Thousands of people are involved in one way or another in documenta fifteen. For many, working on the world's largest art show is something they have been looking forward to for a long time. Instead, they and the visitors have to watch as any art experience is overshadowed and made impossible by a never-ending anti-Semitism scandal.
This week, anti-Jewish depictions surfaced again at the Documenta: the facsimile of a brochure with drawings on the Palestine conflict dates from the 1980s and is part of an archive of the Algerian women's movement.
Archives contain a lot – what matters is how you classify it for an exhibition. However, the documenta had not put the hate-mongering drawings into context and found them to be harmless, even after receiving hints. After all, the figures marked with the Star of David do not mean “Jews as such”.
A bizarre statement. Well-known politicians are now calling for the show to be stopped. Patience has finally run out. Those responsible in Kassel fail to realize that they have a responsibility that goes beyond simply making an exhibition possible. It was always said that they didn't want to check all the works shown at the Documenta.
Well, nobody wants that. No serious critic or politician wants to play the inspector at an art exhibition and search for anti-Semitic motifs there - or for racist or homophobic ones. You don't usually have to, because you assume it won't happen.
Now it has happened repeatedly, in the middle of Hesse and before the eyes of the world. Artistic freedom is a valuable asset. But it can collide with other fundamental rights, in this case with human dignity. Respecting and protecting this is the obligation of all state authority. That might not be in the documenta fifteen programme. But in the constitution.
