Hito Steyerl: Babenhausen

Hito Steyerl’s work in the 1990s involved documentation of the activities of the extreme right in Germany and Austria (demonstrations, desecration of cemeteries, assaults on immigrants, etc), which were “normalized” in the official political discourse. Her interests from that period are reflected in the short film Babenhausen which brings back events from the eponymous town in Hesse, Germany. In 1993, the house of Tony Abraham Merin, the last Jew living in Babenhausen, was burned down. The building was set on fire right after the man left the country following multiple intrusions on his property and death threats. The house was covered with anti-Semitic slogans and swastikas. The soundtrack of the film is a recording of a speech delivered during Antifa’s demonstration in Babenhausen.

Hito Steyerl (*1966 in Munich) is a filmmaker, writer, and new media theorist. Steyerl analyses the mechanisms of power, manipulations and institutionalized violence perpetrated in the name of the nation-state and international corporations. Her works most often adopt the form of video installations and performative lectures.

©Hito Steyerl – Babenhausen, video still, 1997. Courtesy of sixpackfilm.