Mayor Katrin Habenschaden (Greens) has promised that the city will provide financial support for showmen if they want to redesign their rides. The background is the current debate about racist and sexist depictions at the Oktoberfest. After the difficult Corona years, many people do not have much financial leeway, wrote habenschaden on Tuesday afternoon in a longer statement on the Instagram platform. Incidentally, it is about “very few rides where racism is an issue”. She was “good hope that we will find a solution”.
At the same time, the Greens politician took up another aspect of the painting on the “Crazy Alm” litter box that was at the center of the discussion. Its facade shows a black man lifting a woman’s dress with a broad smile, which two other men take no offense at. “I don’t want women and girls to have their skirts pulled up at the Oktoberfest – not even in pictures,” wrote habenschaden. The festival must be a place “where women and girls feel comfortable and safe and don’t have to expect sexual assaults”. And on which “People with black skin are not portrayed as lechers”.
The CSU calls such representations “art” and their criticism of them “green prohibition culture”. But she doesn’t consider “sexual harassment and racism to be art,” wrote habenharm. “But for sexual harassment and racism.” A CSU politician jumped to her side on Tuesday: Susanne Hornberger, direct candidate for the state elections in the Munich-Mitte constituency. “I agree with the mayor,” she said. The picture at the “Crazy Alm” was “tasteless, and I wouldn’t call it art either”. She feels that the representation is “more than borderline” and supports the suggestion that the showmen be offered financial help for painting over in such cases.
The municipal department for democracy had classified various motifs at the Wiesn as racist. Economics officer and Wiesn boss Clemens Baumgärtner (CSU) had recently rejected action against the paintings. On Tuesday, an intergroup working group met on the question of how to deal with the images.