Vip Vip, Hooray!: The Sad Case of Melanie Müller

Nazi slogans and an alleged Nazi salute: all of Germany is talking about the Ballermann singer Melanie Müller. She herself says she has nothing to do with nationalist ideas. Doesn’t she know what her performance location in Leipzig is all about?

You still can’t believe it. Melanie Müller, the woman who inspired millions of TV viewers with her once natural and affectionate nature and became the jungle queen in 2014, is said to have celebrated with rights. All of Germany is talking about her performance in Leipzig these days, with people in the audience chanting right-wing slogans and raising their arms in the Nazi salute. Ballermann’s lead singer stands on stage and sings. After the first reports and film recordings of the said performance that have become public, Müller makes a statement that sounds weak. She says she canceled the performance and left the stage.

Yes, it’s true: Artists are on many stages almost all year round. Time and again they report that they don’t even know in which city they actually perform. Or whatever event they were even invited to. Similar to what Melanie Müller says about her performance in Leipzig. This includes words like, “Nazis don’t belong in my audience. I’m clearly distancing myself from what’s happening (…) and hoping I’ll get the chance to position myself publicly with some distance.”

As if her statements weren’t dubious enough given the images, which speak a completely different language, the singer provides them with the hashtags #fcknzs and #gemeinsamgegenrechts. Shortly after the first video, a second video made the rounds. But not one where Müller takes a stand and tells the audience she would stop performing. No, there are recordings of her raising her hand a total of eight times. Was it the Hitler salute? The singer denies that.

Nothing to do with nationalist ideas

There are many who think that the artist should be canceled because her new boyfriend would have connections in the right-wing scene. This reads in the comments below her statement: “Oh dear, have you been beaten up with the Nazi club like so many others? Let the people talk, you did nothing, why do you always have to justify yourself?!”

Mrs Müller sees it that way too. She is not right, the media, especially RTL, throw “dirt” at her, trying to “attribute something” to her. It’s just a matter of “lie”. “I am physically quite battered at the moment and will therefore withdraw a bit in the coming days, recover and try to process the whole thing. (…) I have nothing to do with right-wing extremists or nationalist ideas. I have condemned that in the strongest possible terms.”

Dear Melanie Müller, purely hypothetical, everything you say is true: your new life partner only by chance wore Thor Steinar clothes. It was pure coincidence that in Leipzig you found yourself in a situation that you hate. And coincidentally—perhaps for scheduling reasons—you didn’t manage to comment on the incident until it went public. Was your joke in 2014, which you made in response to the publication of your book: “Do it yourself, or no one will do it for you – from wallflower to jungle queen” by chance? “I actually wanted to call it ‘Mein Kampf’ but I googled it – unfortunately the title is already taken.”

“The largest women’s satellite camp of the Buchenwald concentration camp”

Dear Melanie Müller, because, as you suggest, you know nothing about the place where your performance took place on September 17, 2022, here’s some information about the buildings on Kamenzer Straße in – your hometown! Today, where right-wing rock concerts are repeatedly held, was once the largest women’s camp of the Buchenwald concentration camp.

The “Arolsen Archives – International Center on Nazi Persecution”, center for documentation, information and research on National Socialist persecution, Nazi forced labor and the Holocaust, writes on its website: “With more than 5000 inmates, the subcamp (… . ) the largest satellite camp for women of the Buchenwald concentration camp.” (…) It is the only authentic building of a subcamp of a concentration camp in the city of Leipzig that has survived to this day. (…) In April 2021, a swastika flag would have been found during a raid on the grounds of boxing club “Sin City Boygym”. The Saxon Constitutional Protection Agency calls the place a “property used by right-wing extremists”.

And Deutschlandfunkkultur writes that the SS evacuated the camp from April 1945 and ‘sent the forced laborers through Saxony on several death marches’. For “almost 15 years”, the building complex has been owned by “the self-proclaimed far-right Ludwig K. (…) who today calls himself “Prince of Prussia” (…) and is used by the militant neo-Nazi scene as a meeting place. “

“Shocked, helpless, speechless”

So if it is as you say, dear Mrs. Müller, and you are against Nazis, then you can certainly consciously ensure that this monument in your hometown of Leipzig, the “testimony of forced labor and inhumanity of the Nazi regime” is no longer a hotbed where right-wing ideas are indulged and people in collective Ballermann frenzy raise their hands in the Nazi salute.

Even though the singer states that she has “been doing this hand movement (…) for years”, Mike Blümer, estranged husband and father of her children, says he was “shocked, defeated, speechless”. I don’t recognize Melli Müller as a person who is still my wife again.”

It’s the sad case of a once-popular “Girl from the East” who won the jungle crown in 2014 for her endearing nature. Eight years later, she will raise her hand eight times and say it wasn’t a Nazi salute.