Never Again Is Now | Homage to Ida Dehmel

The personal statement of Eleni Müller regarding the cancellation by organizer Gertrude Schleising to hold the project "East-West Salons" on Augustastraße.

A year ago, I received an unusual phone call. A friendly female voice explained that she had learned about our salon online and found our work as a cultural promotion association particularly interesting. This exact venue seemed ideal to her for staging a project of her own. Then the voice—warm, enthusiastic, the voice of an elderly lady—began to describe the endeavor. It was about her wish, as an artist, to realize a homage to the Jewish patron of the arts Ida Dehmel, a figure for whom she, as an artist in Bremen, holds deep admiration. She herself belongs to the GEDOK association, which Ida Dehmel founded a hundred years ago and which is based in Hamburg today. The idea was to host four salons in which she herself, dressed as Ida Dehmel, would discuss building bridges between East and West with female artists from the West and the former East of Germany. The project bore the name "East-West Salons" and was scheduled to take place in two locations in the West (Bremen and Hamburg) and two locations in the East (Görlitz and Berlin). My salon was slated for October; October 4th was proposed.

I listened with growing interest and felt immediately: This is a project for me. Who was this fascinating woman of whom I had known nothing until now? From the past, a voice rose up, seeking to re-enter our consciousness. Born Ida Coblenz in Bingen am Rhein in 1870, Ida Dehmel was one of the most significant art patrons and women's rights activists of her time. As the wife of the poet Richard Dehmel and a former companion of Stefan George, she created salons and networks that supported female artists across all disciplines and helped them gain public recognition. In 1926, she founded GEDOK, the Federation of German and Austrian Women Artists' Associations of All Art Genres, which continues to exist today. After 1933, as a Jew, she was forced out of all offices and lived in increasing isolation; in 1942, facing imminent deportation, she took her own life.

For ten years, ever since I founded this association, I have gladly listened to such voices from the past. I discover forgotten books, musical scores, and faces, and give them space. Moreover, October 4th is the day before my birthday. I agreed and began preparing for a great adventure. The enthusiasm was immense: the fate of an important Jewish woman of the first half of the 20th century was to take center stage, alongside female artists, women, patrons, and our beautiful salon on Augustastraße.

Ten years ago, my husband and I opened our 188-square-meter apartment on Augustastraße to the public. He, a musician and sound engineer, carries the financial burden since I am without means; together, we make the rooms available primarily to artists. The very first concert was a recital by the American tenor Stanley Jackson. Stanley, a friend from my time in Munich who now lives in Leipzig, gifted us an unforgettable evening with Olga Dribas at the piano. That is how it all began. The second concert brought together the three founding members of the Lusatian Baroque Ensemble—our Polish-German ensemble that explores the Baroque heritage of the Saxon-Polish kings and understands Baroque music as a bond between Poland and Germany. It was 2017, the Telemann Year. Telemann had lived in Pless and Sorau and composed Polish concertos, inspired by the fiddle music in Polish folk taverns. Susan Joseph from Görlitz, Szczepan Dembinski from Bad Flinsberg, and Adam Rorat on the harpsichord from Krakow met at our place and played Telemann. Without us calling it that, it was a true East-West Salon. Imperceptibly, despite my lack of means, I myself became a patron to other artists. A deep voice within me said that this region, in which I had chosen to live, needed regenerative forces: the voice of music from old times, young people, spirit, enthusiasm, and Polish-German encounters.

The artist on the phone was named Gertrude Schleising. I accepted and invited her to get to know the region. In the summer, I had organized an International Lied Competition, which I hosted for young singers from all over the world. In Jelenia Góra, where part of the competition took place, there had been a significant artists' colony around 1900, especially in nearby Schreiberhau in the Giant Mountains. At that time, we discovered the composer Anna Teichmüller, who belonged to the circle around Karl and Gerhart Hauptmann. We even translated into Polish the pacifist Festspiel in deutschen Reimen (Festival Play in German Rhymes) by Hauptmann and Reinhardt, which had premiered in 1913 at the Centennial Hall in Breslau. The work, a fruitful collaboration between the newly crowned Silesian Nobel laureate and the Jewish Berlin theater magician Max Reinhardt, culminated in a triumphant monologue by Athena, the Greek goddess of wisdom. The mother of the fallen soldiers of the Napoleonic Wars transforms into the Greek goddess and proclaims the following message:

"There, where I am and where you stream toward, is the light:

We, never parted, ever united, know nothing of war.

And thus peace dwells among us!

Not there, not yonder, nor surrounded by us

Like a sacred host protecting a ruler.

No! Our souls are one in His soul!

Neither languages separate us, nor rivers and seas.

Neither gods separate, nor the unknown God,

Those who hold the well-being of all humanity at heart.

What separates is error—error, which alone unleashes

Hatred—is ignorance, is the naked misery of hunger!

Not the divine that dwells within humankind.

For this divine is Eros! Eros is

The creating one, the Creator! All that lives,

Is Eros, was born of Eros, works within him, and begets him anew.

And Eros ever begets it anew, the world!"

Gertrude actually came. She visited the Villa Wiesenstein and the finale of the competition, where singers from China, Japan, Germany, Poland, Finland, Italy, South Korea, Israel, Russia, and Romania also performed folk songs from their homelands. Just as Athena would have wished.

I believe in peace and, above all, in the peacemaking mission of artists, so that war may never return. The division of society that we have been experiencing in Europe for ten years appears to me—and I already see it before my mind's eye—as the most fertile breeding ground for the specter of war. Hatred feeds it.

In our city, society can hardly be divided any further: half left, half right, a relentless struggle, exclusion, defamation, firewalls, and growing agitation from both sides. That is why, a year ago, I wrote a petition for social peace in the city and sent it to the mayor. He did not take it seriously. He himself belongs to this climate of division; his greatest opponent is the AfD. In the mayoral elections in May, his front of the Left Party, CDU, and SPD once again stood opposed to the 47 percent of the AfD.

Already a year ago, I made the courageous decision to stand on the side of these ostracized people—in order to break the ice. I attended their Christmas party and meetings and observed the normality of these people: ordinary citizens who fear losing their homeland, do not want a war with Russia, and above all reject the totalitarian measures of the government; many of them were unvaccinated during the pandemic. I found this legitimate and harmless—regardless of my own stance on the war in Ukraine, the pandemic, or foreign infiltration. I reject the discrimination and exclusion of ordinary people who can hardly defend themselves.

Thus, for a year, I led a double life: as a citizen actively campaigning politically for social peace, and at the same time as an organizer of cultural projects. Yet my reputation was already damaged because, in 2025, I had refused to distance myself from Professor Stöcker, who had supported some of my projects. Stöcker himself, an FDP voter, had made a major donation to the AfD in the hope of averting the threatening situation as he perceived it as an entrepreneur. The organizers of the events surrounding "Hammerschmidt 2025" demanded that I publicly oppose him, and because I replied that I would not exclude anyone—neither the wealthy professor nor the former convict who is a friend of my husband and whom many in Görlitz avoid—the team excluded my EU project "Homage to the Zittau Orpheus" from the event series. It was my first experience in life with exclusion, simply because my conscience does not allow me to distance myself from other human beings.

For several years now, I have also been a follower of Jesus. Jesus has worked miracles in my life and in the life of my severely ill husband, whom I care for. He has been living with cancer for five years, and two years ago, with His help, Jesus saved me from certain death as a result of chronic depression. Through countless synchronicities, He showed me His closeness and finally saved me through His word. This Jesus, who sought the company of tax collectors and prostitutes rather than that of the scribes and Pharisees, became my new friend. Like Him, I would never exclude "controversial people" from my life. On the contrary: I sit down beside them.

And if the mayor does not want to commit himself to social peace, then I would do it. I wanted to prove that a new kind of politics is possible—just as Athena understood Germany and as Plato presented it in his political dialogues. The dream was called: "The Renaissance of Europe will begin in Görlitz." I announced my candidacy for the office of mayor. At first, I tried through the AfD, which did not yet have a candidate. Then the dream burst because the party pursued other political plans. With that, my image of ideal politics according to Plato also shattered, and I resigned from the party—and from politics altogether.

But all of this brought already vile people onto the scene who seized the opportunity to harm me. They spoke out against me. I received hate mail, most of it anonymous. I was called an enemy of democracy, a fascist, and anti-European. Sponsors of the association asked to have their names removed from the list of supporters. I was left alone.

Then calm returned, and I am grateful that culture, Jesus, and the artists did not abandon me. One major donor still stood by me, making many enemies for himself in the process. I was considered "contaminated"; people were not allowed to speak to or contact me in public. Yet behind the facade, many people still thought rationally. After all, they knew that I was not a "fascist." I continued to receive EU funding for the competition, foundations donated prizes, and the Cultural Foundation as well as the City of Görlitz supported my projects. Only a facade had to be maintained.

I endured everything stoically, even though life with my husband's illness was already difficult enough. Sometimes I cried, yet I never lost hope. I was preparing for the salon to speak about all of this there—when the telephone rang.

It was the same lovely voice of the elderly lady, though this time no longer friendly. She reported that voices in Berlin had reached out to her, telling her things she could scarcely believe. If it were true, she did not want to jeopardize her project, as she receives state funding. She did not wish for it to come near "right-wing extremist or anti-democratic tendencies," and announced she would change the venue: instead of the Augusta Cultural Salon, the Literature House in the Old Synagogue. The Görlitz locals involved in this—Mr. Michel and Ms. Kommerell—probably agreed. What a disappointment to experience so little solidarity from local artists.

I was left behind and thought of Ida Dehmel. The patron who had helped so many female artists in Germany, and who, when the regime changed in 1933, received no support from any of the countless women she had so generously stood by. She died alone in Hamburg in 1942 by taking her own life because she could no longer bear the exclusion as a woman and a Jew in the Third Reich, and because human nature had probably bitterly disappointed her.

I honor you, Ida. I will not take my own life. I will continue to stand up for the human rights of every single individual: for NEVER AGAIN is NOW.