Berlin Exhibition Re-examines Artist Who Staged Royal Hitler Salute
Christoph Schlingensief, a master of provocation who died in 2010 just before his 50th birthday, remains a polarizing figure in German art. A new exhibition at Berlin’s Gropius Bau, titled It’s Not My Problem Anymore, Deal With Your Own Shit, revisits his radical work. The retrospective centers on the artist’s 2006 play Kaprow City, which originally premiered at the Volksbühne theatre. The production drew sharp condemnation, including a Sunday Express headline that read: “Fury at German play that shows Queen as a Nazi.”
The play, inspired by US performance artist Allan Kaprow, scrutinized the cultural obsession surrounding Diana, Princess of Wales. Schlingensief’s staging included a scene featuring the monarch performing a Hitler salute, alongside re-enactments of the fatal paparazzi chase and provocative imagery like the smearing of Camilla with animal blood. While Schlingensief argued he was investigating the transformation of Diana into a modern icon, the work relied on the shock value of turning tabloid figures into symbols of societal absurdity. Aino Laber, his widow and estate manager, notes that the artist was deeply fascinated by the myths surrounding Lady Di and the public speculation regarding her death. Exposing the absurdity of societies that glorify their idols while consuming their lives as entertainment, but his art thrived on outrage. Spectators witnessed only fragments of the action.
Visitors to the Gropius Bau can view parts of the “animatograph,” a rotating, carousel-like stage assembly originally designed by Schlingensief. The current installation features remnants of the set, including flickering footage of a crucifixion and a slate board displaying odd labels such as “Diana Girl Ballet” and “exorcism.” The original production confined audiences to 18 wedge-shaped rooms to mirror Allan Kaprow’s 18 Happenings in 6 Parts, though the current exhibit is draped in plastic with loops of old video footage playing on television screens. Violent fantasies and royal glamour, looking at this installation today feels like a glimpse into Schlingensief’s mind: a messy collage of childhood memories. A major influence, once exhibited his Stag Monuments, the Gropius Bau installed roughly half of Schlingensief’s original set on the very same spot where Joseph Beuys.
Schlingensief’s artistic roots were firmly planted in the traditions of New German Cinema, influenced heavily by directors like Rainer Werner Fassbinder. This background is evident in works like The African Twin Towers, which brought figures such as Patti Smith and Irm Hermann to Namibia. The project aimed to address Germany’s colonial genocide by re-enacting Wagnerian myths at Shark Island, a site of a former concentration camp. However, some contemporary critics argue the project prioritized the artist’s aesthetic vision over a genuine reckoning with history, treating the location as a cinematic backdrop.
The artist’s engagement with far-right politics is perhaps his most enduring legacy. In his adaptation of Hamlet, staged at both the Schauspielhaus Zürich and Berlin’s Volksbühne, he cast former extremists to re-enact Shakespearean scenes against a backdrop of Nazi aesthetics and heavy music. A sign at the exhibit quotes his intent: “We’re not playing Hamlet, we’re playing Germany.” This confrontational stance was equally prominent in his 2000 project Ausländer Raus!, where asylum seekers were housed in a monitored container near the Vienna State Opera, with audiences voting daily on who should be deported. His 2000 project in which asylum seekers lived under surveillance in a Big Brother-style container beside Vienna’s State Opera, while audiences voted on who should be deported first, two people, schlingensiefs Container.
The project, which targeted the rise of the far-right FPÖ, anticipated modern political discourse regarding “remigration.” While Schlingensief used art to expose the mechanics of public racism and deportation, current observers note how far-right movements have since co-opted these aesthetic techniques. For example, the AfD’s 2024 AI video Remigration Hit mirrors the eerie spectacle of past political theater, using imagery of planes and Aryan-looking pilots to humiliate migrants. Laber emphasizes that Schlingensief’s absence is felt deeply today, noting that the responsibility to confront such ideologies remains with the public. For instance, revels in humiliating migrant men herded on to planes by Aryan-looking pilots, the AfD’s AI video Remigration Hit from 2024.
