Front view
Inv. No.S-2629
ArtistBeate Passowborn 1945 in Stadtoldendorf, Germany
Title

"Fürher oder Später"

Year1992
Medium

cibachrome

Dimensions28 x 38 cm
Edition1/3
Signature

signed recto

Comment

The artist Beate Passow visited the Villa am Großen Wannsee in Berlin around 1990. The Wannsee Conference took place in this house on January 20, 1942. Fifteen high-ranking representatives of the National Socialist Reich government and the SS authorities met at the secret meeting to organize the details of the Holocaust of the Jews that had begun and to coordinate the cooperation of the authorities involved.1 During her visit to the museum, Passow remembered a yellow bale of fabric in a display case. The fabric was printed with so-called Jewish stars and dated from the National Socialist era. Also at the time of the visit to the museum, in the early 1990s, a series of neo-Nazi marches, racist and xenophobic attacks began in Germany, especially in the new federal states. Anti-Semitic crimes also increased considerably from 1990 onwards. Right-wing extremist parties such as the NPD, Deutsche Volksunion (DVU) and Die Republikaner (REP) gained seats in some state parliaments.2
Beate Passow, born in 1945, is one of the few artists in Germany to deal proactively with political issues and coming to terms with the past.3 "Beate Passow works against forgetting."4 In line with her Art of Memory concept, she made the repressed German past the subject of her political art as early as the late 1980s. In 1992, the artist developed an entire series on the Jewish Star. She screen-printed yellow fabric with the Star of David and the word "Jew". The fabric was then used in various photographs or as a coat.
In the work "früher oder später" (sooner or later), the artist stages herself as a customer in a fabric store, examining the fabric she has made.
The original Jewish stars were produced by the Berlin flag factory Geitel & Co. In September 1941, Geitel received the order to manufacture the Jewish stars and produced almost one million stars within three weeks.5 The star had to be worn by Jews on the left side of their chest so that it was clearly visible. The Gestapo forced the Jewish community to sell the stars - each one cost 10 pfennigs.6 As the star had to be worn visibly on clothing at all times and only three "stars" were issued per person, they often had to be sewn from one item of clothing to another.7
In the picture, the artist is wearing a T-shirt with the Deutsche Bank logo and thus wants to show the connection between money and anti-Semitism. Deutsche Bank is representative of all German banks that profited from the assets in the accounts of Jewish victims after the Second World War. Banks played a central role during the National Socialist takeover. Aryanization, which was an important part of the National Socialist reorganization of the economy after 1933, aimed to gradually eliminate Jews completely from German economic life and transfer their companies and assets into Aryan hands.8 Deutsche Bank also provided loans for the construction of the concentration camp in Auschwitz and financed other SS projects.9
(Christoph Fuchs, 2023, transl. by deepl.com)

 

1
see wikipedia.org, https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wannseekonferenz (2023-11-24).

2
Werner Bergmann, "Deutschland" in: Wolfgang Benz (Hrsg.): Handbuch des Antisemitismus Band 1: Länder und Regionen, Berlin 2008, S. 101.

3
Alexander Braun, form "Nicht Vergangenheitsbewältigung, sondern Gegenwartsbewältigung" in: Kunstforum International, Bd. 132 (Die Zukunft des Körpers I), 1995.

4
Helmut Friedel, "Gegen das Vergessen – Den Finger an die Erinnerungswunden legen" in: www.beate-passow.de (no longer available online). Archived from the original on 2017-10-13 at https://web.archive.org/web/20171013224855/http://www.beate-passow.de/de/text_freidel.htm (2023-11-24).

5
wikipedia.org, https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judenstern (2023-11-24).

6
Jüdisches Museum Berlin, https://www.jmberlin.de/dauerausstellung-13-dinge-judenstern (2023-11-24).

7
Jüdisches Museum Berlin, https://objekte.jmberlin.de/object/jmb-obj-134871 (2023-11-24).

8
see more in Harold James, Die Deutsche Bank und die Arisierung, 2001.

9
Fritjof Meyer, Christoph Pauly, and Wolfgang Reuter, "Die Augen fest zugemacht" in: DER SPIEGEL, 6/1999, https://www.spiegel.de/politik/die-augen-fest-zugemacht-a-70edaa61-0002-0001-0000-000008608212 (2023-11-24).

S-2629, "Fürher oder Später"
Beate Passow, "Fürher oder Später", 1992
S-2629, Front view
© Beate Passow / Bildrecht, Wien
S-2629, Beate Passow,
Beate Passow, "Fürher oder Später", 1992
S-2629, Beate Passow, "früher oder später", 1992
S-2629, Beate Passow,
Beate Passow, "Fürher oder Später", 1992
S-2629, Beate Passow, "Mantel mit gelben Sternen",1993