Hans Haacke versus the myth ofVolk

An English garden in the Reichstag/Bundestag, Hans Haacke's Der Bevlkerung (2000) invites Germans to reflect critically on the concepts of nation and identity, urging a catharsis to reject the old belief in a pure and noble Volk defined by blood and soil (filiation), to accept a new ideal of a natural, mottled otherness. But all these notions, which in Germany are still dangerously laden, invoking the culture at its worst, carry complicated, discordant implications. Meanings here escape the intentions of the artist, so that the Naturgarten in question stands not only as a tribute to migration and integration but also, usefully, as a reminder that Germany's troubled, violent past refuses to become either facile history or simple art.