The Deutsches Museum in Munich has covered a portrait of tech billionaire and Trump administration “efficiency tsar” Elon Musk, claiming the museum considers it problematic to glorify living figures.

Musk portrait covered in Deutsches Museum exhibition

Curators at the Deutsches Museum in Munich have covered a portrait of Elon Musk which has been on display for three years and is part of a permanent exhibition about astronautics.

Musk’s portrait was shown on an information panel about “Visionaries of the past and future” in the astronautics industry, alongside information about Austrian physicist Max Valier and Hungarian-German physicist Hermann Oberth, among others.

“It can always be problematic to honour people who are still alive so prominently as part of an exhibition,” a museum spokesperson said following the decision.

The museum explained that the information board only had enough space to add a few lines of text about each figure, making it difficult to add context as current events developed.

Germany reacts to Musk’s apparent Hitlergruß

The Deutsches Museum’s announcement that Musk’s portrait would be removed came just hours after Europe awoke to a video of the businessman appearing to use a Nazi salute (Hitlergruß) at an event celebrating Donald Trump’s inauguration.

In Germany, intentionally gesturing a Hitlergruß, raising the right arm diagonally and stretching the palm out flat parallel with the eyes, is banned and can lead to a criminal conviction.

Historians, official representatives of Germany’s Jewish community and politicians have had mixed reactions to Musk’s outstretched arm. Some see the moment as an unambiguous communication of allegiance to Nazism and in the case of the US Anti-Defamation League, merely “an awkward gesture in a moment of enthusiasm”.

President of the Jewish community in Munich and Upper Bavaria Charlotte Knobloch called the gesture “highly disconcerting” but added that “Musk’s political positions, his offensive interference in the German parliamentary election campaign and his support for a party whose anti-democratic aims should be under no illusion” and were “far more worrying”. 

On January 9, Musk broadcast a 75-minute interview with AfD candidate for chancellor Alice Weidel on X. The interview, in which Weidel made a slew of incorrect statements about Germany’s Nazi history, is now being investigated as a potentially illegal party donation in breach of German electoral law.

On Musk’s gesture, outgoing chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) said, “We have freedom of speech in Europe, and everyone can say what [they] want, even if [they are] a billionaire. What we do not accept is if this is supporting extreme right positions”. 

Responding to the international reaction, Musk wrote on his platform X that his political opponents needed “better dirty tricks. The “everyone is Hitler” attack is soo tired.”

Thumb image credit: Anna Moneymaker / Shutterstock.com