There is a folk festival atmosphere at the Olympic Stadium, where almost 200,000 people want to see Rammstein live over three days. In the afternoon, however, first stroll past fries and strawberry punch. Brittas and Norberts take souvenir photos with beer and ticket, the smokers and beard-tailed clientele in checked shorts talk shop over an arm’s length of bratwurst with mustard, tourists from Argentina crowd the merch stand. Just normal people – although the dominant dress code is very clear, the Hawaiian shirt rate is surprisingly high on this 37-degree summer day. And so the La-Ola goes round and round around the stadium, the fairground mood is contagious.
Just in time for the communicated start of the show at 8.30 p.m., the Rammstein logo rises on the tower of the industrial-looking backdrop to Handel’s fireworks music and Till Lindemann comes down in the elevator for the opener “Rammlied”. The Olympic Stadium is wrapped in black smoke, and it is almost unbearably loud in the upper tiers. Announcements have never been her thing, but Rammstein give their fans appreciative gestures right from the start: drummer Christoph Schneider forms a heart with his hands and kisses the hands. As in the previous concerts, Lindemann does not sing the full text of the later song “Ich will”: “We want you to trust us” – but no longer “that you believe everything we say”. “Wet backs, clammy hands – everyone is afraid. Vor Lindemann”, it also says in the song “Fear”, which is actually about the “black man”. On the other hand, they don’t do without tried-and-tested show elements: Pyro rockets that shoot across the infield herald the particularly hot part of the show at “Du hast”. Others can heat climate-friendly. And keyboarder Flake ends up in the cooking pot again with “Mein Teil”.
Ignorance is bliss?
Rammstein has been called a lot of things in her career: irreverent, dirty, inhuman, some even called her racist. So it’s not surprising that the constant criticism of the band has built resilience among the fans. Some celebrate the meta level of the lyrics – and others, well, still scream “Undress!” in 2023 when a big-breasted woman appears on the screen. Anyone who has followed the reporting of the past few weeks attentively will probably get a head cinema when the expansive DJ interlude before the song “Deutschland” announces itself, four LED stick figures hitch the stage and finally a flap under the stage opens, um to release Lindemann from the alleged suck box.
You can meet the moral status quo of the Germans with anger or resignation, but you can also find it reassuring, especially when there are so many things in life that you have no influence on. As a loud representative, who is also not very into change, once put it so aptly: “Stop, stop, everything will stay the way it is here.” Many people simply go against the grain, of people like those who are today have demonstrated at the concert site to be patronized. Some have sold their Rammstein ticket because they cannot reconcile with their conscience cheering the show and the artists in the face of the allegations. However, 66,000 people have decided to be there – also with the knowledge: some things in life are disgusting, but nothing has been proven here. Even if this means tolerating possible private lapses or tastelessness or even celebrating it in public. But a society must also be able to withstand the ambivalence that heart balloons are flying around in the front rows of a Rammstein show that has been controversial for weeks.
After a long break, in which fans show the signs they brought with them on the screens (“We are loyal to you”, “We can’t be without you”), it sounds from another stage in the audience “God knows, I don’t want an angel be” – and a theatrical rain shower falls through the open roof of the Olympic Stadium, while the band is carried back to the Main Stage in three inflatable boats. After the band said goodbye with “Adieu” and Kniefall, Till Lindemann addressed a few more meaningful words to the audience: “We’re home again, thanks Berlin!”