Obermayer German Jewish History Award

Wolfram Kastner

Munich, Bavaria

Wolfram Kastner is a professional troublemaker. With his “interventions,” the performance artist provokes public debate, as well as legal action and threats on his life.

To commemorate Kristallnacht in Munich in 1993, for example, Kastner dressed two people in Nazi uniforms and five others in clothes bearing a yellow star. The “Nazis” led the three “Jews” through the streets. “Politicians said, ‘This is not the place for such performances,’” Kastner recalls. “But of course it is the right place; the Holocaust didn’t start in Auschwitz, it started right here in the streets of Munich.” The performers were arrested and taken to court. Some were even threatened with murder. But though his lawyer abandoned the case, Kastner never thought of giving up. “No, no,” he repeats slowly, his voice implying that quitting is not an option. “That would be capitulation.” Eventually, the case was dismissed.

Provocation, however, is just one way the 57-year-old influences people. His approach is clearly inter-disciplinary. He has taught adult education, has researched and written a book on creativity, and founded his own publishing house. He established a foundation to commemorate the social democrat Kurt Eisner. He paints and works as a photographer. He has studied art, art history, German literature, instruction, psychology, sociology, and political science. All of this is in addition to Kastner’s public actions and installation projects. His work has ranged from advocating for asylum-seekers to arranging antimilitaristic events. “I don’t want to be a soloist, the artistic genius who works in solitude,” Kastner explains. “I want to involve people in a direct way.”

Kastner supervised more than 40 people for his most recent project, a commemoration of the Jews deported from the Munich district of Bogenhausen. The group researched for more than a year, then prepared an exhibit portraying the deported as individuals, not just victims. Kastner led free tours and arranged a public installation of the exhibit: 17 yellow suitcases lined up on a single street to remember 17 deported Jews who had lived there. “When people see that it happened on their street, it touches them in a way it wouldn’t otherwise. It ignites attention, interest, sensitivity,” he says.

Samuel Golde, now living in Munich, remembers well Kastner’s sensitivity. When his mother died, the 45-year-old began discovering his family history. Kastner helped Golde with his research, and twice he accompanied Golde to the family’s former hometown of Schonungen, helping him find files and local residents who had known Golde’s relatives. “He stood by my side during a very difficult emotional process, and he was always understanding,” Golde remembers. “It would have been very hard for me to have done this alone.” Manchester, England, resident Peter Jordan, whom Kastner interviewed about his life in 1930s Germany, believes there is a guiding principle in the artist’s work: He wishes “to dignify Jewish individuals” and to provide a “visible memory of Jews in places where they lived and worked, in their neighborhoods, schools, etc.”

But to break the silence that buries the crimes and injustices of the past, Kastner felt compelled to use provocative methods. In commemoration of the 1933 book burnings, Kastner burned holes in the gardens of several German cities and organized public readings of once-banned books. “When art goes to the street, not staying nicely in a museum, it can be risky, but you reach people you might not otherwise,” he explains. Since 1993, Kastner has repeatedly disrupted commemoration ceremonies of SS veterans, held each year at the Salzburg cemetery. He has sprayed the word “Judensau” (“Jewish swine”) on Christian churches—such as the one in Regensburg—to raise awareness of the origin of this epithet, used by Nazis today as it was during the Holocaust. “Wolfram’s approach has not been a gentle, kid-gloves one, but feisty and in-your-face, often at personal and/or financial risk to himself,” write Inge and Martin Goldstein, who have been acquainted with Kastner since 1995.

This courage of his convictions can likely be traced to his grandmother. When she was 14, she joined the illegal Social Democratic Party. Later, when her husband joined the National Socialists in 1933, she took his card and returned it to the party’s office. “My grandmother was an important role model for me,” Kastner explains. “I saw that you could protest and resist and get away with it.”

Despite the fines, law suits, and murder threats, Kastner will continue his work. “I just hope I’ll be around in 130 years,” he says, “so I can accomplish all the projects I have ideas for.”