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Home > Publications > Artistic Freedom Threatened in Germany
Artistic Freedom Threatened In Germany
DISCRIMINATION AGAINST
ARTISTS IN GERMANY (continued...)
Germany is the only country in the world to censure Mr. Corea and other Scientology artists because of their religion — and this in a nation whose constitution guarantees both religious and artistic freedom.
Other American artists have also been targeted. A concert by the American band Golden Bough, due to take place in April 1996, was cancelled by the organizers because the members of the band are Scientologists. Golden Bough have been blacklisted by a prominent German folk music magazine because of their religion. Like Mr. Corea, the band used to perform regularly in Germany. In 1991, the group enjoyed 12 appearances while there. By 1994, the number of play dates dropped to two. During one Golden Bough concert in Germany, members of the CDU youth faction actually mounted the stage with banners protesting the group members’ religion, forcing the concert to a halt.
Not only musicians but painters and writers have been singled out. Because of their prominence, discrimination against world-famous Scientologists makes headlines. However, unknown and unheard of, discrimination against Scientologists and members of minority religions takes place every day.
While an editorial in TIME magazine characterized the German government’s reaction to Scientology as “somewhere between silly and hysterical,” the true situation is more serious. Lives are being harmed and careers destroyed. The ability of Germans belonging to minority religions to feed, care for and bring up their families is in jeopardy.
Because Germany’s policies violate international human rights laws guaranteeing the freedoms of speech and religion, no less than 11 reports by human rights agencies have strongly criticized the German government. The United Nations Human Rights Committee, the U.S. State Department’s annual human rights reports, and the prestigious Human Rights Centre at Essex University, England, have all expressed concern that Germany is failing to live up to its obligations to protect civil liberties.
Although the German government has targeted a wide range of minority and new religions, those most affected have been Scientologists. The Scientology religion appeals to people from all walks of life, and artists have long been prominent among its membership. It is not surprising to find that Scientology’s founder, L. Ron Hubbard — himself a successful writer, musician, photographer and poet — held artists in high esteem. He considered it essential that they be kept free from government interference and suppression. He wrote:
“The artist injects the spirit of life into the culture.
“A society which in any way inhibits, suppresses or regiments its artists is a society... most certainly doomed. A totalitarian state, following its usual line of perversion of truth, talks endlessly and raucously about its subsidization of the artist. But it subsidizes only those artists who are willing to work for the state exactly as the state dictates. It regiments the artist and prescribes what he will do and what he will write and what he will think. This is in direct controversion to the function of the artist in a society. Because the artist deals in future realities, he always seeks improvements or changes in the existing reality.”
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