Cologne, Germany - A German Catholic archbishop triggered a storm in Germany Friday with an attack on irreligious culture. Cardinal Joachim Meisner was speaking at the blessing of his archdiocese's new art museum, the Kolumba, in the heart of Cologne.
"Wherever culture separates from the worship of God, the cult atrophies in ritualism and the art becomes degenerate," he said.
Blunt criticism of art is rare in Germany, which still remembers how the Nazis pilloried the art they did not like as "degenerate."
The use of the same term by the outspoken churchman brought him rebukes.
Hans-Heinrich Grosse-Brockhoff, North Rhine-Westphalia's secretary of culture, said, "It's appalling that Cardinal Meisner uses such words and it shows he knows nothing about art and culture."
"Degenerate art" was a term from the worst event in German history, he said in a newspaper interview.
Kolumba exhibits both medieval and modern art from the diocese's rich art collection.
The 4,500-square-metre Kolumba Museum was built on the foundations of a Cologne church, St Columba, which was flattened by Second World War bombing and never rebuilt.
The new building, by leading Swiss architect Peter Zumthor, follows the floor plan of the late Gothic church, with some of the ruins and an archaeological excavation on show inside.
