The theme of the exhibition is - once again or already again - terribly topical. Against all hope, war and the military and everything that goes with it have always existed and will probably always exist. This includes the training of soldiers to kill people. The exhibition with Herlinde Koelbl's pictures therefore raises many fundamental questions and, although it seems otherwise, reaches back to the biblical beginnings of Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel.
Death and life - power and powerlessness
This is a theme of humanity. The title formulates what the photographer is showing us. Her images and texts are largely taken from the targets project, which she exhibited at the German Historical Museum and the Bundeskunsthalle in 2014 to mark the centenary of the outbreak of the First World War (!). Herlinde Koelbl had worked on this project for decades. This thoroughness, due to the complexity of the subject matter, takes time and is typical of Koelbl's approach to finally giving her projects the form she is satisfied with as an author in the form of exhibitions, films and books.
"Death and Life - Power and Powerlessness". In view of the current, terrible war in Europe, terrible in the true sense of the word, Herlinde Koelbl has made a selection of targets for the exhibition at the Catholic Academy. Pictures of people in combat uniforms, carrying weapons, aiming, firing, pictures of perforated tin figures, of torn heads, of bodies sifted through, of hearts with bullet marks. Pictures taken over thirty years, whose quality does not lie in photojournalistic topicality. They do not show hybrid warfare, an arsenal of remote-controlled weapons and their murderous effects, as they currently appear day after day in almost all the media and at some point become part of everyday news.
This is precisely why Koelbl's photos, which focus on soldiers, i.e. on the people who are trained to shoot others, have an impressive impact and validity that goes beyond topicality. This is because the photographer is interested in another level of perception and meaningfulness. Her interest is focussed on finding out whether and what motivates people, or what motivates them, to switch off their inhibitions to kill, if they exist, and to shoot a fellow human being without even a second's hesitation.
As already mentioned, she had chosen the English word "targets" as the original title of this project, expressing how soldiers all over the world are trained to kill suspected opponents, i.e. fellow human beings, in a "targeted" manner. Now, marksmanship and reaction speed could also be practised with targets, with clay pigeons or, as in Westerns, with tin cans or bottles. But these are human dummies. Cardboard dummies, as they used to be called in the pre-digital age. Today, military shooting training has long since been perfected, opponents are virtual, as in gaming, appear unexpectedly, sometimes aggressively in combat uniform, sometimes unsuspiciously civilian, as realistically as possible, also approximating different war situations, right up to a specific cultural environment of a suspected or expected enemy area. Zack, shot, hit in the head or heart, immediate exit. The enemy is finished.
The word "enemy" is used here in its literal sense. The human enemy is reduced to the term "target". He becomes an object to be hit. "Eliminate" is a common synonym that comes from the world of machines. It is interesting how words linguistically defuse the act of violence of shooting someone: eliminate - which actually means "remove", or blow away and even "shoot" or "kill" describe the act of violence. As does "knock out". This word also resonates with the idea of the light of life no longer shining.
The religious level
If we take up this linguistic image, it leads from the level of war and killing to a deeper, religious level: the other person, perceived as a threat that must be eliminated, is a human being. A "child of light", as St Paul says, and, he says, as creatures of God, people are "members one of another", which means that no one exists on their own, but always in connection with others. In his book Ways of Peace, theologian Eugen Biser reminds us of man's filiation with God and inscribes the sentence from the New Testament "that we are not only called children of God, but are children of God".
Including those who emerge as a potential threat and then, like their comrades, lie torn to pieces, as the poem by Ludwig Uhland puts it, at your feet, "as if it were a piece of me." Herlinde Koelbl conveys an idea of this because for this exhibition she has selected pictures of people who, as the Russian-Ukrainian religious philosopher Nikolai Alexandrovich Berdyaev (1874 to 1948) put it, "resolve the paradox of suffering and evil through the experience of compassion and love".
These people, who can be seen in the portraits on the wooden wall, are also uniformly dressed as nuns or monks, but they are visible in a different way and serve in a different way. They live in seclusion, but above all for others, as meditators, prayers, helpers who let their light shine, as it says in Matthew, by turning to you, to their fellow human beings, because, as the Russian monk Starez Siluan, a famous spiritual teacher of the 20th century, put it: "Blessed is he who loves his neighbour, for our neighbour is our life", and he adds: "Love does not tolerate the destruction of even one soul". And, he says: "War is the wages of sin, but not of love". Herlinde Koelbl shows these portraits because they convey what being human actually means, beyond killing, and yet knowing about death and life, and about power and powerlessness.
However, the "paradox of suffering and evil" that Berdyaev talks about is constantly coming to the fore in life, especially at the moment, in a loud and threatening way. Russian soldiers, it is said, are trained live in the war zone. They use live targets and are training squads with recognisable signs: One group shoots only in the neck, another in the eye, a third practises shooting in the forehead, as I said, on a live counterpart. This is the side of the wounded and wounding, the killing and killed person. So that of the wounded and killed God?
I think a picture hanging on the front wall might indicate this: The black and white silhouette with the red heart dot in the centre, shot up many times. Another crucifixion next to the crucifix at the front? Hope of resurrection? The red colour of the heart area could indicate this. We have just celebrated Easter, with the cry "Christ is risen!"
Training to kill obviously belongs here, even if the training on the object is only for defence. But can defence and attack be clearly separated? Where is the boundary between good and evil? Herlinde Koelbl's photographs leave this open. They do not accuse. They show: Death and life - power and powerlessness.
Mao Zedong coined the phrase that political power comes from the barrels of guns. In Portugal in 1974, red carnations were placed in the barrels of guns to break dictatorial power and invasion plans were considered in NATO if the country were to become socialist.
The paradox of suffering and killing, of evil, was and is today more than ever the power of bombs, missiles and drones, and all the other highly efficient machines of destruction, the power of violent oppression worldwide, this power that brings death to hundreds of thousands of people and wounds and pollutes, destroys and destroys the already highly endangered world and tears creation and creatures from life to death. Does this not leave us with a feeling of helpless powerlessness, of being unable to change anything? Would the only solution therefore be to fight power with even more power? Deterrence with reciprocal armament. Necessary? Again? Questions that arise in front of the pictures in the exhibition, with the core question of what is going on in people who are supposed to be a light in the world.
So what is man in the face of death and life, power and powerlessness? Herlinde Koelbl, the incessant observer, has repeatedly sought out relevant topics, exploring them with camera and microphone in her search for answers. She is an explorer of the human condition, one could justifiably call her an artistic anthropologist who wants to know the how and the why. Her numerous projects are like field research, showing the abundance of human existence in images and, supplemented by interviews, from different but mostly interrelated perspectives.
Her early long-term project Feine Leute (Fine People), 111 photographs taken between 1979 and 1985, as the subtitle suggests, already bore witness to wealth and power. These are self-exposures of the rich and powerful in the country, on all kinds of festive occasions. Herlinde Koelbl's gaze is never cynical, she does not betray those photographed, but registers precisely, looks closely, shows details, the clothing, for example, also as a disguise, the habitus, the insignia of wealth and social power.
Power, political power and powerlessness was the subject of her perhaps best-known project, Spuren der Macht - Die Verwandlung des Menschen durch das Amt - Eine Langzeitstudie, which was published in 1999. Much has been written about it, as well as about her series of portraits of Chancellor Angela Merkel. Does power change people? Does it corrupt, does it make people lonely, or is a person with power more respected, even more desirable than those who renounce power, remain without power or are weak? Even weaklings, as it is disparagingly expressed. But didn't Paul say "when I am weak, then I am strong"?
In another project, which she laconically called Children, she focussed on people between the ages of two and eight, who are just beginning to develop a kind of understanding of their roles. So innocence? No, Herlinde Koelbl is not sentimental, not in any of her projects, and her approach remains distanced and free of clichés. In her portraits of children, she shows largely undisguised faces in which a part of the soul is revealed in a poetic way. For the photographer, this is yet another attempt to dare to look deeper in order to find out what it means to be human.
Herlinde Koelbl visited writers, photographed them in their study, their intimate space, talked to them about the process of creation, of writing, of creativity. What motivates them, what drives them, what do they hope for, what do they want to achieve, do they want to achieve anything at all? This is also a pictorial search for clues, a look inside people, and also a rumination on power and powerlessness.
Just like the portrait series Strong Women, in the real and figurative sense. The result is a "body and soul book" that literally shows the young and full, as well as the old, withered and vulnerable beauty. Traces of life with the sensual fullness of becoming, as in the mature fullness of decay: skin that resembles a landscape full of infinite wrinkles: life towards death, in the noble dignity of the naked body.
The concepts of death and life
Here it is once again, the concept of death and life as the cornerstones of human existence. The exhibition here before us in the Catholic Academy revolves around these core concepts and, ladies and gentlemen, an exhibition by Herlinde Koelbl has already been shown in these rooms. It was The Sacrifice. Seventeen pictures of the Easter slaughter of a lamb by a shepherd in Sardinia: seventeen stages of killing and processing, of preparing and eating together. The tied sheep stands at the beginning, hands sharing the roasted meat form the end. This project has very little text in the book. The cycle of images takes centre stage and is legible enough. The photographer has prefaced it with the biblical account of the first victim, the first act of violence: Cain and Abel.
Fratricide: A story about the connection between violence, life and death. Of power and powerlessness. Cain slays Abel. Cain is the perpetrator and Abel the victim. But Abel, for his part, has killed: sacrificed a sheep. Killing means violence. Abel practises violence. Admittedly ritualised, in a prescribed form. The Latin word "rite" means "in the right way" or "duly". In sacrifice, the violence flows in a contained way, flows in the right direction. It does not flood, does not cause destruction. It is the path of the rite that binds the killing in the transcendent.
"One of the two brothers kills the other, and it is the one who is unable to outwit violence, as is possible in the form of animal sacrifice," explains the French cultural scientist René Girard in the foreword to Herlinde Koelbl's book Opfer (Sacrifice). She had asked him for a text because when she observed the slaughter ritual in Sardinia at Easter with a sharpened eye through the camera, she says she first became aware of the force of the violence that lies in killing.
It is remarkable how strongly the public reacted to these pictures at almost all exhibition stations, including here at the Academy.
The images with the photos of the soldiers and their shot-up virtual counterparts, on the other hand, seem to remain at a certain emotional distance. Although killing is practised here in different variations - the killing of people. But it seems strangely undramatic and also abstract. This distance, and Herlinde Koelbl shows this impressively, is also part of a sometimes improvised, sometimes sophisticated and perfected training for the soldiers, depending on the available possibilities. After all, the training should be realistic and at the same time reduce any scruples and reservations about pulling the trigger as much as possible. This requires a certain degree of abstraction. "Anyone who thinks about whether to shoot or not is as good as dead," Herlinde Koelbl quotes a soldier.
Of course it is. It is the fundamental logic that has been inherent in every potential military action since antiquity, whether as an exercise or in an emergency. The military must necessarily be ready and able to maximise efficiency, otherwise it is pointless and would not do justice to its task. But where are the limits that need to be observed: is killing allowed? And if so, when, how, where and whom? The relevant rules are actually formulated in the UN Charter. According to this, war is fundamentally illegal under international law, but legitimate in the case of self-defence in the event of an attack. Even during a war, the legal principles of the Geneva Convention and the Hague Convention must, or at least should, be observed.
Now law and justice are two different concepts, and for many reasons they do not always coincide. An unjust decision can be in accordance with the law, or a just decision can run counter to it. "We have a law, and according to the law he must die, for he has made himself the Son of God." This is how the priesthood, at least according to the Gospel of John (John 19:7), as the supreme organ of Jewish jurisdiction at the time, justifies Jesus' death sentence. Law-abiding? Perhaps. But just?
The law also changes with social perceptions, which leads to the question of where a legal system derives its legitimacy from. Who ultimately defines what is right and wrong? Especially as the definitions themselves can lead to a grey area of many other questions. In the case of the killing of people, certainly.
In this context, let me tell you a story that I was able to experience with the Catholic Academy. In October 2016, we travelled to Volos in central Greece, at the foot of the mountainous Pelion peninsula, as part of a study trip. One of the excursions from there took us to the nearby mountain village of Miliés. We didn't come to visit it, however, but to hold a joint ecumenical ceremony on the village square in front of the old Taxiarchis (Archangel) Church to commemorate the 20 or so people who were shot by German Wehrmacht soldiers on this square on 4 October 1943.
Their blood flowed into the small village stream and down the mountain. The victims were randomly selected male villagers, from small children to old men. They were murdered in retaliation for two German soldiers who had been killed by Greek partisans in the mountains around Milies. 73 years later, an old man who had survived the massacre as a child stood next to the mayor of the village and looked at us, the first official group from Germany, in amazement and confusion. That was extremely moving.
Death and life - power and powerlessness, and, may I add: Shame. Why shame? Because this massacre, like many others, not only in Greece, had no legal consequences after the war. Because for each of the German soldiers killed by the partisans, the shooting of ten hostages from nearby villages was considered appropriate retribution and was therefore justified. At least that is how the courts of the Federal Republic of Germany ruled.
Not least against this background and in view of the exhibition with the images of worldwide shooting training on dummy humans, one wonders whether and what consequences exercises that lower the inner threshold for killing a person have for soldiers. And, one step further, what the consequences are for the actual emergency when combat becomes the norm and war becomes everyday life and the enemy is transformed from a person into a target, a thing to be destroyed. Whether with gunfire, mines, drones or bombs.
Is there any official, accompanying research? Perhaps - but I don't know. Herlinde Koelbl, who studied these "targets" in detail, writes in her text accompanying the exhibition that she asked the soldiers corresponding questions about doubts and fears, about killing and responsibility. This can be read in her very worthwhile book with the same title.
In any case, the exhibition Death and Life - Power and Powerlessness touches on fundamental issues that arise simply by looking at it. Including whether there can be a "just war" at all, or a "just peace", which would require a binding definition of what peace means. A worldly treaty - then there may be an unjust peace because it is enforced, but is that really peace? As we know, peace is more than just the absence of war. Could peace be a utopia? Unattainable? "Peace I leave with you, my peace I give to you; not as the world gives, do I give it to you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid."
This peace that Jesus promises in the Gospel of John is not a utopia, but the peace that the angels over Bethlehem proclaim to the shepherds. The peace of Christ is the core of Christian faith and is inseparably linked to Christ. It is proclaimed and prayed for with every blessing, in every mass, every divine liturgy, in every church service, even as an experience of peace, as Eugen Biser says, and is prayed for in the so-called pulpit blessing as the last vow after the sermon in Protestant churches: "The peace of God, which is higher than all reason, keep your hearts and minds - all of ours - in Christ Jesus."
I apologise, ladies and gentlemen, for this slight variation on the letter to the Philippians. But these are neither pastor's words nor words spoken from the pulpit, but introductory words to the exhibition, which in its own way can also make an experience of peace possible.
