SPIEGEL
This caricature in Kassel is causing a commotion.
The German city of Kassel is best known for the art exhibition Documenta, which is currently taking place. These days, though, a local caricature museum is dominating the headlines with a controversial cartoon hanging in its window, depicting Jesus on the cross. Christian leaders want it removed.
Lampooning religion has proven an easy way to get into hot water in recent years. Caricatures poking fun, or outright hostility, at Islam have been especially prone to producing controversy — or even violence.
Now, however, it is Germany’s Christians who find themselves on the receiving end of an indelicate cartoon. Several religious leaders in Kassel, the western German city that is currently hosting the semi-decadal art exhibition Documenta, have protested against a drawing advertising a show in the city’s caricature museum.
“I find it problematic when a caricature disparages the very heart of a faith,” Barbara Heinrich, a Protestant official in the city, told German news agency DPA. Local Catholic priest Harald Fischer has likewise criticized the caricature, according to the local paper, the Hessische/Niedersächsische Allgemeine (HNA), as have Catholic and Orthodox Christian leaders from the area.
The cartoon in question is hanging outside the Kulturbahnhof, a cultural center which houses the caricature museum, known as Caricatura. It depicts Jesus in agony on the cross as a voice calls down from heaven, “Hey, you. I fucked your mother.”
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