Gustav Metzger on Nürnberg

Gustav Metzger in conversation with Hans Ulrich Obrist

One of the earliest memories is from my childhood in Nuremberg. We were living in a house in Fürther Straße, which is a big, linear road from Nuremberg to Fürth. We were at the beginning of that road, Fürther Straße 37. We had a big yard in front of our home.
One day I went into the yard and onto the road and joined a marching group of political people. I think they were more left-wing than right-wing. This was before ’33. It was, I believe, my first appearance in politics. But my parents were very worried and took me back home as quickly as possible, and I was locked up, grounded for some days.

I was raised in an Orthodox Jewish environment, so there was a fascinating clash in my youth in Nuremberg, which has a profusion of churches and cathedrals, between art and the Jewish insistence on the prohibition on images. This is at the center of my work: on the one hand, opening up to the world and, on the other, closing off from it.

So the works in the Historic Photographs are personal, but they’re also an arena for people, for everyone, to connect with their life–with uncertainty, facing the unknown, an awareness of an expanding array of risks, feelings of helplessness, and an inability to come up with answers to major social issues.

Gustav Metzger: Interviews with Hans-Ulrich Obrist, edited by Karen Marta, Hauser & Wirth Publications, Zürich 2024

Gustav Metzger in conversation with Ken McMullen

We lived on the longest street of Nürnberg, Further Straße, and there you could go left and wherever you saw blocks of SA, SS, every year.
And then I would sometimes, venture to the actual ralley. I did see them sure, ralleys at their place, ten of thousands.

And so the power of the visual presentation had a very deep impact on me, and it went on affecting me when I came to England and I would remember that, I would go back in my mind to all that again and again and again.

The childhood experiences continued as a gift year by year, before the war started, I would be reading papers about Nazi Germany and seeing images of Hitler and so on. And on the radio there would be endless talk of Hitler, and during the war, endless talk of Hitler, endless talk of the Nazis. So in my mind I would relive this part ongoing. And when the war was over, Germany was still in the headlines. And the reparations and war trials and on and on and on. So Germany was on my mind continuously, steadily, right through until the present day.

The impact of the Nazis on me as a child continued to the present day. The problematic, the discussion, the questions, the difficulties involved are there for life. Till we die, we Jews will be involved in all that.
And certainly the experience in Nürnberg was very formative for my whole life and for my art. The power of that experience stayed with me and influenced the way I formulated Autodestructive Art.

Ken McCullen, Pioneers in Arts and Science: Gustav Metzger, Arts Council England 2004

Gustav Metzger in conversation with Cora Piantoni

I had seen a picture that deeply shocked me. It is a picture, a photograph, of Hitler driving by… not walking. He is in his armoured car with his right hand outstretched. In front of him are hundreds of young people, young men and women, worshipping him. The image shook me deeply. When I came to execute the Historic Photographs, it was one of the most powerful images I had ever seen.
The image was then placed on a piece of metal, a steel plate I believe, and another steel plate was placed on top of it and then welded shut, properly welded shut, so that the image could never come out again. You could say that Hitler will never come out again because of this weight, this heaviness.

In 2006, I went by public transport to the Nazi party rally grounds in Nuremberg. I spent a long time in that area. I had heard that a historical centre had been built there and wanted to see it.
It was a difficult experience. Whenever I encounter National Socialism anywhere, in any way, it is difficult. Sometimes very difficult. Difficult, but important to do. And that is a central statement about my entire relationship with Germany, before, during and after the Nazi period.

Cora Piantoni, Abriss. Wir haben viel erlebt: Gustav Metzger, Kunstraum München 2016