BERLIN.- With Deutschlandsuche ´99 (Searching for Germany), the Neue Nationalgalerie is receiving a significant work by Christoph Schlingensief as a gift for its collection. The installation has been presented at the start of this year's Gallery Weekend as part of the collection presentation Extreme Tension. Art between Politics and Society. Collection of the Nationalgalerie 1945 – 2000.

The Neue Nationalgalerie presents Christoph Schlingensief (1960-2010) – the highly influential German artist, author, filmmaker, theater and opera director as well as professor of fine arts – with a dedicated room in the current collection presentation Extreme Tension. The center of this presentation marks the work Deutschland versenken (Sinking Germany) from 1999, which was part of his project Deutschlandsuche ´99. Neue Nationalgalerie announced that this work will stay in the collection as it is a generous donation from Aino Laberenz of the Christoph Schlingensief Estate.

In 1999, Christoph Schlingensief was invited by MoMA PS1 to come to New York City, where he carried out the action Deutschland versenken at the Statue of Liberty. The date of the action, 9 November 1999, was deliberately chosen, referencing significant historical events in Germany, such as the November Pogrom (1938) and the fall of the Berlin Wall (1989). Schlingensief staged a ritual performance, or in his words “action”, where he knelt before the statue, recalling former German Chancellor Willy Brandt’s historic Warsaw kneeling. He then threw an urn containing the symbolic “ashes of Germany” and a suitcase filled with 99 everyday German objects into the Hudson River—marking the symbolic end of Germany as it approached the new millennium.

Christoph Schlingensiefs work spanned various mediums, including film, theater, opera, television, conceptual, installation and performance art. Schlingensief became known for his boundary-pushing approach to art, often blending shock value with deep political commentary. His works explored themes of nationalism, identity, and the darker aspects of German history, challenging societal norms and cultural complacency. His approach was also deeply interwoven with ethical and moral concerns, which he also addressed in his books on themes such as death, fear, illness, exclusion, and faith. It is therefore an honor that the Neue Nationalgalerie has now received this important work and is now able to add a part of Schlingensief's influential oeuvre to its collection.

The work Deutschland versenken (1999) is a 1-minute and 28-second video, originally filmed on 35mm, featuring Schlingensief in the streets of New York City, holding a sign. We see him standing outside the famous staircase of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, at the bustling Times Square intersection, and in front of the Goethe Institut in New York City. The video work is shown in the context of three other films in which Schlingensief executes the performance and explains the project in more detail, including in an interview with Alexander Kluge. The work is a part of his larger project Deutschlandsuche ´99, of which the first parts consisted of a theater tour through smaller and bigger cities in Germany. Inspired by Richard Wagner’s opera Der Ring des Nibelungen (The Ring of the Nibelung), the project sought a modern version of Siegfried—a hero for a reunited, globalizing Germany.

The end of the 20th century saw a rise in right-wing tendencies in Germany, prompting Schlingensief to reflect on the country's identity in relation to its fascist past. At the end of the Deutschlandsuche ´99 in the Namibian desert, Schlingensief explained: "The colonial remnants of the former German South West Africa will be blasted one last time with Wagner's music, the Ring of the Nibelungs will not be sunk in the Rhine, but buried in the sand."

Christoph Schlingensief. Deutschlandsuche ´99 is realised in collaboration with Aino Laberenz, Christoph Schlingensief Estate, and Frieder Schlaich of the Filmgalerie 451 and curated by Klaus Biesenbach, Director of the Neue Nationalgalerie.

Extreme Tension. Art between Politics and Society. Collection of the Nationalgalerie 1945 – 2000 is curated by Joachim Jäger, Deputy Director of the Neue Nationalgalerie, Maike Steinkamp, Curator at the Neue Nationalgalerie, and Marta Smolińska, Professor of Art History at the Magdalena Abakanowicz University of the Arts Poznań.