Following a government decree, the Alte Nationalgalerie in Berlin has removed from view all artwork depicting rivers or seas.
According to the museum’s announcement, the move is intended to prevent “creating the conditions for slogans that might inadvertently refer to ‘From river to sea, Palestine will be free.'”
Works removed include Gustave Courbet’s “The Waves” (1869), Caspar David Friedrich’s “The Monk on the Shore” (1808-10), Carl Blechen’s The Fisherman of Capri (1834), and hundreds of other works.
The decision is a watered-down version of a previous proposal to landfill Germany’s Rhine River in solidarity with the people of Israel.
“If we are serious about respecting the historical trauma of the Jewish people, we must eliminate every river, canal and creek in this country,” said one congressman, who also pledged to never go to the beach for the rest of his life.
German media praised the move, accusing several international waters, including the mighty Nile, of maintaining “ongoing anti-Semitism”.
Members of the German left, now reduced to five, protested against the new measure, but no one paid attention.
Due to a lack of space in the museum’s storage facilities, some of the removed artworks were moved to underground storage in a former World War II Nazi bunker. Oh, the irony.
