Mary Ocher: "We were taught that what the Nazis did will never be repeated... That it is literally an impossibility. That is an extremely dangerous idea"

Does an artist have to be politically engaged? How important is it for them to be on the side of the oppressed? Is it their responsibility to speak out? With the explosion of wars taking place in different parts of the world, and the increasingly divisive nature of contemporary politics, this is a subject of intensifying debate.

Some artists reckon they shouldn’t have to bend to pressure and make performative gestures just because they’re well-known. Others argue that art is inherently political and that, in times of crisis, people are obliged to use whatever platform they have to take a stand against injustice.

The risk with this view is that you end up with – as happened in June 2024 – David Draiman of nu metal band Disturbed signing IDF bombs before they were used to blow people to kingdom come in Gaza.

But you can also get an artist like Mary Ocher.

Born to a Jewish-Ukrainian family in Russia, and raised in Israel, she has lived in Berlin since 2007. Mary is a multi-talented artist who makes left-field pop with a political backbone, accompanying her releases with socio-political essays. She has released numerous albums, written poetry, made short films, written soundtracks, had her own photography exhibition – and lots more besides.

“Some people are very privileged and never had to take a stance on anything. They have no idea what it’s like to not be treated like a first class citizen,” she says. “While we don’t choose to be rich or poor, we choose to be empathetic to others.”

Ocher’s parents lived under communism in Russia, before moving to Israel when Mary was four. She left for Berlin aged 20, feeling ostracised by Israeli society, something that worsened after she was repeatedly forced to justify her decision not to serve in the IDF to strangers.

The othering had begun long before that.

“I learned as soon as I was brought to kindergarten in Tel Aviv that the kids were treated differently based on where they were from,” she says. “The adults treated some of us as ‘the other’ from the very first moment, and it persisted throughout all the systems that I was part of. They never acknowledged that it hurt. They acted as if that was the way of the world.

“I grew up with an internalised sense of shame because I was born in Moscow, which is funny to me now. I detest the notion of national pride, but I’m also amused at the thought of national shame. It’s all so utterly senseless. If people would only travel, read more, and see how other people live, they would see no point in any of this. But ignorance is everywhere. It is also responsible for the tendency to look for someone to blame for every economic decline in the West.”

STICK TO THE PIANO

Which brings us to Mary’s new album, Weimar. The title refers to the German republic that preceded the Nazis, an artistically fertile era of Bauhaus, Expressionism and Dadaism. But it was also a place that was politically supine. Ocher sees it as eerily familiar, amid the momentum of the far-right AfD in her current home-place.

“We were taught that what the Nazis did will never be repeated,” she reflects. “Not that it cannot, or must not, but that it is literally an impossibility. That is an extremely dangerous idea. It almost invites contradiction. Once you could sedate the masses with televisions. We now have social media, and we all choose to be distracted, instead of doing something more valuable with our time and attention.

“Economic crises have always been fertile ground for fascism,” she adds. “There is usually a large-scale rupture preceding it – something that destabilises everyday life and leads to economic decline. In our case, it’s the pandemic. There’s a study linking the 1919 influenza to the rise of Italian fascism – areas that suffered more loss, readily voted the fascists in.

“These movements thrive on instability – rightwing hardliners offer simple narratives, larger than life heroic figures, and the promise of restored comfort for the middle classes, usually at the cost of scapegoating minorities. It’s happening again, in so many places.”

Mary’s music is both sonically ambitious and politically conceptual. She goes further than most musicians, writing essays to accompany her music, like 2024’s A Guide To Radical Living (released with her album Your Guide To Revolution), which, as the title suggests, lays out how you can carve your own path through the mire of capitalist consumerism.

In terms of the music, Weimar is a piano album in the most elemental sense, built around a single instrument – an 1870s upright she rescued from a Berlin apartment, which creaks with character. Ocher’s keening voice and spare, ornate arrangements leave a great deal of space, and the storytelling fills it.

“The idea to make a piano album was something I carried around for a while,” she explains. “I got my first piano in late 2021 and began writing on it – almost absentmindedly at first. Before I realised what was happening, it had become an album. During that time both Approaching Singularity and Your Guide To Revolution were already completed, and all of the sudden I had three albums all ready to be released, but without any touring plans because of the pandemic... everything came together bit by bit.

“I tend to switch lead instruments on most of my albums. So far, this is the only one where I made a conscious decision to stick to the piano.

“I find great joy in discovering new instruments, new limitations. It’s so much more interesting musically when a record takes you on a journey, and doesn’t sound the same through and through. However, I’ve always thought of my work as minimalist. It’s very bare, and it leaves a lot of space on purpose. It’s very amusing that in recent reviews some writers refer to Weimar as maximalist – I’ll take that as a compliment.”

THE CONDITIONS FOR HATE

The accompanying essay is characteristically direct. Censorship is a central theme, particularly around how Germany’s unresolved guilt has distorted its ability to talk honestly about Israel.

“This conversation hasn’t reached a healthy plateau yet where it can be brought to the table with humility, honesty and real guts,” Ocher says. “There is a great deal of inherited shame based on the knowledge that a family member – a grandparent, a great uncle – did awful things.

“It’s often swept under the rug, and it ends there, because the families don’t usually talk about it. There seems to be a certain solidarity in that silent shame, but talking is necessary for healing trauma. The Holocaust is a shared trauma of the Jews and the Germans, yet some Germans are uncomfortable at the thought of having the Jews witness their personal struggle with that guilt and shame.

“Which may lead to amusing situations when Germans try to teach Jews what antisemitism is, because they think they are experts on it. They can also magically determine that a Jew is an antisemite in some cases, especially when protesting the horrible things done by my government.”

That she describes Israel as ‘her government’ may come as a surprise, given that Ocher also describes Tel Aviv as “a city where all doors close”, and where the word “traitor” follows her everywhere. But it’s a term used from a place of responsibility rather than affinity.

“It’s always awkward to enter and leave,” she says. “I feel a certain guilt because I left so long ago. Judging by what I see, absolutely everyone who is leftwing, and stayed, wishes they had left too.

“There is little hope for change because we are outnumbered,” she says of the situation in Israel itself, “and we are leaving in desperation. If my work was mainstream I’d probably be harassed constantly, because it is now truly a fascist country and its population has entirely lost its moral compass.”

Credit: Camila Berrio

The Israeli propaganda machine, meanwhile, works ‘round the clock...

“It’s the one thing that never ceases to amaze me,” Ocher says. “The majority of people have no idea that they have been systemically conditioned to believe that their country is surrounded by enemies hungry to annihilate them. That it is dangerous to leave the country, because everyone hates them. That any Palestinian, even a child, will kill any Jew if just given the chance. That is how you create the conditions necessary for hate.”

And yet, even in the direst of circumstances there is always room to resist. In her essay, Ocher writes that her grandfather survived the war only because a Nazi soldier refused to follow orders by sparing his life. How much does that story live on in her work?

“Perhaps more than in my work, it’s a guiding element to live by,” she says. “We were never offered to ask questions, to think for ourselves where I grew up – but when you know that something is wrong, you don’t ask for permission.

“I never served in the IDF because I find the idea of the nation state extremely dangerous, and I had no interest in trying to preserve it by means of violence, which is expected of each and every citizen once they reach the age of 18. I had to bear the consequences of being spat out by a society that views me as a traitor, but frankly, it was never a choice. I couldn’t have lived with myself otherwise.”

Would that there were more Israeli citizens like Mary Ocher.

• Weimar is out now.