Germania – 1995

“Germania” (1995) grew out of a very personal experience and became, for me, a painting of its time as well. It tells of love, freedom, consumerism, hope, and the contradictory dreams of reunited Germany.

The Painting

It began with my relationship with a stewardess working for the airline Germania, with whom I associated freedom, travel, and great closeness. Through almost free stand-by flights, we came to many European cities, and for a while everything seemed open: love, future, movement, adventure.

East Berlin in the 1990s

But even during that relationship, I was already painting the inner contradiction. On the left side of the painting are words such as “Sonne, Sex, Schönheit, Spaß, Schnellkost, Schokolade, Sieg” — promises of a time in which everything seemed attainable, everything possible, and everything available immediately. On the right side appears the other reality: numbers, “Abzüglich”, “Soll”, a sober reckoning in which almost nothing remains.

This is why the painting is not only private. The child in her arms is double-layered in meaning. It stands both for a possible future child of our own and for the young, inexperienced reunited Germany of the 1990s — full of hope, promises and dreams, but already burdened with a weight almost too heavy to carry.

For many young East Germans, that period was about finally being able to build something of their own. Everyone was looking for a path: through quick success, quick money, or through the realization of a dream. My path was art. Money never played the decisive role for me. I wanted to make art — with or without money. That has not changed to this day.

The title “Germania” therefore refers to more than just an airline. It also means Germany itself, in the middle of the 1990s: between departure and projection, between consumerism and overload, between hope and reckoning.