The publishing house Kiepenheuer & Witsch has ended its collaboration with the Rammstein singer Till Lindemann. The background is his porn video in which one of his books appears. The publisher had brought out two volumes of poems by Lindemann.
The publishing house Kiepenheuer & Witsch is ending its collaboration with Rammstein singer Till Lindemann with immediate effect. The Cologne publishing house has published the volumes “In silent nights” and “100 poems” with some of Lindemann’s highly controversial poems.
“We have been shocked to see allegations against Till Lindemann that have become public in the past few days,” wrote publisher Kerstin Gleba. “Our sympathy and respect goes to the women affected.”
Book featured in porn video
The reports are about criticism of the way the 60-year-old deals with women. “In the course of the current reporting, we became aware of a porn video in which Till Lindemann celebrates sexual violence against women and in which the 2013 book ‘In stillen Nachten’, published by Kiepenheuer & Witsch, plays a role,” it says in the Justification of the publisher.
In a video for the Lindemann song “Till The End” that has been circulating online for three years, the singer can be seen in numerous pornographic scenes with young women. In some sequences, a book of poetry is used and a poem is quoted. The publisher was initially unable to find out how long this video has been known to the responsible authorities.
In 2020, the publisher had still defended the musician
The volume “100 Poems”, also published by Kiepenheuer & Witsch, was under discussion in 2020 because of rape fantasies in the poem “When you sleep”. The publisher had protected Lindemann at the time: “The moral outrage over the text of this poem is based on a confusion between the fictional speaker, the so-called ‘lyrical I’ and the author Till Lindemann,” it said in a statement.
Now the publisher is moving away from the singer. “We see this as a gross breach of trust and as a ruthless act against the values we represent as a publisher,” wrote publisher Gleba. “We defend the freedom of art with full conviction. Till Lindemann’s actions that humiliate women in the aforementioned porn and the targeted use of our book in a pornographic context mean that the separation between the ‘lyrical I’ and the author/artist, which we so staunchly defended, is becoming less clear mocked by the author himself.”
From the publisher’s point of view, “Till Lindemann exceeds immovable limits for us when dealing with women”. The collaboration will end “since our relationship of trust with the author has been irretrievably broken”.
No comment from Lindemann
Initially, no statement could be obtained from Lindemann or the band. The band spoke up on Twitter on May 28 after the first allegations became known. The Irish Shelby Lynn had previously stated that she was drugged on the sidelines of a Rammstein concert. The band wrote: “Regarding the allegations about Vilnius circulating online, we can rule out that what is alleged to have happened in our environment. We are not aware of any official investigations into this.”