A kiss in the Luzhniki Stadium
A kiss in Moscow: in 2019 Rammstein's guitarists took a stand against Russia's gay propaganda law in front of 80,000 people.
On 29 July 2019, the Berlin band Rammstein played to more than 80,000 people in Moscow's Luzhniki Stadium. At the start of the first encore, "Ausländer" rang out. Towards the end of the song, the guitarists Paul Landers and Richard Z. Kruspe walked towards each other and kissed on the mouth.
Anywhere else it would have been a footnote. In Russia it was a political signal. Since 2013, a federal law there has banned so-called "gay propaganda", meaning any neutral or positive portrayal of homosexuality that could reach minors. The summer of 2019 was particularly oppressive for the country's queer community: in St Petersburg the activist Yelena Grigoryeva had been murdered shortly before, and the city refused the planned Pride event any venue at all.
The band did not let the moment pass without comment. The day after the concert, it posted a photo of the kiss on Instagram, captioned in Russian: "Russia, we love you!" The picture gathered more than 250,000 likes within two days.
A week earlier, Rammstein had already taken a stand in Chorzów, Poland: the drummer Christoph Schneider, carried over the audience in a rubber dinghy, waved a rainbow flag. Observers saw this as a response to the violent attacks on the Pride march in Białystok in eastern Poland a few days earlier.
In Moscow the political response was swift. The Duma deputy Vitaly Milonov, who as a St Petersburg local politician had initiated Russia's first "propaganda" law, called the musicians "idiots" on the radio station NSN. There were enough "decent performers" in Europe, he said, who did not behave so scandalously. If they wanted to kiss, they should do it in Ukraine.
Four days later Rammstein played again, in Milonov's home city of St Petersburg of all places. In Germany, meanwhile, the praise poured in. The newspaper "Die Welt" called the band the best ambassador the country could imagine abroad.