{"id":280081,"date":"2025-11-12T18:30:11","date_gmt":"2025-11-12T18:30:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/280081\/"},"modified":"2025-11-12T18:30:11","modified_gmt":"2025-11-12T18:30:11","slug":"haftbefehl-shows-that-germany-loves-art-born-from-alienation-just-not-the-people-who-create-it-music","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/280081\/","title":{"rendered":"Haftbefehl shows that Germany loves art born from alienation \u2013 just not the people who create it | Music"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you want to understand the state of Germany<\/a> in these last weeks of 2025, grasping the meaning of two entries in the German dictionary are essential: stadtbild and haftbefehl.<\/p>\n

The first term technically means \u201ccityscape\u201d. But since chancellor Friedrich Merz<\/a> gave a speech in the state of Brandenburg on 14 October, it has taken on a new political meaning. \u201cWe have come far with migration,\u201d he said, \u201cbut of course we still have this problem in our stadtbild.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was a very different register from his predecessor Angela Merkel, who once said she could not determine whether someone had a German passport \u201cjust by looking at them.\u201d Asked to clarify his comments at a press conference a few days after his speech, Merz doubled down: he told the journalists to \u201cask your daughters\u201d<\/a> what he meant \u2013 and refused to elaborate.<\/p>\n

That one vague line has dominated Germany\u2019s political discourse for over a month now. Public figures organised demonstrations and launched open letters rejecting what they saw as a racist dog-whistle by the chancellor. On political talkshows, politicians, actors and comedians rallied to Merz\u2019s defence. And the far-right AfD celebrated the free PR ahead of next year\u2019s regional elections, as the chancellor\u2019s vagueness left plenty of space to connect his words to their vision of \u201cremigration\u201d, a far-right concept of mass deportation that amounts to ethnic cleansing.<\/p>\n

\u2018We still have this problem\u2019 \u2026 Friedrich Merz on a visit to Brandenburg on 14 October. Photograph: Getty Images<\/p>\n

The debate revealed something larger: how Germany\u2019s ruling Christian Democrats, who govern in most of the country\u2019s states, seem to view Germans of colour \u2013 not as fellow citizens, but as aesthetic intrusions into an idealised, sanitised vision of the German city. Party allies tried to brush off accusations of racism towards the Chancellor, yet never explained what Merz\u2019s ideal cityscape looked like, or who exactly didn\u2019t fit into it.<\/p>\n

The second word, Haftbefehl, is equally loaded. Literally, it means \u201carrest warrant\u201d. But it\u2019s also the stage name of Aykut Anhan, one of Germany\u2019s most influential rappers. The son of a Turkish mother and a Zaza-Kurdish father, born in Offenbach, Hesse, Haftbefehl built his career on brutally honest, yet also at times comedic depictions of crime, trauma and survival \u2013 in a language that fuses German, Turkish, Zazaki and English.<\/p>\n

After nearly two years out of the public eye, Anhan resurfaced with a Netflix documentary, Babo \u2013 The Haftbefehl Story, an unflinching account of addiction, familial trauma in migrant families and mental illness in the upper echelons of the German music industry. It immediately jumped to the top of Netflix Germany\u2019s charts, praised for both its film-making and its raw honesty.<\/p>\n

The documentary\u2019s success wasn\u2019t surprising: in contrast to the UK or France, artists from marginalised communities are rarities in the cultural mainstream of Germany, and Haftbefehl has long been one of the few, if not only, gangsta rappers embraced by Germany\u2019s cultural establishment while remaining rooted in marginalised communities. Yet the attention the film drew eclipsed even the debate about Merz\u2019s \u201ccityscape\u201d. It\u2019s a telling coincidence: at the very moment the ruling party is defining belonging as an aesthetic question \u2013 who fits visually into the German landscape \u2013 the nation is captivated by the story of a man whose entire art is born from exclusion.<\/p>\n

\u2018Haftbefehl is the answer to the stadtbild debate\u2019 \u2026 a still from Babo: The Haftbefehl Story. Photograph: Netflix<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not hard to imagine that a figure such as Aykut Anhan \u2013 a former small-time dealer from an urban estate who\u2019s battling addiction and depression \u2013 is precisely the kind of person Merz\u2019s stadtbild rhetoric seems to aim at. The kind of person who may be perceived as a \u201cproblem\u201d in the \u201ccityscape\u201d that a greater amount of deportations of asylum seekers would solve. The dehumanising view within Merz\u2019s choice of words is hidden behind a language alluding to cleanliness and civic beauty.<\/p>\n

That ideology has consequences. When people sense they are unwanted in the country of their birth, resentment towards the state follows. Haftbefehl captures this feeling in his music. \u201cHuman values don\u2019t count, just your shiny Mercedes\u201d, he raps in Depressionen im Ghetto (Depression in the Ghetto); \u201cFuck your integration, I\u2019ll pop a bullet straight into your skull\u201d, he sings on 069 (named after the Offenbach and Frankfurt dialling code). Anhan managed to turn the despair of being seen as alien into highly influential and lucrative art with his alter ego. He even left an imprint on German language, with the Zazaki word babo (\u201cboss\u201d or \u201cleader\u201d), popularised by his lyrics, becoming Germany\u2019s \u201cyouth word of the year\u201d in 2013.<\/p>\n

Germany, it seems, loves the art born from this alienation \u2013 but not necessarily the people who create it. The same pattern of appreciating the aesthetic while erasing the originators appears elsewhere as well: luxury kebab shops selling \u201celevated\u201d versions of the Turkish-German staple with truffle and asparagus; Berlin DJs sampling north African melodies; influencers wearing headscarves as summer accessories. The aesthetics of migrant life are endlessly imitated \u2013 while the people behind them remain suspect at best, a problem to be removed at worst.<\/p>\n

\u2018Fear? Yes, of a shift to the right in Germany\u2019 \u2026 a demonstration with the title We Are the Daughters in Berlin on October 21, after Merz\u2019s comments. Photograph: John MacDougall\/AFP\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

German youth have come to recognise this: the student council of the city of Offenbach, Anhan\u2019s place of birth, has petitioned to include Haftbefehl\u2019s music in school curricula to reflect \u201cpost-migrant\u201d identities and pop cultural debates. Unsurprisingly, Hesse\u2019s ministry of culture and education has so far rejected the proposal due to Haftbefehl\u2019s \u201cpropensity for crime\u201d, as well as allegations of sexism or antisemitism, among others. \u201cHaftbefehl is the answer to the stadtbild debate\u201d, a student told the German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, \u201cI don\u2019t relate to Goethe or Kafka.\u201d Including Haftbefehl\u2019s lyricism in the school syllabus would appeal to more students, and, ultimately, help to \u201cintegrate\u201d them into German society.<\/p>\n

The pressure to conform to an idea of integration is deeply ingrained even within post-migrant youth themselves. But as the chancellor muses about a more German cityscape, the question remains: what should integration look like? Will it ever include the perspectives of those who are pushed to comply or does the concept remain a dead end? And can those who don\u2019t fit Merz\u2019s picture of Germany ever feel truly at home in it, no matter how much they assimilate to a \u2013 more often than not vague \u2013 idea of Germanness?<\/p>\n

One of Babo\u2019s most moving scenes shows Anhan sitting on the floor, singing along to the traditional German singer-songwriter Reinhard Mey\u2019s In Meinem Garten. It is a moment of quiet revelation: a man who will for ever be perceived as not belonging to the Chancellor\u2019s ideal stadtbild, yet so deeply shaping and shaped by German culture, so very German in his tastes and sensibilities.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"If you want to understand the state of Germany in these last weeks of 2025, grasping the meaning…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":280082,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[64,63,134,136],"class_list":{"0":"post-280081","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-music"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280081","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=280081"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280081\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/280082"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=280081"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=280081"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=280081"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}