Germany Taking Flack for Backing Daniel Barenboim Show in Iran
Star conductor Daniel Barenboim is holding talks to take one of Germany’s main orchestras to Iran, his employer Berlin State Opera said on Thursday, in the face of angry protests from Israel.
The opera said the plans by its Israeli-Argentinian musical director had the full backing of German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, setting up a possible confrontation with Israel which called the state support for the trip a “mistake.”
The announcement of the visit comes at a particularly sensitive time for Israel, which is concerned that last month’s nuclear deal between Iran and world powers, including Germany, could empower one of its main enemies and ease Tehran’s international isolation.
The 72-year-old conductor and pianist has also been an outspoken critic of Israel’s Palestinian policies.
“Barenboim draws an anti-Israel line and makes sure to slander Israel while using culture to leverage his political opinions against Israel,” Israeli Culture Minister Miri Regev said on Facebook on Wednesday as news of the trip first emerged.
She said she would write to the German government to protest against its support for the concert.
The German opera issued a statement saying: “Steinmeiner supports the efforts of Daniel Barenboim to make music accessible across national, religious and ethnic borders.”
The German foreign ministry declined comment on Thursday, but Steinmeier is due to travel to Iran himself in October.
His cabinet colleague Sigmar Gabriel, the economy minister, visited Tehran in July with a small delegation of business representatives days after the nuclear deal, drawing criticism from Israeli leaders.
Berlin’s support for the nuclear deal has tested the close ties Germany has cultivated with Israel since World War Two, when the Nazis killed six million Jews.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO