The rising composer Clemens K. Thomas had an opera, ‘Dollhouse’, premiered in Hamburg a few months back. Now he’s putting on an orchestral piece called ‘Girls und Panzer’. Tricky, right?
Thomas explains:
I was commissioned by the Ensemble intercontemporain and Patricia Kopatchinskaja to explore the topic of war and peace for a performance at the Paris Philharmonie. I find this topic very challenging because it’s not as black and white as the title suggests, but rather very complex. The debate we’re currently conducting publicly has also moved me deeply and continues to resonate with me. I think I was raised with a very pacifist attitude; perhaps that’s common if you were born shortly after the fall of the Iron Curtain. I was in the first generation not to have to go to the conscription stage. Now we’re experiencing another discussion about the question of military fitness, rearmament, and conscription. This raises the question for me: how do we actually perceive this debate, or how is war packaged so that it becomes consumable?
Then there are the Schwarzwaldgipfel-Mädchen (Black Forest Summit Girls, pictured), for example. These are girls in a classic manga look, wearing school uniforms and short skirts, who are highly sexualized. At the same time, they drive tanks of the German Wehrmacht. When these Black Forest Summit Girls go into battle—in which, by the way, no one can die, it’s a sport—they play the “Panzerlied” or “Erika.” These are war songs that primarily have SS or Nazi connotations. Some of these songs were also played in the Bundeswehr until recently. The songs are now experiencing a strong renaissance on social media. They are associated with warmongering propaganda, but also with national identity content, such as content close to the AfD.
“Girls und Panzer” will be performed on May 4 in Göttingen.
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