Reinickendorf District Removes Historical Swastika Photograph from City Hall Gallery

When photographer Tim Gassauer presented his work to roughly a dozen visitors on a cool Tuesday evening at the Rathaus-Galerie in Reinickendorf, one image from his series was absent from the walls. His photographs document Lüderitz — a town in Saxony-Anhalt — alongside the identically named place in Namibia, and the series hangs in the gallery situated behind the district mayor's office in the borough's town hall. The missing image was an archival photograph from the Nazi era that contained a visible swastika, which the district office had quietly removed. A local art association responded sharply, describing the action as "Bildzensur" — image censorship — and defending the display of historical documentation in a civic gallery. The district mayor countered that her concern was specifically about the photograph's location within the town hall, not about the historical image as such, suggesting it could be exhibited elsewhere. The episode reflects a broader tension in German public life over how and where Nazi-era imagery may appear on government property. Whether a compromise can be found remains an open question.