Racism in the world heritage: Kassel mayor Eberle suggests resignation

In der Affäre um die rassistische Beleidigung des Vorsitzenden des Kulturbeirats der Stadt Kassel durch den Direktor der Museumslandschaft Hessen Kassel hat der Kasseler Oberbürgermeister Sven Schoeller die Erwartung geäußert, dass die Prüfung der Angelegenheit durch das Hessische Ministerium für Wissenschaft und Kunst mit dem Ausscheiden von Martin Eberle aus dem Amt des Direktors der Museumslandschaft enden wird, die seit 2023 den offiziellen Namen Hessen Kassel Heritage (HKH) führt. In der „Hessisch-Niedersächsischen Allgemeinen“ wurde Schoeller, der in Personalunion auch Kulturdezernent ist, mit der Bewertung zitiert, die Äußerungen, „die Herr Eberle getätigt haben soll“, hätten „einen zutiefst rassistischen Gehalt“.

Der Grünen-Politiker, der 2023 zum Stadtoberhaupt gewählt wurde, erklärte des Weiteren: „Sofern sich der Vorgang so bestätigen sollte, kann ich mir nicht vorstellen, dass Herr Eberle seine derzeitige Funktion weiter fortführen würde.“ Wie ein Sprecher der Stadt Kassel der F.A.Z. bestätigte, bezieht sich der Begriff „Funktion“ in dieser Stellungnahme nicht auf die von Eberle kraft Amtes wahrgenommene Mitgliedschaft im städtischen Kulturbeirat, sondern auf das Leitungsamt des Museumsverbunds um die Welterbestätten im Kasseler Bergpark, dessen Besetzung in der Hand des Landes Hessen liegt.

Am 8. Oktober 2024 hielt der Verein Kulturnetz Kassel sein dreizehntes jährliches Vernetzungstreffen für Kulturschaffende der Region ab. Daran nahmen auch Martin Eberle und David Zabel teil. Zabel arbeitet als Moderator und Sportpädagoge und engagiert sich in der antirassistischen Bildungsarbeit, etwa im Beirat des Vereins Initiative Schwarze Menschen in Deutschland. Im Kulturbeirat, der sich 2023 konstituierte und den Magistrat in Fragen der kulturellen Entwicklung Kassels und bei Planungen kultureller Vorhaben mit gesamtstädtischer Perspektive beraten soll, vertritt er die Sparte Soziokultur.

Eine „Vollversammlung der Kulturschaffenden“ im Kasseler Kulturbahnhof wählte am 29. März 2023 acht Vertreter der freien Kulturszenen, die im Beirat mit den Leitern der öffentlichen Institutionen Staatstheater, documenta gGmbH, Kunsthochschule und Hessen Kassel Heritage sowie mit den Kulturpolitikern der Fraktionen der Stadtverordnetenversammlung zusammenkommen. Etwa 200 Personen waren zur Vollversammlung erschienen, es gab 66 Kandidaten. Die erste Vorsitzende des Kulturbeirats war eine Vertreterin der Theaterszene. Zabel, der sich schon in der konstituierenden Sitzung des Kulturbeirats am 17. Mai 2023 um den Vorsitz beworben hatte, wurde in der zweiten Sitzung am 9. November 2023 zu ihrem Nachfolger gewählt.

Der Kulturrat tagt zweimal im Jahr. Für das Empfinden hauptberuflicher Funktionäre, deren Arbeitsleben aus ei­ner endlosen Kette von Terminen besteht, mag das häufig sein, nach dem Gefühl ehrenamtlicher Kulturarbeiter, die ihr gesamtes kreatives Tun als ständigen Aushandlungsprozess verstehen, eher selten. Wer eine Sitzung versäumt, muss jedenfalls zwölf Monate warten, bevor er wieder Konzepte vortragen kann oder Kritik zu hören bekommt.

Zabel nutzte eine Pause des Treffens am 8. Oktober 2024, um Eberle zu fragen, ob er an der nächsten Sitzung des Kulturbeirats teilnehmen werde. Als Eberle die Frage verneinte, regte Zabel an, dass er sich von Aymen Hamdouni vertreten lassen könne, der bei HKH für Bildung, Vermittlung und Diversität zuständig ist. Eberle wies dieses Ansinnen mit Worten zurück, die es ungewiss erscheinen lassen, dass der Direktor, der 2017 von Gotha nach Kassel kam und von 2003 bis 2007 das Städtische Museum Braunschweig geleitet hatte, sein Direktorenamt wird behalten können: „Herr Zabel, ich sag jetzt mal was Rassistisches. Ich schicke meine Kollegin, und ich kann ihr ja sagen, dass sie sich Schuhcreme ins Gesicht schmieren soll, dann fühlen Sie sich bei Kulturbeiratssitzungen nicht so alleine.“

Representatives are appointed for all members of the cultural advisory board who sent the elected as the power of the office. According to Eberles, the employee entrusted with this task should not be able to appear instead of his appearance, not the colleague proposed by Zabel. Eberle shared his determination not to deviate from the proposed procedure in the form of a racist statement, which he himself classified as racist in advance. What he said, he said with an announcement.

On February 6, 2025, Eberle confirmed at the request of the FAZ that on October 8, 2024 he had said the sentences cited. After the first online publication of the FAZ, the press spokeswoman from HKH submitted an explanation of the circumstances: “From Mr. Eberle's point of view, Mr. Zabel called for a re-occupation of his representation position by a person of color because he wanted to increase the representations with migration skills on the cultural advisory board. In view of the officially represented colleague, Mr. Eberle did not want to grant this. ”Zabel rejected the presentation to the FAZ that he, as the chairman of the cultural advisory board, called for or even suggested the permanent change of a representative member. His proposal was limited to the then upcoming session because the subject of cultural participation was on its agenda, the Hamdounis area.

Compared to the FAZ, Eberle stated that he had to “in the affect” to create the evil shoe cream joke that had to cause memories of the “BlackFacing” practice. He expressed the will to repeat his “apology made in writing after the incident” in a personal conversation with Zabel because he wanted to appreciate and continue the collaboration with him on the cultural advisory board. “So I have to – and I will – work on me that such an outbreak of anger will no longer happen in the future. That is why I will also take part in anti -discrimination training. Here I am already in contact with a qualified agency. ”

The training should not be limited to anti -racist sharpening of consciousness. On February 5, the Labor Court of Kassel negotiated the lawsuit of an applicant who, despite the prior written commitment, refused an internship to prepare for the training as a restorer because she is only 80 percent able to work due to a chronic illness. A comparison with an obligation to pay a compensation was concluded, which the ministry must confirm within two weeks.

Eberle's classification of the “incident” of October 8, 2024 as a “outbreak of anger” not only fits a self-description, with which Eberle 2023 was cited in an extensive newspaper article, which the “Hessisch-Niedersächsische Allgemeine” (HNA) published in Kassel in August 2023 devoted to his leadership style and its effects in the staff of the museum landscape. Eberle said that he was “certainly a passionate and emotional person” and “not a factual type”. Already in 2014, an article from the “Thuringian Landeszeitung” Eberles Bearings described as head of the Foundation Schloss Friedenstein in Gotha in similar phrases such as nine years later, the big research piece in the HNA, as “little squeamish”, “rather rough” and “almost stubborn”. He is considered a vain and is mocked by specialist colleagues as a “duodezfürst”. There is “a climate of fear and distrust”.

Eberles' written apology went to Zabel on October 22, 2024, exactly two weeks after the “incident”, about the Zabel in the meantime talked to Eberle's employee Handoumi. One will only speak of an attempt at reply “after” after the occurrence if you use the punctuality standards of the Deutsche Bahn, which is one of the largest employers in Kassel.

In the situation of October 4, 2024, Zabel did not experience his insult as angry, but as cool and caught. Eberle's subsequent self -diagnosis of the “outbreak of anger”, but Zabel is alienated primarily because when trying to process an attack on his self -respect, which in the familiar environment of his professional and voluntary work had to be completely unprepared, had to have a bitter experience that for blacks People are not only one of the life risks in Germany: he was faced with the “cliché of the angry black man” “who throws allegations of racism” without mitigating him at the issue of this profit letter from a rage anti-citizen because of an affect would have been granted.

The Kassel local monopoly newspaper dedicated Zabel to a long comment with the heading “Racism allegation” in its February 4 issue. According to Unterzeile, the article had the “David Zabel's speech” on the Kassel demonstration with the motto “If the fire wall falls, we will build it up again on February 2. From the speaker grandstand, Zabel had called the HKH director a “racist landgrave” (in allusion to the princes whose legacy manages Eberle).

The commentator asked the question of what Zabel, who was introduced with a picture as a “activist” and “cultural worker”, “just ridden”. Various possible material reasons were mentioned and rejected, including post -colonial criticism of dealing with the landgraved “Menschenzoo” in the Chinese village of the mountain park. There was “not as clear” as it shows the “Kassel Postcolonial” initiative. The commentator Zabel and his local allies teach paternally: “Yes, German society has some catching up to do with dealing with and dealing with colonialism and racism. However, this legitimate request is not served with excessive allegations. ”

In retrospect, Zabel sees the good of this article about his person in the attention for “Kassel Postcolonial”. In the opinion of the commentator, Zabel had missed his topic in his speech. From a total policy, national perspective, when it is now about the cohesion of the Democrats, “the absurd criticism” of Zabels on Eberle was just as “miscalculated” as when looking behind the institutional backdrops of Wilhelmshöhe Castle: The employment of the Tunisia The native diversity officer led the comment to the white washing of the recovered director in the field.

Eberle's verbal attack, which had occurred four months earlier, was not mentioned. Three months ago, the city brought the matter to the Hessian Ministry of Science and Art, which HKH is subordinate. She was not known to the city and also not a city conversation, but a city that can offer 200 cultural workers for a general assembly is too big. But Zabel had told many colleagues his story, and he had also announced to an editor of the HNA that at the beginning of the year there would probably be a unveiling about racism that had to do with him and asked for this case to call him.

When Eberle agreed to him that he felt alone on the cultural advisory board because of his skin color, Zabel was disturbed because this poisoned diagnosis of his emotional situation did not at all corresponded. In the networks of freelance and civil servants, he did not see himself as an isolated lone fighter. He has lived in Kassel since 2010, “as an East German among West Germans”, as he said in an interview with the FAZ. He grew up in Wernigerode in the Harz, his father comes from Zambia and came to the GDR to study agricultural sciences. His youth in the prefabricated building fell into the “Baseballschläger years”. According to his sarcastic wording, he was “welcomed in the education system and said goodbye to the education system” on the first day in kindergarten and on the last day of school after graduation. In primary school, his class teacher provided the solidarity of the classmates, but in the seventh and eighth grade he was welcomed with the Hitler salute every morning.

For him, Kassel is also the city of Walter Lübcke and the murder of Halit Yozgat by the NSU terrorists. In the continued clarification of the prerequisites of right -wing murder acts, he measures Kassel's claim to be a cultural city of world rank. If he was invited from his family to return to Wernigerode because of the Kassel neo -Nazis, he always rejected it with a laugh. However, when in his local newspaper it was put on half of his local newspaper that forbidden what he had said in public, he felt alone for the first time when “someone who does not know how to proceed with himself and his family”

Zabel says self -critically today that he creates “massive confusion” in the audience when he did not establish the allegation of racism against the “Landgrave”. But why didn't the newspaper ask him about his reason? The headline “Racism's accusation is prohibited” evaluates Zabel as the “blueprint of a perpetrator-victim reversal”.

Eberle's interpretation of Zabel's proposal for session as an attempt to change the composition of the cultural advisory board, suggests not to see the director's failure as unprovocozed. Perhaps there is an audience in Kassel that would even recognize a self -defense reflex to defend an attacking activist. Zabel had “wanted to increase the representations with migration skills”, Eberle said about his press spokeswoman. A lobbyist who is not satisfied with his own chair, but would like to make up for his peers? The keywords of the public relations of Hesse Kassel Heritage are thinking of Donald Trump's campaign against “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion”. Knightly, as Eberle can be understood, he wants to have campaigned for the right to participate in his representative on the Culture Advisory Board. Racism from “consideration”?

The Ministry of Art checks the case under office law and has not yet been able to listen to Eberle, who is on sick leave. Minister of Art Timon Gremmels (SPD) nevertheless explained to the cameras of Hessian broadcasting: “Something like that cannot remain without sanctions at the end of the day.”

When the HNA reported on the online report of the FAZ about Eberles admission of the racist insult, a reference to the comment printed two days beforehand was not After all, this has now been provided with a new opening credits. Anyone who calls the text may come to the conclusion that things may be as clear as David Zabel had referred to in his speech on February 2, 2025.