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Ruangrupa members and Reza Afisina and Iswanto Hartono in front of the HfbK door:
Photo: Georg Wendt / dpa
"I'm starting with something that I've taken for granted that I previously thought was unnecessary to state," clarifies the President of the Hamburg University of Fine Arts (HfbK), Martin Köttering, immediately after welcoming the guests.
And this clarification is primarily aimed at outsiders.
“There is no place for anti-Semitism at the HfbK,” he says.
"Yes," comes the reply from the auditorium, which is packed with around 300 guests.
Others are to follow this interjection, but they are not benevolent.
This is because Köttering has been criticized for the decision to bring two members of the Indonesian collective Ruangrupa to the university as guest professors at the traditional event to mark the beginning of the semester this year.
The curatorial collective Ruangrupa caused a scandal at the Documenta in Kassel by admitting anti-Semitic works;
the group was also accused of being close to the anti-Israel boycott movement BDS.
Iswanto Hartono and Reza Afisina are smoking in front of the entrance of the HfbK before the start of the semester opening ceremony.
They only arrived on Wednesday and are looking forward to their accommodation.
"It's sad that there's still agitation against us," says Hartono.
He doesn't understand the ongoing criticism.
They would have distanced themselves from anti-Semitism and BDS.
"It's good that we're here," he says.
»Anti-Semitism is not art«
Inside the hall, not everyone sees it that way.
But it's quiet at first, until Martin Köttering says that the university is in the middle of a "wave of excitement" because of the accusation against Ruangrupa.
"That's not an accusation, what's the point?" interrupts a woman from the back rows.
She steps forward and starts distributing leaflets: "Anti-Semitism is not art."
Köttering defends Hartono and Afisina and emphasizes that he is looking for an argument.
"We have to start making anti-Semitism an issue." He says he relies on discourse.
And the objections from the audience increased, around ten of the 300 guests took part over the course of the afternoon.
They're polite, and a kind of discussion between Köttering and critics actually develops.
Until the President says that he would like to finish his little speech.
The rest of the guests remain strangely distant.
The mood is not upset, but rather depressed.
It almost seems as if nobody really wants to behave on the subject.
If there were protests, then they would come from outside, the HfbK press office predicted before the event.
And indeed, most of those calling are guests who say that they are not from the HfbK.
The city's science senator is busy with the appointment: Katharina Fegebank (Greens) had been critical of the personnel.
And even the Federal Education Minister Bettina Stark-Watzinger (FDP) joined the debate with a tweet on Wednesday.
However, many of the students who attend the event do not want to comment when asked or say they do not know the debate well enough.
Pronounced “political lethargy”
There is a pronounced "political lethargy" at the university, says Jan Schneidereit, who studied photography at the HfbK until 2020 and is involved in the German-Israeli Society.
He doesn't believe the president is promoting a culture of debate at the university.
The event is a farce, says Schneidereit.
What remains is the feeling that this personality is being sat out.
Just as most of the guests felt listless on the chairs in the hall.
The semester opening even ends with a small scandal: after two guest lectures and further heckling, Köttering decides after three quarters of an hour that the third planned guest lecture will no longer take place.
He leaves the microphone to the protesters, but this does not lead to any further discussion.
Köttering invites you to the next item on the program, a visit to an exhibition, and the guests poured out.
The protest in the diminutive found a little approval from the students in front of the door: "It would have been worrying if the opening had taken place quite normally," says Apollonia Stoisits from Vienna, who is studying at the HfbK in the third semester.
The two guest lecturers, she says, are now being observed at the university.