It has become a new communication standard in the last year and a half: the celebrity vaccination picture. Celebrities like Dolly Parton, Arnold Schwarzenegger or Kate and William have shared photos on social media and agencies in which they are just getting the injection or showing the band-aid. Most of the time it’s about personal, unsolicited commitment to medicine and responsibility – but this current case weighs more heavily. Musician Marius Müller-Westernhagen published his vaccination picture on Instagram on Friday. And it has a wider meaning.
You can see at first glance that Westernhagen is not about the situation: the scenery is stylized, it’s more of a campaign image, a statement. He wrote just one word underneath: “Freedom”. Nevertheless, he takes up a complex discourse and sets the last point in it.
For many of the demonstrators, the anthem has now finally burned
Because “Freiheit”, Westernhagen’s famous song from 1987, had recently involuntarily to an anti-vaccination anthem and Corona policy critics developed. Since the beginning of 2021, the song has been sung again and again on many demos, solemnly and taking advantage of its combative undertone. The artist himself did not react, neither with (probably hopeless) complaints nor with a statement. He also did not comment on inquiries from the SZ.
The management now announced that they did not want to draw more attention to the topic and preferred to let the art speak for itself. With the Instagram picture, Westernhagen has now created a small political work of art himself: a completely non-authoritarian advertisement for solidarity, a gentle interpretation of his own song without misinterpreting it.
For many of the demonstrators, the anthem has now finally burned, which can be read from several of the around 5,000 comments that had been collected under the photo by Sunday. The agencies that designed the federal government’s last campaigns should study the case.