up their minds about who belongs here,'' suggested Matthias Mansen, an artist who finds the inscription on the Reichstag disturbing. ''We have a rather twisted relationship to our identity, which makes these issues particularly explosive.''

 

Certainly, ''Bevolkerung'' does not seem a word pregnant with explosive implications. No throb of patriotism lurks here. The word resides more in the domain of the statistician than that of the statesman. It means nothing more than the people, all of them, who make up the population.

But that is not how Peter Ramsauer and many other conservative members of Parliament see it. ''This is political art, a provocative attempt to portray the words on the facade of the Reichstag as nationalistic,'' he said. ''But 'Volk' is just a normal word; it's ridiculous to think Hitler tainted it forever. German history is more than the 12 Nazi years.''

 

Referring to the slogan of the protesting East Germans who brought down the Berlin Wall a decade ago -- ''Wir sind das Volk'' (''We are the People'') -- Mr. Ramsauer, a member of the Christian Social Union, asked, ''Could you imagine Germany's division ending to the cry of 'We are the Population'?''

 

In a telephone interview, Mr. Haacke conceded that the word ''Volk'' has had some ''good meanings'' over the years. But he argued that it was also charged with ominous connotations, thanks to the Nazis and the East German leadership. To the artist, the word reeks of myth, of tribes, of blood lines, of all that Germany should now shun.

 

''The juxtaposition of the two words would help make the inscription on the Reichstag facade immune to nationalist interpretation,'' Mr. Haacke said. ''The salutary quality of the word 'Bevolkerung' is that it is bureaucratic, dry and non-inspiring. Because it is extremely precise, it resists myths.''

 

In the artist's proposal, the words ''Der Bevolkerung'' appear above a wooden trough, 95 feet long and 23 feet wide, into which soil from all constituencies of Germany would be shoveled by the lawmakers representing the various areas.

 

In this proposed procedure, or ceremony, the mocking allusion to the Nazi obsession with German soil, evident in the slogan of ''Blut und Boden'' (''Blood and Soil''), seems clear enough.

Mr. Haacke, who has aroused passions in New York through his recent portrayal, in an exhibition at the Whitney, of Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani in a manner that seems to link some of his statements to the Nazis, was asked in 1998 to prepare a work for the Reichstag, which became the seat of the German Parliament again last year.

 

His project was approved by a vote of 9 to 1 in the art committee of the Parliament last November, and approved again by a smaller margin in January after the first complaints emerged. It seemed then that nothing could stop the execution of the $200,000 commission from one of Germany's best-known artists.

 

But these votes have since been overruled by a parliamentary body that oversees the committees, with the result that, in an extraordinary procedure, Mr. Haacke's project is to be put to a vote of the whole Parliament, the Bundestag, probably next month. Michael Naumann, Germany's top cultural official, opposes the work as ''an overpriced provocation.''

 

Some of the most insistent arguments against the work have come from legal scholars who have insisted it is anticonstitutional. One of them, Dietrich Murswiek, argued that under the German Constitution, ''the German Volk, the people of the Federal Republic of Germany, is the bearer of executive power and the subject of politics: the function of the Bundestag is to represent the Volk.''

 

Therefore, by suggesting that Parliament should work for and represent the Bevolkerung, Mr. Haacke's piece infringes ''the sovereignty of the Volk and thus the fundamental principles of the Constitution.''

 

Mr. Haacke, who has enough support here to ensure a close vote, dismissed such arguments as absurd, saying that his work is buttressed both by Article 3 of the Constitution, which says nobody may be prejudiced or favored because of ''his homeland and origin,'' and by Article 5, which says art is free.

 

''The tenuous link I see between the row over the Giuliani piece in New York and the Reichstag work is that both involve constitutional issues,'' he said. ''At the Whitney, I am concerned with the First Amendment. And in Germany it seems that art is free all over the country, except at the seat of Parliament.''