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(Original title: Life as a Work of Art)
March 3 – May 31, 2004
MAK
Board of Trustees:
Andreas Treichl, Chairman (Bank Austria, Director)
Rudolf
Scholten Vice-Chairman (Kontroll-Bank, Director,)
Otto
Mühl is one of the most important artists of the post-war
period.
Mühl
never has, never had sex the commune with small children. If
Otto Mühl slept with 13- to 14-year old girls, has as been
alleged, this resulted from adhering to an idea, and not a
perverted idea. We
thought that one is very ripe at thirteen.
We
are dealing with the artistic work of Otto Mühl ... The
exhibit is necessary in order to determine who Otto Mühl is.
On the other hand, these elements cannot be separated from
each other.
-
Peter Noever
The
‘moral-attackers’ look a bit ridiculous as they bang the
same heads against the same wall decade after decade.
-
Rudolf Scholten, MAK Board of Trustees
***
Herbert
Kuhner
Violence
Under the Guise of Art
or
The Fourth Reich of Savagery in the Arts
The
new fascism will not declare itself as fascism, but rather as
anti-fascism.
-
Ignazio Silone
Blasphemy,
obscenity, charlatanism, sadistic excesses, orgies, the
aesthetics of the cesspool are our moral means.
Murder is an integral part of sex.
It will soon become
an ethical necessity to rob banks and to shoot a random
cripple down.
-
Otto Mühl, actionist
Mühl’s
specialty is minors and sex and my specialty is the agonizing
torture of animals....I could well envision that murder could
be a component of a work of art.
Killing was and is beyond all moral
judgments.
-
Hermann Nitsch, actionist
We
have learned from Hermann Nitsch. We have begun to understand
him....Now we think more profoundly. Only the adherents of
National Socialism do not understand him.
-
Alfred Worm, editor-in-chief of News.
Viennese
actionism can no longer be the basis for dispute in a
civilized state; it has been canonized for quite some time and
has found its place in museums. Today anyone who opposes
actionism simply disqualifies himself.
-
Sigrid Löffler, critic
We
guarantee Nitsch the protection of the state for practicing
his profession freely.
-
Dr. Peter Wittmann Austrian State Secretary for Culture.
If
we don’t prosper, the world will be blown up.
-
Peter Weibel, actionist and Cultural Commissar
After
World War II a thorough purge of
National Socialism failed to take place in Austria. According
to legend, the post-war literary leftovers were displaced by
an “anti-fascist” literary movement in the Fifties. The
actionists composed part of that movement.
Those who had served a barbarous regime were replaced
by those who favored the public practice of barbarism. And
they have held sway ever since. After the collapse of the
Third Reich its spirit merely reasserted itself in another
ambiance.
Violence
has been integrated into the arts and poses as a protest
against violence.
In
order to retrieve the lost honor of the Third Reich, the Nazis
deny the reality of the gas chambers, but being what they are,
declare their intent to do a thorough job the next time around.
The revisionists are less candid and more sophistic.
The
revisionists are the “respectable” heirs to the National
Socialists, and they act as their apologists. Their aim is to
rehabilitate the Third Reich and to exonerate those who
participated in barbarism. The revisionists mitigate the
barbarism of the Third Reich but condemn the barbarism of the
actionists.
Actionism
has been integrated into anti-fascism in Austria. Thus the
apologists for National Socialism can assume a
holier-than-thou stance and can score easy points against the
“anti-fascists.” Those who do not favor the
sado-masochistic extravaganzas of the actionists are inhibited
about expressing their views since they fear being linked to
the unsavory elements that vent their opposition. I quote the
sociologist Michael Ley: “The ‘anti-fascist’ label
seemed to insure immunity from any criticism and every critic
was classified as a ‘fascist.’”
The
battle in the Austrian news media concerning the Third Reich
is to a great extent being waged by the revisionists, who
strive to improve the Reich's “image” and those who are
exploiting the Holocaust for their own purposes. The National
Socialists mostly practiced barbaric acts in venues shielded
from public view. While committing crimes, they wanted to
present a decent and honorable image to the world. Today the
word “decent” is used as a Nazi code word. This is part of
a tradition. Heinrich Himmler: “We
all know what it is like to see
a hundred corpses lie side by side, or five-hundred
corpses, or a thousand; to have remained decent
after having
participated in
this, that is a page of honor
in the history of Germany that can never be written.”
A
revisionist is not opposed to violence per se, he simply
assumes the role critic when its perpetrators and advocates
are associated with another political camp. Advocates and
practitioners of violence in Austria can be found marching in
the front ranks of the Austrian anti-fascist faction and are
cashing in on the situation. What
a blessing for the revisionists! They are being served the
best cards on a silver tray, enabling them to flay present
events as well as play down the past.
According
the artist Adolf Frohner: “The actionists remonstrated
against the silence that followed 1945. Influential positions
were still occupied by those who had held them during the Nazi
era. Their Swastika badges were either pinned under their
lapels or had been thrown away.”
Sometimes the “antidote” is as toxic as the
poison.
Hitler
had Ernst Röhm and his SA-henchman done away with in June of
‘34. Röhm was Hitler's adversary, but he was anything but
an anti-Nazi. Which goes to show that birds of a feather don't
always fly together. That same year, Hitler ordered the murder
of Austrian Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss. Dollfuss was an
anti-Nazi, but not an anti-fascist. It is essential to know
what one favors as well as what one opposes.
When
Josef Goebbels publicized the Soviet massacre of Polish
officers in Katyn in 1941, he did so because it fit into his
concept. We know that he was not opposed to massacres, for the
murders he was responsible for and approved of were
million-fold.
Demagogues don't always have to lie. They tell the
truth when it serves their purposes.
A demagogue cannot turn a lie into the truth, nor can
he turn the truth into a lie.
No liar lies all the time. Even a broken clock tells
the right time twice a day.
It
is impossible for me to deal with Austrian actionism without
referring to my own fate as a remigré. As one who had to flee
Austria, or rather “Ostmark,” in 1939 or share the fate of
those who chose to stay or could not leave, I have aversion to
the gratuitous stifling of life, wanton brutality and the
degradation of man as well as the desecration of religious
cult objects. After I had returned to Austria in 1963, I was
confronted with a closed-door policy as a writer. When I
published my satire on actionism, Da-Da
Ga-Ga Ca-Ca, in 1972, the key was turned in the lock.
I quote Michael Ley: “Only an ostracized outsider discerned
what really lay concealed behind the fraudulent phrase
‘anti-fascist art’: the affirmation of totalitarian
violence and not its censure.”
In
art and literature it becomes more and more difficult to
separate the sheep from the goats, in other words: valid
artists from charlatans. It's all a matter of opinion. (In my
humble opinion, the goats gained the upper hand long ago, and
their bleating is the dominant sound.) However, public
“actions” such as the flagellation of self and others, the
drinking of blood and urine, the eating of feces, copulation
to the accompaniment of fecal production, self-mutilation,
self-immolation and tormenting animals to death are actions
that I for one could not keep silent about. Examples: Valie
Export poured scalding wax over live birds. Günter Brus slit his
chest open with a razor blade
and declared that the next step would be to cut a piece of
himself off and eat it. Rudolf Schwarzkogler committed suicide
as a ritualistic act of self-immolation. It is alleged that he
his penis off before defenstrating himself.
These
actions are engaged in and supported by the Austrian cultural
elite, la crème de la
crème, and meet the approval of those in power as well as
those aspiring power. The promoters of the actionists are very
skillful and well versed in the art of sophistry. Those who
are not proponents or fellow travelers have been cowed and
usually keep mum. They comprise an integral part of the
anti-fascist scene. And some fear that an open discussion will
weaken the anti-fascist faction.
Violence
for its own sake is the antithesis of anti-fascism.
In
this topsy-turvy situation, “artists” advocating and
engaging in violence are sacrosanct, and they have been
sanctioned by the State.
The question is whether mendacity and calumny can serve a good purpose.
I answer that in the negative. Clarification is long overdue.
And I say: Let the chips fall where they may!
The
Nazis destroyed human values as well as humans. They attempted
to cancel art and literature out, replacing it with an
antiseptic and illustrative depiction of the glories of
motherhood and military heroism, as well as family, farming
and factory scenes. Basically National-Socialist art, or
non-art, consisted of a sham portrayal of the patriotic love
of Mother Earth and the Fatherland.
The
scurrilous, sado-masochistic, anti-humanistic, murderous
elements in the anti-Semitic tracts, cartoons and propaganda
films are rarely to be found in official National-Socialist
art. Thus the lie of illustrative Nazi non-art was doublefold.
The lie was intended to reflect a movement and society that
were “wholesome.” It does not bring to the fore what
National Socialism was really about. Actionist art, or
anti-art if you will, provides what is missing. It is indeed
more honest. And one could make a plea for it being
representative of the society in which it is entrenched. It is
revealing that those who have literally defecated on the state
have achieved the highest status as state artists. Today
opposing actionism is tantamount to opposing the state.
The
Nazis catered to sado-masochistic tastes, with the emphasis on
sadism. The Third Reich provided its adherents with the
opportunity of living out their sadistic fantasies. The
concentration camps and other murderous venues were a Paradise
for sadistic camp commanders, administrators, guards, capos
and Death’s Head SS-Men.
With
the exception of the Kristallnacht,
the pogrom of November 9, 1938, barbarous acts usually took
place behind locked doors, closed gates and barbed wire, or in
subjugated countries.
The
Nazis wanted to be known as brave warriors, not the mass
murderers of helpless civilians. While behaving dishonorably,
they wanted to convey an honorable image. Thus, after World
War II right up to the present, the official Nazi line is to
deny the Holocaust by promulgating the so-called “Auschwitz
lie.” And Neo-Nazis still stick to this while they engage in
acts of terror against refugees, members of minority groups
and those who aid them in Germany and Austria.
Revisionism is the close cousin of dialectical materialism. It is an
attempt to change the past by rewriting history. Revisionists,
as we know, are not opposed to violence. The business of the
revisionist is to play down, minimize and belie the barbarity
of the Third Reich. He merely opposes violence when the
perpetrators belong to another political camp.
The
revisionists present themselves as the foes of those who
engage in actionist extravaganzas. The actionists and their
advocates declare that they do what they do in order to combat
fascism. Opposition by the revisionist faction is opportune
and fits into the scheme of things. The syllogism used is that
since condemnation comes from the revisionists, all adversity
must be associated with revisionism. Thus the advocates of
actionism have very skillfully maneuvered the apologists for
fascism into a position of not having to be mendacious
concerning this subject.
Those
who feel uneasy about this situation are usually afraid of
being labeled as fascists if they speak out. And speaking out
can have its consequences, since it means countering power and
influence. Regretfully, in this topsy-turvy situation, those
who utter criticism of public
actionist cruelty are not to be found on the Left, but
rather on the Right. Thus, opposing violence under the guise
of art is “synonymous” to favoring fascism in present-day
Austria.
Closed
books are more dangerous than open books.
The
present is a key to the past, as well as vice versa. The
revisionist faction is an open book, but accurate historical
perception can only be achieved if the closed books are opened.
The
pernicious spirit of National Socialism has been channeled
into the arts, and it is clearly expressed in the arts. Its
advocates operate under the sanctified carapace of art.
There
is a route to the inner sanctum for artists who conform to the
trend, as well as other artists who are well on in years. The
latter have the prospect of being exploited in their remaining
years and having their work sold at high prices posthumously.
Assent includes engaging in actions that make one subject to
blackmail. A prominent promoter told an artist who refused to
comply that divulging information could result in
assassination.
A brotherhood in evil holds perpetrators together,
just as blood served as an agglutinate for the SS.
In
the film Das
Meisterspiel (The Master Game) directed by Lutz Dammbeck,
he and Helmut Kohlenberger draw parallels between two
quotations. One stems from a letter by the anonymous
self-proclaimed perpetrator who alleged to have painted over
the painted-over paintings of Arnulf Rainer: “I decided to
become an actionist.” The other is a phrase from Adolf
Hitler’s Mein Kampf
: “I decided to become a politician.” Kohlenberger: "The
cultural scene in which one makes a decision to become an
actionist is the structural successor (to National Socialism)
... I believe that the cultural scene, in its entirety,
comprises the structural successor to that regime, for it is
the only dictatorship which is allowed in this country (Austria).
Lutz Dammbeck: "In other words, in the cultural scene one
can give vent to Nazi-type barbarity under a Leftist banner.”
Kohlenberger: “Here is text that brings to mind that there
is a continuity right in the midst of the asserted
discontinuity, and right where you might least expect to find
it, that is amongst the good old leftist and anti-fascistic
artists.”
“An
artist recognizes his work when it is sent to his home free of
charge via the media.” (From a letter sent to Dr. Michael
Sika, the Director of the Security Police, after the letter
bomb attack on Dr. Helmut Zilk, the Mayor of Vienna.)
According
to Josef Dvorak: ”In a back room of the Mühl Commune on
Praterstrasse, Hermann Flasch and others were constructing
explosive devices. They planned to send letter bombs to
various politicians and institutions, and all traces should
lead to Hermann Flasch. The police were to find him dead. The
suicide was to be carried out according to an exact
”happening partitur”, and it was to be filmed. In June of
1972, I found out the details Hermann Flasch’s plan....On
June 4th Flasch wandered around aimlessly in the
Prater Amusement Park in Vienna and called me to ask for help.
We arranged to meet on June 8th, and I saw him
three times after that. He
showed me the partitur of the suicide happening, which I had
previously seen but not understood at the Mühl Commune. I
found out the names of others involved in the ”explosive
action” ... Beside his body the police found the suicide ”partitur.”
The suicide had been carried out exactly according this plan.
Days after the body had been discovered, the last of the
explosive devices arrived at their addressees. In September of
1973, I wrote an obituary for Neues Forum. Mühl
blocked its publication, and he threatened me with
consequences if I wrote articles critical of Viennese
actionism. I would no longer be able to practice my profession
in Austria ... A few
days later their it became clear that the Flasch Case was to
be hushed up. The police investigation was superficial and
background information did not find its way the into the
newspapers. An influential political functionary (unsuccessfully)
attempted to prevent an anti-Mühl article from being
published in the Arbeiter-Zeitung. Colleagues warned me
that there would be ”repercussions” by influential people:
I knew too much.”
In
the seventies, an American journalist investigated allegations
of pedophilia and snuffing. He asserted that he was unable to
proceed due to political blocking.
It
stood to reason that a man who had publicly copulated while
wallowing in excrement,
a man who had decapitated a goose and used the neck to
penetrate a woman
was suited to direct a commune and be
the guardian of children. There he reigned for almost two
decades while the funding flowed in and praise came from the
highest places.
Bruno
Kreisky: “...my friend the great painter, perhaps the best
we have in Austria.
He went through a great and intense development as a human
being, and he as a matter of fact, brought new humane
qualities to the life of the community.”
Kreisky
concerning the Commune: “From a liberal point of view, we
have no choice but to let these young people go their way.
We must offer this experiment protection against being
attacked by the press, above all by German papers.”
Other
politicians who vociferously supported the Commune are Theodor
Kery, Hilde Hawlicek, Karl Blecha and Helmut Zilk.
In
the winter of 1989, Mühl and his fellow actionists were
honored at their exhibit their exhibition in Kassel, Germany,
by Austrian Chancellor Franz Vranitzky who traveled there to
open it.
Here
are quotations by the leader of the Commune. “Everything
is worthy of presentation....That includes rape and
murder.”
“Coitus, torture and the annihilation of man and beast is
the only drama worth viewing.....Murder is an integral part of
sex. House pets have to serve as surrogates. I intend to
commit the perfect murder on a goat that will serve as a
substitute for a woman.
In my next films humans will be slaughtered. Slaughtering
humans must not continue to be a monopoly of the state. It
will soon become an ethical necessity to rob banks and to
shoot a random cripple down.”
Austrian
Cultural Commissar Peter Weibel about a political figure, who
happens to have been a man of integrity: “I knew a
university professor called Stephan Koren. He was cripple
and wanted to convince me that he was a man like me. In order
to prove this he pressed on in politics to the rank of
minister with just one arm...when Koren the cripple
raises his left arm during his speeches, it becomes a ghastly
monument of his dissipated and mutilated humanity...this scum
of the nation fills every healthy Austrian with such dread
that the pupils of his eyes would burst at the sight.”
More
by Weibel: ”The true heroes of freedom are those who commit
crimes run amuck and assassinate. It is only possible for man
to realize himself by running amuck, by murder and by
assassination….I would be glad if I had the strength to act
like the assassins and those who run amuck. These are
exceptional human achievements for me.”
Oswald
Wiener: “We thought about killing people as a work of art,
or that sort of thing – if that is radical. But it did not
happen. Bayer, Achleitner, Rühm and I met for intensive
discussions on an almost daily basis for two or three years.”
Hermann
Nitsch: “I could well envision that murder could be a
component of a work of art; the artist’s accountability
would be on another level.…Thus, art can consist of a crime.”
Killing was and is beyond all moral judgments.”
Here
we have the ideological basis for “snuffing” as a
component of art.
Otto Mühl’s credo:
The Friedrichshof Lord’s Prayer
Long
live the whole!
I
must resist temptation to sin against the whole
in
sex as well as with my belongings
and
in thought and deed.
Everything
must be for the good of the whole.
I
will terminate the program
that
has been impressed on me
by
strange ethical persons
and
transform it into a social program
for
the good of the whole.
I
think, work, act and feel
exclusively
for the whole.
Without
the whole I am nothing.
Here’s
more “I consider the adults as just a food the children. My
plan would be, 5,000 children with the adults renouncing
happiness and merely earn money here close, so this can be
built up. The only purpose is to change oneself. A
relationship between two people is a thing of the past, no
more private feelings, you dismantle everything and there is
no longer a fixation on money. You serve only one en: Project
third generation. The children of the third generation who are
better than everyone, humans the like of which the world has
never seen.”
Does
this bring Lebensborn to mind? Lebensborn was the Nazi
breeding ground for the Master race.
Otto
Mühl about himself: “I am probably the most vain man under
God’s Heaven....Caesar, Napoleon, Stalin, Lenin and Hitler
accomplished great things that are still spoken about in
either a negative or a positive sense; the most important aim
in life should be to be talked about. Life would have no
meaning without that.…Being world-famous is marvelous.
Otherwise life would be asinine. I wouldn’t be able to bear
not being renowned. I am famous and I will become more famous.
Even if I hadn’t become famous through actionism, I’d have
achieved fame through the Commune.”
Certainly
it cannot be denied that Otto Mühl achieved his aims.
Otto
Mühl about his colleagues: “Nitsch is a sadist with a mania
for approbation, an autistic alcoholic who’s completely
narcissistic, a mother’s boy who didn’t get enough
attention. Rainer is genuinely violent and a sadist. Nitsch
torments the participants in his actions; they’re constantly
freezing. He arranges that intentionally. I’d like to know
how many became ill, how many caught pneumonia, how many died.”
Nitsch
about his colleague: “Mühl’s specialty is minors and sex
and my specialty is the agonizing torture of animals.”
As
a fledgling “actionist” Mühl enjoyed the support of the
late Monsignor Otto Mauer. Mauer along with Bishop Alois Hudal
who was located at the Vatican, was a member of the Rat Line
and aided escaping Nazis, as well as those who remained in
Austria. Among Mauer’s
protégés was former Third Reich publicist Otto Schulmeister,
who in turn supported Mauer. Mauer and Schulmeister
collaborated as editors on the Catholic cultural monthly Wort
und Wahrheit together, which they founded in the Fifties.
Otto
Schulmeister, 1989: “There
were many swine at the time, not only brown ones.”
Asked whether he regretted what he had written during the
Third Reich in National Socialist organs, he replied: "Not
in the least!”
Otto
Mauer, pater familias of the actionists, was the official
Catholic “caretaker of souls” for artists.
Otto
Mauer in 1948, the years after
the Holocaust: “The Jews have immense influence on communism and capitalism. They
pass themselves off as defenders of humanity...but they are
nothing but a depraved people with a perverted spirit....They
have been condemned to eternal damnation....They invariably
choose the evil path.”
Later
Mauer was more conciliatory. In 1949 he wrote: “There is a
solution to the Jewish problem, but just one: the Jews must
recognize Christ as the Messiah, the heathens must become
Christians…”
Otto
Mauer, during the
Third Reich: “The artist is in league with the devil, either
as one possessed or as an exorcist.”
Mauer
to artist Günther Kraus: “A good Catholic cannot be a good
artist.”
Mauer
labeled the object-artist Padhi Friebeger as a heretic. Then
he offered to promote Frieberger if he joined the Catholic
Church.
Josef
Dvorak about Otto Mauer: “He thought that Otto Mühl and
Hermann Nitsch were much better suited to his gallery than
mine. That is why his intrigue against me was unlimited.”
On
April 17, 1967, Mühl along with Oswald Wiener and Peter
Weibel presented
an
actionist performance in Mauer’s Gallery St. Stephan.
(This was followed by the sado-masochistic extravaganza at the
University of Vienna on June 7th.) Mühl had made a
name for himself by engaging in public fecal orgies.
These were to serve as the basis for the "failed
experiment."
Otto
Mühl: “Democracy is a load of shit!”
Here's
a description of a visit to the Commune by dramatist Peter
Turrini: “The first time I was able to generate the sympathy
of the group was by a matricide. I performed a ritualistic
matricide and I screamed, shouted, cried, pissed and shat,
disintegrating completely and yet at the same time, acting and
experiencing murder, which was always combined, the end and I
lay there, naked and sweating and sobbing, they approached me
and caressed me and said. 'That was insanely pleasant,' and it
really was, for who, after all, is the real murderer of his
mother? My introduction to the group was a matricide.”
Ex-Commune
member Andreas Schlothauer: “Most of the former members of
the commune know that Otto Mühl abused girls whose ages
ranged 12 to 16. He practiced what was known in the Middle
Ages as ‘jus primae noctis’, however Mühl extended this
right for weeks or months.”
When
members of the commune rebelled, it was the revisionist yellow
press that brought him down. Liberal elements either defended
him or stayed on the sidelines.
(Concerning
revisionistic dogma, it must be stated here that those who
attempt to downplay the murder of one-and-a-half million
children in the death factories of the Third Reich are not
against the abuse of children per se.)
Among
those who countered criticism of the Commune was Peter
Sichrovsky, who was employed by Mühl as a PR-advisor.
Sichrovsky acted as Mühl’s champion with articles such as Das
Sonenenreich des Aktionisten (The Sunny Realm of the
Actionist).
Andreas
Schlothauer concerning proceedings during the trial of Mühl
on January 23, 1990: “After the moving descriptions of seven
girls who were sexually abused by Mühl, a compilation of
videos was shown after the courtroom had been cleared of
spectators. In addition to violent actions by Mühl, his wife
Claudia was shown forcing minors to engage in oral sex with
her in front of an enthusiastic audience. ’I have seen the
films, and they cannot be compared to anything I’ve ever
viewed,’ said Frau Jelinek, the judge (not related to
Austrian writer Elfriede Jelinek). ‘The boys did not want to
do it; they were in tears. They received a permanent shock.
One was her son, the son and his stepmother!’ (One of the
boys was the son of Otto Mühl and Claudia’s sister).”
“District
attorney Rabonog, still under the impression of the testimony
of witnesses and the videos, stated in his summation: 'I have
taken part in many major trials, but the fate of the victims
has never moved me so much as in this one. Mühl engages in
the practice of terror. History has shown us what a
concentration camp is. What the girls in the Friedrichshof had
to go through was just as horrible. Otto Mühl experimented
with people; he manipulated them. He was so sensitive as an
artist that he thought that when a girl said “no” she
meant “yes.” The children weren't voluntarily there; he
had taken their parents from them, and thus the ability of
leaving the commune. They didn't have a chance.’”
Otto
Mühl's trial in Eisenstadt ended with a conviction and a
seven-year sentence for “the sexual abuse of minors, rape
and forced abortion.”
After
his incarceration, Mühl was honored by two highly-subsidized
exhibits under the aegis of Ursula Pasterk, Municipal Cultural
Coordinator of the City of Vienna.
Among
those colleagues who spoke for him are Christian Ludwig
Attersee, Kurt Kalb, Oswald Oberhuber, Arnulf Rainer and
Hermann Nitsch who compared him with Egon Schiele.
This comparison was also used by Green politician Peter Pilz:
“And what about Egon Schiele who served nine
sentences in prison?"
(Egon Schiele was sentenced once to two weeks in prison for
using underage girls as nude models without the consent of
their parents.)
Here’s
a comment by Heinz Sichrovsky of News:
“Mühl was the only artist who attempted in his Commune
to realize political utopias of freedom for sex and from
possessions. He failed grotesquely and went to prison for
seven years.”
However,
it should be stated that Otto Mühl tripped up. Usually
rolling in feces ultimately means rolling in dough with no
problems.
Indeed,
Otto Mühl was rewarded after his release from prison by
having a "dramolette" performed at Claus Peymann's
Burgtheater on February 12, 1998 with support from Peter
Turrini, Christian Ludwig Attersee and Einar Schleef. An
exhibit of Mühl's prison paintings opened on February 18,
1998 at the Austrian Museum of Applied Art in Vienna.
Claus
Peymann emphatically stated that he was justified to place the
Burgtheater at Mühl’s disposal
since “Mühl had served his sentence.“ Mühl’s play Muchl
is, among other things, a travesty of the legal system that
had found Mühl guilty of the abuse and rape of minors.
Mühl’s
remorse for his actions: “I have no feelings of guilt for
what I have done.“
Mühl
in Die Zeit, February 26, 20004:
“I’m not a child molester. That’s idiotic. They
were all fully-developed girls.”
Die Zeit: “They were
12 and 13 years old.”
Mühl: “So what! I allegedly raped one of them. That certainly was not
the case. I’m sorry that they are all so devastated. They
are victims of the breaking up of the commune, rather than of
free sexuality.”
Press Conference, Café Landtmann, Vienna, March 1, 2004 by
former members of the Commune: “According to the latest
information, Otto Mühl began to abuse small children from the ages
of four to five in the 1970s. He did this regularly over the
years. Such abuse took place at times in front of the Commune
Leadership and was not brought up at Mühl’s trial in
1991….In a conversation that took place five months Frau
(Claudia) Mühl told us that she was now
practicing ’intergenerational exchange of tenderness.’”
Two
young women have come forward with new accusations prior the
opening of Mühl-Show in MAK, which they consider to be an
attempt to rehabilitate the artist. They claim that Mühl not
only abused teenagers, as has already been confirmed, but
younger children as well.
In
sworn statements the two victims describe how Mühl forced
them to participate in sexual actions when they were small
children. One of the women, who is now 29 years old, describes
how Mühl forced her to engage in sexual actions with him in
front of the leadership of the commune at the age of five.
Both
women state that at the time of Mühl’s trial, they were
forced to remain silent about these occurrences by members of
the Commune.
Georg Hoffmann-Ostenhof. Profil:
“Some gentlemen in high places - we have heard - visited Mühl
in order to have themselves served by wild women.”
According
to an article by Manfred Seeh in Die
Presse, 17.8 million Austrian Shillings hush money was
paid to the parents of underage girls and other members
of the commune prior to Otto Mühl's trial in 1988-9. That is
approximately one and a half million dollars.
Doubtlessly,
not all the notables went to the Commune to be served “wild
women,” and what was provided there is now being provided
elsewhere.
A
cultural personage admitted that pedophilia continues to be
practiced in organized artistic circles.
Three
decades ago I published Da-Da
Ga-Ga Ca-Ca, a satire on actionism. I wrote: “He smeared
foodstuffs on nude models. But recently he had changed his
act. Symbolic defecation had made way for the real thing. And
then there was his friend, another happening man. Slaughtering
lambs was his act….This was the dance around the golden
calf. No it was the dance around the golden ass. I heard a
snorting and sang a giant horned head. It was the Minotaur.
Its shaggy beast's body was galloping through the crowd….It
was a night on which I had expected murder, suicide and rape.
Now all of these things were taking place. I could no longer
differentiate one body from another. That thing was one body.
It was a body that was committing murder, suicide and rape.“
Allegedly
this text caused me to be ostracized, or “Austro-cized,”
up to the present. There are writer-colleagues who still
refuse to speak to me on account of it, and some more
favorably inclined, claim that I aimed at the wrong target.
Recent events have not brought about a change in attitude.
If
the powers-that-be had taken heed of the warning contained in Da-Da, instead of doing their best to cancel me out as a writer,
many members of the Commune, especially those abused as
children, would not have suffered permanent damage.
In
Menschenrecht (Human Rights) of
September of 1992, I wrote: “But there’s no reason for
concern. Incarceration does not necessarily mean the end of an
artist’s career. Having been on the wrong side of the law
can serve as carte blanche for the future.”
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