Roger Waters raises hackles in Berlin with SS-themed show

Pink Floyd were favourites of German concertgoers for decades, particularly after they brought their multimedia spectacular, The Wall, to Berlin in 1990.

But band co-founder Roger Waters has divided German audiences with his latest show, which sees him don an SS uniform and fire into the audience with a machine gun. Critics say the show’s imagery and texts veer into anti-Semitism propaganda and compare Israel with Nazi Germany.

Among the set pieces are pig-shaped balloons covered with images including the Star of David, as well as logos of an oil company and an Israeli arms company.

Screens juxtapose the name of Frankfurt-born Anne Frank, who died in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in 1945, and Al-Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, who was shot in the face – mostly likely by Israeli security forces – while covering Israeli army raids in the city of Jenin in the northern occupied West Bank last year.

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After his Berlin concert this week, the city’s culture senator, Joe Chialo, condemned “in the strongest terms the performance of an artist like Roger Waters releasing pig-shaped balloons with Stars of David on them”.

After Berlin, Waters takes his show on Sunday to Frankfurt, where city authorities failed in their attempt to ban his show, which is being staged at a publicly owned venue. They said their ban was justified because Waters is “one of the anti-Semites with the widest reach in the world”.

After an emergency filing by lawyers for Waters, a Frankfurt court agreed that the singer “obviously uses symbolism based on National Socialist rule” in his stage show. More important, though, was the “overall impression” and, in the view of the court, the musician “neither glorifies or relativises National Socialist atrocities or identifies with the National Socialist racial ideology”.

Postwar Germany has tight rules for the public use of Nazi images, propaganda or dissemination of views seen as glorifying the fascist regime. However, the Nazi-era crackdown on artists who challenged fascism means modern Germany has broad freedom of expression rules which allow the use of otherwise banned Nazi imagery for artistic purposes.

As controversial in Germany as Waters’s show, imagery is his support of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, which lobbies politicians, companies, artists, scientists and athletes to cancel or discontinue appearances, investments or co-operation with Israel. In a 2019 parliamentary resolution, the German Bundestag criticised the organisation for using anti-Semitic arguments and methods.

Waters denies claims he is anti-Semitic, alleges he is “harassed in Germany” and insists his support for BDS is a political protest against the Israeli government’s stance towards Palestinians, which he considers apartheid.

“The State of Israel maintains a powerful army of occupation in Palestine that has brutally oppressed the population for the last half century,” he told the Süddeutsche Zeitung.

After interviewing him earlier this month, a journalist for Der Spiegel said that “Waters either consciously or unconsciously panders to anti-Semitic stereotypes”.

Heading into his recent Hamburg show, audience members defended the musician’s right to perform but were divided over his political views.

One English-speaking audience member told Spiegel TV he found it “very funny ... that people in Germany care about this more than anywhere else ... but I feel that is because of the guilt they have for their grandfathers”.

A middle-aged woman concertgoer said: “I find his politics difficult, to be honest, but I’m here because I like the music.”