They wear the cloth emblems used to identify their ‘crimes’: a pink triangle for homosexual prisoners, a yellow star for Jewish prisoners, a red and yellow star for Jewish political prisoners. Four members of the band, in the striped uniforms of camp inmates, wait at the gallows, about to be hanged. The most obviously shocking scene references the Holocaust and the Nazi period. Medieval monks feast grotesquely on the supine Germania, tearing sauerkraut and sausage from Ruby Commey’s body, prison inmates are beaten by guards dressed in police and military uniforms from different historical periods. There’s another astronaut, or rather a cosmonaut: Sigmund Jähn, the first German in space, who flew with the USSR’s space program (and who’s also a character in the 2003 film, Good Bye Lenin!). We see the former East Germany, complete with busts of Marx and Lenin, the national emblem of East Germany (opens in new tab), and a lookalike of the long-serving, insular, and repressive GDR leader Erich Honecker. Ruby Commey as Germania Rammstein's Deutschland video explained: Marx, Lenin and the GDR Here, Germania appears in the cabaret costume of a flapper girl, and the boxers fight with knuckle-dusters as a crowd cheers them on. Then we move to a scene set at a boxing match which takes us to Weimar Germany (1918-1933), a period known for its political instability but also greater cultural liberalism.
In the background we see a U-boat – a German submarine, used in World Wars I and II. Next, astronauts appear carrying a metal and glass box shaped like a coffin. We get our first glimpse of Germania here (played by Ruby Commey), who stands holding Till Lindemann’s severed head. Look out for these in the video – they come up again and again – and the colours of the contemporary flag are there in every scene. Various symbols appear with her, among them a breastplate with an eagle, a black, red, and gold flag, and a crown. Germania (opens in new tab) is a strong woman, usually armour-clad and battle-ready. ‘Germania’ refers not just to a place, somewhere partly defined by where it isn’t (Rome) as well as where it is, but also to a national figurehead, traditionally representing the German people. Rome never again attempted to take the lands east of the River Rhine, known as Germania. Three legionary standards were captured, a loss symbolic and moral, as well as physical, and decades were spent trying to recover them. The Romans were ambushed by an alliance of Germanic Tribes, led by a chieftain called Arminius (the original Hermann the German). Roman soldiers creep through the woods in the aftermath of the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest. The video opens in AD 16, on the ‘barbarian’ side of the limes, the border of the Roman Empire. At over nine minutes, it gives us a panorama of events and historical and mythical figures, and there are so many references and Easter eggs that fans and commentators will be poring over it for some time to come. Rammstein’s Deutschland takes us on a thrilling, violent, and moving journey through German history. Rammstein's Deutschland video explained: introducing Germania
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