Inspired by the book Bambi, Nasan Tur at the Berlinische Galerie in 2023 and my own childhood.

My father gave me Bambi when I was a little girl. He was both a hunter and a veterinarian, and I grew up between tenderness of nature and the violence of hunting. Nature and death. „That is life," he would say. „Death lives with it."

Seeing Bambi again — dead and taxidermied on the floor of the Berlinische Galerie in an installation by Nasan Tur — moved me deeply. Especially now, as the hidden political layers of Felix Salten's story feel painfully relevant again. Written in 1923 by the Hungarian-Jewish author Siegmund Salzmann alias Felix Salten, Bambi is often understood as a disguised allegory about persecution, displacement and survival. The Nazis later banned and burned the book.

For me, Bambi's fragile body, those large eyes and thin legs, carry collective vulnerability, memory and the shared instinct to protect what is innocent. I deeply believe in the peacebuilding power of connectedness, shared values and empathy — for my homeland Germany, in European spirit, for humanity, democracy and for Mother Earth.