“And there goes Claudia Pechstein / She’s been doing it for a thousand years / If you love something, it can’t be bad / The ground is frozen under her.” This is how the song “Auf Eis” by the Berlin band Von Wegen Lisbeth begins. The track was released a little over a year ago, now the band wants to change the first few lines.
Actually, the song is not about Claudia Pechstein, but about the feeling of going in circles like a speed skater. Nevertheless, Von Wegen Lisbeth are now distancing themselves from the ex-athlete. A controversial appearance by Claudia Pechstein at the CDU convention has led to the band no longer wanting to use their name. “We have decided not to play the song ‘Auf Eis’ like this anymore,” the group said on Instagram.
“We really don’t want to build a musical monument on the stage to a person who gives a party speech in police uniform and spreads racist resentment, among other things,” writes the band around singer Matthias Rohde. Pechstein was supposed to speak about school and club sport at the CDU convention, but had also called for stricter deportations of rejected asylum seekers. The federal police have meanwhile initiated an official investigation against the five-time Olympic champion because Pechstein appeared in her police uniform despite the requirement of neutrality.
For Von Wegen Lisbeth, these are reasons enough to distance themselves from the athlete. The song is about ice skating, so it “relatively doesn’t matter which person is doing their rounds right now”. Going forward, the band would like to simply swap Pechstein’s name and asked their fans for input. We are looking for an ice skater whose name has the right number of syllables. And which also fits the band’s attitude: The “driving in circles” from the lyrics should only refer to the sport, “not to medieval values”.
Sources: Because of Lisbeth on Youtube / Because of Lisbeth on Instagram
