LETTER FROM BERLIN
He weathered the storm. In mid-June, when the Berlin public prosecutor's office announced the opening of an investigation against Till Lindemann "for alleged sexual offenses and the distribution of narcotics," people wondered whether the famous German metal band Rammstein still had a future in the face of such accusations against its lead singer.
The response was swift. It's true that Lindemann was dropped by Kiepenheuer & Witsch, with whom he published three collections of poems. Universal Music also stopped promoting Rammstein records. But the band's European tour, which began on May 20 in Vilnius (just five days before the first accusations were made against the singer) was a success. From Bern to Brussels, via Lisbon, Madrid, Vienna, Budapest and Saint-Denis, near Paris, the concerts were sold out. The tickets for the three dates at the Berlin Olympic Stadium in mid-July had also been snapped up in no time.
Things went according to plan, apart from a few key details. There were several hundred protesters against the band's appearance in Berlin and Vienna. Following claims by several women that they had been sexually assaulted and sometimes drugged at previous pre- and post-concert parties, such parties were canceled on this tour. And there was no "row zero," the reserved area at the foot of the stage where hand-picked young female spectators said they had been invited without suspecting that they were there to serve as potential prey.
Lindemann, now aged 60, is crying slander. "These accusations are invariably false," his lawyers said in early June, a few days after the first women's testimonies were published on social media and in the German press. "We will take immediate legal action against all allegations of this type," they said, before doing so.
So far, their strategy has had little success: while some media outlets have been ordered to "unpublish" comments deemed defamatory, judges have ruled that, for the most part, the accusations made against the Rammstein singer fall within the scope of free speech or freedom of the press. On August 18, a Berlin court dismissed Lindemann's complaint against Shelby Lynn, a 24-year-old woman from Northern Ireland. She was the first to speak out on May 25, claiming to have been drugged three days earlier in Vilnius, during a concert where Lindemann allegedly insisted on having sex with her. A photo of her stomach with a large bruise on it was posted on Instagram and went viral.
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