Melanie Müller is Germany’s trash television queen: a nipped, tucked and tattooed pop culture personality with a CV that includes spells in porn, sex work and singing.
This week she was called before a court in Leipzig to answer an allegation that, during a concert two years ago, she allegedly gave the banned so-called Hitler salute.
In two amateur videos from September 2022, Müller can be seen onstage giving a stiff-armed salute eight times.
In court on Tuesday, Ms Müller declined to testify but, in a prior statement, denied that what can be seen in the video was a forbidden act.
“I didn’t show the Hitler salute ... and have never expressed myself in a racist, right-wing radical or other anti-constitutional manner,” she wrote.
The court heard that Ms Müller was engaged to perform by a group called Rowdy’s Eastside, linked to an extreme right organisation, the Hooligans. The concert venue in Leipzig was built originally as a satellite facility to the Nazi-era Buchenwald concentration camp.
During the concert, audience members began giving the Hitler salute, shouting “Sieg Heil”.
The singer says she ended her concert “immediately” but, in the video recording, she extended her arm and can be heard shouting “Ost Deutschland”, East Germany.
She also reportedly asked her audience that “this remains among us”.
It didn’t. Two videos were leaked to the Bild tabloid and since it published them online, according to Ms Müller’s lawyer, the singer has lost almost all her concert bookings.
At a second day of hearings in mid-August, a friend of Ms Müller who attended the concert will testify alongside experts on the illegal Hitler salute. Among the questions to be answered: at what angle can an outstretched right arm be considered an illegal Hitler salute and should, as Ms Müller’s lawyer insist, intention play a key role in deciding the nature of the gesture.
