Munich: Mayor Reiter wants to throw Roger Waters out of the Olympic Hall – Munich

The Olympiapark München Gesellschaft (OMG) is coming under increasing pressure because of Roger Waters’ planned concert on May 21, 2023 in the Olympiahalle. “It irritates me a lot,” said Mayor Dieter Reiter (SPD) that the city’s subsidiary was allowing this concert to take place on city land. “I had no knowledge of it.” This is particularly explosive, because before and after the last concert by Pink Floyd-Co-founder Waters in the Olympic Hall, the mayor and the musician had clashed.

Waters is no longer welcome because of his identification with the at least partly anti-Semitic Israel boycott movement BDS, said Reiter in the summer of 2018. A clear veto against further concerts in the city’s Olympiahalle. At the end of last week, Mayor Verena Dietl (SPD) was annoyed that the OMG supervisory board had not been involved with the Waters concert.

The anti-Semitism commissioner of the Bavarian state government, Ludwig Spaenle (CSU), called for the concert to be canceled if Waters did not distance himself from the BDS movement. Criticism of the Israeli government’s concrete policies is legitimate, but denying the state of Israel’s right to exist, as practiced by the BDS movement, is unacceptable.

“Roger Waters plays the keyboard of anti-Semitic stereotypes again and again – also in the context of his concerts,” said Miriam Heigl, head of the Department for Democracy of the City of Munich. Waters recently commented on the war in Ukraine. “His statements about the Russian war of aggression are riddled with conspiracy myths,” Heigl continued. Her conclusion “This is technically unbearable on an urban stage.”

The OMG explained that due to a judgment by the Federal Administrative Court against the city of Munich, they saw no possibility of refusing Waters a contract for the requested concert in the Olympiahalle. The city decided in December 2017 to no longer rent out its own space to the BDS movement or anyone close to it. She failed in court. That’s why you had to sign the contract with Waters, explained the OMG.

Those responsible reject the fact that they bypassed the city administration. One is “very well of the opinion that we have coordinated with the responsible authorities,” said a spokesman. “There is corresponding correspondence that proves it.” The economics department, to which the municipal subsidiary reports, and also the specialist office for democracy have only confirmed that they have dealt with the BDS issue in general, but not with the specific Waters concert in May 2023.

As early as 2019, the year after the last Waters concert, the supervisory board was concerned with how to deal with artists whose political stance was racist, anti-Semitic or anti-democratic, said the OMG spokesman. At that time, one “came to the conclusion that the committee could not make any recommendations and that the OMG had to refer to the assessments of the lawyers”.

Nevertheless, the OMG will have to deal with Waters again. Mayor Reiter wants to try to uphold his veto by taking into account recent political statements on the war in Ukraine: “In the light of the conspiracy-theoretical statements on Russia’s war of aggression, I can also look at our twin city of Kyiv, which is currently experiencing terrible bombing raids by Russia again , just ask the Olympiapark GmbH to check again whether this concert actually has to take place.”

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