After femicide joke on TV: Dieter Nuhr does not want to have made fun of violence against women

Nuhr, recently from Central Council of Jews in Germany The prestigious Leo Baeck Prize was awarded, sparked the debate with statements in the “Nuhr im Erstes XXL” program on June 18th. “There are around 300 to 350 femicides every year and please, of course that’s 300 to 350 too many, there’s no question about it,” the cabaret artist said.

“But there are tens of millions of men in Germany. The probability of encountering a woman murderer in a relationship is practically zero. To be on the safe side, it wouldn’t be bad if If you just get to know your partner before sexual intercourse.” Afterwards, Nuhr said: “Maybe just ask whether he works part-time as a woman murderer.”

Nuhr criticizes blanket denigrations

The statement was widely interpreted on social media as a perpetrator-victim reversal. The cabaret artist suggested that women themselves were to blame if they were murdered, according to the accusation.

Nuhr explained in his Facebook post that it was about something completely different. According to the comedian, in his show before the controversial statements he initially took aim at “stupid” blanket judgments against men and women that were glossed over in a scientific way.

Nuhr now wrote on Facebook that he was concerned with the word “structural,” which assigns guilt to all men because they are “structurally” perpetrators. According to his own statements, he referred to several articles in major German newspapers in which women questioned whether they could still live with men because they “statistically kill”.

This “completely exaggerated blanket denigration” was the subject of his article. “I emphasized that every femicide is of course (!) one too many, but that the chance of encountering a femicide when choosing a partner is extremely small.”

RBB protects Nuhr

The Rundfunk Berlin-Brandenburg (rbb), which is responsible for the broadcast, called the criticism of the Nuhr Passage understandable. However, in satirical formats it is also important to respect artistic freedom, the rbb said upon request. “As an artist, Dieter Nuhr is generally allowed to formulate provocatively and pointedly against the background of artistic freedom,” said the broadcaster. “The core business of satire is to consciously turn things into their opposite.”

Satire works through polarization and exaggeration. One can discuss and argue about the boundaries of taste – but given the broad scope of protection of freedom of satire, the rbb does not see its programming mandate being violated. Nuhr has been repeatedly criticized for various contributions in recent years.