Grüß Gott
/5
- Greet God
- Grüß Gott
- 1967
- video, b&w, sound
- 47sec
"Grüss Gott" (lit. “Greet God”) is a short performance together with longtime partner and actress/model Susanne Widl. “Grüss Gott” is a general phrase of greeting in Austria and Southern Germany, both of them bastions of Roman Catholicism in the German-speaking world. Each performer holds a pretzel; one is shaped like the word “Grüss,” the other like “Gott”. While eating his pretzel, which denotes God (“Gott”), Weibel in particular feels repulsed and has to spit out the half-chewed bites. Thus, the artist mocks the word God itself and the notions of religious heritage that permeate parts of the German idiom. His questioning of the bourgeois, conservative, and Catholic society of 1960s Austria moved him to advocate a more secular and/or atheist approach to life—which became fairly common ground just a few decades later, but has nonetheless been a primary concern of many artists who grew up in restrictive social climates. W.S.