It cannot be said that Roger Waters has recently become quiet. He constantly causes a stir with his controversial statements on the Ukraine war, including an appearance at the United Nations and his boycott of the State of Israel. In addition, the legendary album “The Dark Side of the Moon”, which he released with his former band Pink Floyd, is celebrating its 50th birthday these days. Only in Munich had things gone quiet around Waters and his concert on May 21 in the city’s Olympia Hall.
In the fall, a cancellation was still hotly debated. Mayor Dieter Reiter (SPD) had asked the municipal subsidiary Olympiapark München GmbH (OMG) to examine the legal situation. Nothing had been heard of it since then. It was only when the city council colleagues in Frankfurt and the Hessian state parliament recently decided to cancel Waters’ concert in the Festhalle there that the calm around Waters was over in Munich as well.
In an emergency application, the CSU demanded that the city council proceed in the same way as in Frankfurt. The city, as the owner of the Olympic Hall and shareholder of the operating company, should instruct them to terminate the contracts. The motion did not spontaneously make it onto the agenda on Wednesday, but the topic is back on the agenda. On Friday, behind the scenes, the supervisory board of the Olympic Park Society was already discussing how to proceed. On March 14, the city council’s economic committee will decide on this.
“There it will be a question of whether the city of Munich, as a shareholder, will instruct the OMG to cancel the concert,” announced Mayor Dieter Reiter (SPD). It must also be considered “what other effects this will have, such as claims for damages or a possible lawsuit for admission to the hall”. The city would therefore follow very closely how the planned cancellation in Frankfurt developed.
Waters has not been a welcome guest in city politics for a long time because of his proximity to the Israel boycott movement BDS, which is sometimes considered anti-Semitic. At the last Munich concert in 2018, there was an open conflict between the mayor and the musician. Since then, Waters’ comments on the Ukraine war have caused even more resentment in Munich, the sister city of the Ukrainian capital Kiev. He repeatedly attested to Putin’s understandable motives and condemned the West as a warmonger.
In Frankfurt it was enough for those responsible, they decided to cancel. It is not known to what extent it has already been completed. In Munich, the lawyers assess the legal situation as very difficult. “We are currently checking whether there is a way to do this,” said Mayor Verena Dietl (SPD), who is also Chairwoman of the OMG Supervisory Board. It has not yet been clarified whether a corresponding instruction from the city as a shareholder to its subsidiary is legal. Without such an instruction, however, OMG could not terminate the contracts, said Dietl.
The city has already had bitter experiences with a ban on BDS-related events in public facilities. The Bavarian Administrative Court forced them to open their rooms. The judges referred to fundamental rights such as the principle of equality and freedom of expression and freedom of art. These also protected extremist, racist or anti-Semitic statements, as the city understood the verdict.
The Green/Pink List faction calls it “hard to bear” to give Waters a stage in a city hall. You are now looking for a common stance with the other factions in order to achieve a unified character as a city. If the concert can no longer be prevented, we will consider together what we can clearly oppose to Water’s position, said City Councilor David Suess. Mayor Dietl also sees it this way: “We will clearly express our position,” she announced.