Post date: Aug 15, 2013 11:5:24 AM
German court acquits controversial artist Jonathan Meese after making Nazi salute in public.
KASSEL, GERMANY (AUGUST 14, 2013) (REUTERS) - German artist Jonathan Meese was acquitted by a court in Kassel on Wednesday (August 14).
The 43-year-old was accused of making Nazi salutes twice in public, at an event, at the University of Kassel, called 'Megalomania in the Art World' in June, and during an interview with the German magazine Spiegel.
His defence team, Heide Sandkuhl and Pascal Decker, had argued that Meese made the offensive gesture during an art performance and was therefore protected under the artistic freedom clause in the German constitution.The prosecution on the other hand accused the Berlin artist of acting against the ban of Nazi speech in the German constitution, which forbids use of symbols of unconstitutional organisations. Meese himself has defended his actions with the freedom of art.
The artist voiced his relief after the verdict, which he called very reasonable and clear.
"Now I am relieved, now I can play freely, now you can't just bother and molest me and always catapult me into something where I don't feel at home," Meese told reporters as he left the court. "I am at home in the absence of ideology, in the dictatorship of the art.
"I am very satisfied, happy and it is great for mummy, this verdict, because mummy now can breathe a sigh of relief as she sees that her son is doing the right thing.
"He is fighting for the dictatorship of the art and the absence of ideology and mummy understands that," he added, forecasting the end of political parties as we know them. "There won't be any (political) parties anymore. There will the rule of the art then, the takeover of, the dictatorship of the art, that's great," he said.
Meese's lawyer, Pascal Decker, was satisfied with the outcome of the trial as the defence team had anticipated a conviction at an earlier stage.
"The end the prosecution came from the assumption of a constitutionally critical understanding of art and we had to fight against this," Decker said. "But this is only one part of the explanation.
"The actual struggle, and this is why it took three days of trial, was explained by the judge sending out a signal on the first day, which we as defence lawyers had to understand as a sign of a likely conviction. Therefore we pulled out all the stops and this made the trial more complicated."
Meese is an internationally acclaimed artist, known for his stage performances as well as his exhibitions of paintings and sculptures. Working also as a director, he has been invited to the Wagner Festival in Bayreuth to produce Parsifal in 2016.