Irmela Mensah-Schramm

Irmela Mensah-Schramm (born 1945) is a human rights activist and retired special needs teacher known for removing and painting over neo-Nazi and other right-wing extremist graffiti in Berlin and throughout Germany.[1][2]

Irmela Mensah-Schramm in 2013

She began doing this work in 1986 after seeing a sticker at a bus stop near her home in Berlin demanding the release of Nazi war criminal Rudolf Hess. Shocked when she returned and found that no one had removed it, she decided to scrape it away with her keychain.[1][3] After this incident, she began to notice neo-Nazi and right-wing extremist graffiti wherever she went, and resolved to make removing it part of her daily routine. As of 2021, she had removed at least 90,000 stickers, with many of these preserved in binders for posterity, and effaced at least 10,000 spray-painted messages or symbols.[2] According to the New York Times, "Over her 30 years of scraping, dissolving and painting over far-right slogans, she estimates she has been assaulted three or four times. But, she said, she has also been hugged by strangers and thanked."[1]

In October 2019, Mensah-Schramm was found guilty of property damage and fined after being photographed painting over neo-Nazi slogans and reported to the police.[4][5] According to Deutsche Welle, she "refused an offer by the judge to avoid a trial if she donated €500 to non-profit groups, saying it would mean legally admitting she did something wrong."[4] Mensah-Schramm was later acquitted of the charge upon appeal.[6]

Mensah-Schramm has been increasingly recognized for her work since beginning to receive global media attention in the early 2000s. She has been awarded the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany among numerous other awards.[5][7] Her extensive collection of neo-Nazi stickers which she has removed was placed on exhibition at the German Historical Museum in Berlin in 2016.[3][8] As of December 2021, Mensah-Schramm was still active.[9]

Background

Mensah-Schramm was born in 1945 in Stuttgart, Germany, and moved to Berlin in 1967, where she began teaching students with severe disabilities.[1] In the 1960s she also became involved in the anti-nuclear movement.[1]

Methods
Mensah-Schramm removing graffiti in Berlin

Though her work began with the simple removal of a sticker with a keychain, over the years Mensah-Schramm has adopted numerous methods to excise, cover over, and alter the hate speech she encounters, including nail polish remover, a variety of scrapers, and spray paint.[1]

Some of her alterations involve humorous wordplay. In one instance where vandals had written "foreigners to the gas chamber" she altered the text to read "foreigners to the fun chamber" (in German "fun" rhymes with "gas").[3] Since 2015, when an influx of refugees aroused anger against German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Mensah-Schramm has frequently altered graffiti reading "Merkel must go" (Merkel muss weg) to read "Remember! Away with hate" (Merke! Hass weg).[5]

Mensah-Schramm at a graffiti workshop in Helsinki

Mensah-Schramm documents her graffiti effacement photographically, and preserves these photos along with removed stickers in binders.[10] As of 2016, she had filled 82 such binders. These were exhibited in a room devoted to her work at the German Historical Museum as part of a 2016 exhibition titled "Instigated: Anti-Semitic and Racist Stickers from 1880 to Today".[8][10] Her first exhibition of this type of material was at the Zehlendorf town hall in Berlin in 1995.[10]

She also runs educational workshops that teach children and teenagers how to intervene creatively to efface neo-Nazi or other right-wing extremist graffiti when they encounter it.[1][10]

References
  1. McGrane, Sally (27 May 2016). "How One Berliner Battles Hate: With Conscience and a Sharp Scraper". The New York Times.
  2. Ramsel, Yannick (8 January 2021). "Die Hakenkreuzjägerin". Der Spiegel.
  3. Cataneo, Emily (12 April 2018). "The Berliner Who Evaded Arrest". Off Assignment.
  4. Schumacher, Elizabeth (11 October 2019). "Anti-Nazi 'Graffiti Grandma' fined after painting over Nazi tag". Deutsche Welle.
  5. "German 'Graffiti Grandma' fined on Yom Kippur for painting over neo-Nazi slogans". Times of Israel. 14 October 2019.
  6. "Oberlandesgericht spricht Aktivistin gegen Rechts frei". Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk. 10 February 2021.
  7. Schweppe, Peter (2019). "Sticking to it: Barbara. and Irmela Mensah-Schramm". Goethe Institute.
  8. Angezettelt. Antisemitische und rassistische Aufkleber von 1880 bis heute. Berlin: Herausgegeben vom Zentrum für Antisemitismusforschung der Technischen Universität Berlin und Deutsches Historisches Museum. 2016. ISBN 978-3-86102-197-1.
  9. Breuer, Rayna (22 December 2021). "Exploring 200 years of hatred in German history". Deutsche Welle.
  10. Cataneo, Emily; Guerin, Nathan (19 August 2016). "'I deface rightwing graffiti'". The Financial Times.
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