Berlin police are investigating Roger Waters after he wore Nazi-style costumes to concerts

German police are investigating Roger Waters, a founder of the band Pink Floyd, who has long been critical of Israel, after he performed in Berlin last week in Nazi-like costume as he used to criticize fascism in “The Wall.” ”

Mr Waters, who has made anti-Israel statements in the past that many believe cross the line of anti-Semitism, has successfully fought two attempts by German courts in the past to bar him from entering German concert halls.

The investigation focuses on the costume Mr. Waters wore during a rendition of the 1979 Pink Floyd song “In the Flesh” from their seminal album “The Wall,” in which a rock star imagines himself as a fascist dictator. A similar staging was featured in the 1982 movie “Pink Floyd: The Wall” starring Bob Geldof.

During parts of the concerts in Berlin on May 17 and 18, Mr. Waters a black raincoat with epaulettes and a red bracelet, said videos posted on social media and witnesses. Flanked by men dressed in costumes reminiscent of Nazi stormtroopers, he fired a machine gun into the audience. Mr. Waters has worn similar costumes to concerts outside Germany for years for the routine, which he has dubbed satire.

The Berlin authorities will have to determine to what extent the display of Nazi-like images is protected by artistic freedom of expression. In Germany, displaying Nazi symbolism, such as swastikas or SS regalia, that justify or trivialize the Holocaust, and anti-Semitic acts are illegal.

“Artistic freedom of expression is not a license to incite hatred,” Nicholas Potter, a researcher at the Amadeu Antonio Foundation in Berlin, a group that tracks neo-Nazism, right-wing extremism and anti-Semitism in Germany, wrote in an email exchange.

“Artistic freedom is often used as an argument to express anti-democratic or hateful views, including anti-Semitic ones, but that doesn’t always mean it applies – context is crucial,” he added. Mr. Potter attended one of the shows in Berlin and wrote about it on the news blog of the foundation.

Mr. Waters initially agreed to an interview with The New York Times about the investigation, but then declined. A representative wrote, “We are reluctant to comment if the intent is to further sensationalize this fabricated news story.”

A spokesman for the Berlin police said investigators will present their findings to Berlin’s public prosecutor within three months. The prosecutor will decide whether to charge Mr. Waters.

Mr. Waters is an outspoken supporter of BDS, the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, which is pushing foreign governments, corporations and artists, among others, to cut ties with Israel until it ends its occupation of the territories it conquered in 1967.

Mr. Waters has included a floating balloon representing a flying pig, topped with the Star of David, at previous concerts. He defended that action, say in 2013 on Facebook that, “Like it or not, the Star of David represents Israel and its policies and is legitimately subject to all forms of nonviolent protest.”

In a Facebook post on Sunday addressing the controversy surrounding his German concerts, he said criticized German lawmakers who condemned BDS, saying they had “recorded a recommendation to the German people to remain ‘silent and indifferent'” to the “institutionalized murder” of the Palestinian people by a “tyrannical racist regime”, which he said is the state Israel was .

Giant signs throughout the concert bore the name of Anne Frank, one of the most recognizable victims of the Holocaust, in which Germans murdered more than 6 million Jews, alongside Shireen Abu Akleh, a Palestinian-American television correspondent. who was shot last year by Israeli army soldiers during an attack on the West Bank.

On Wednesday morning the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs posted on Twitter: “Good morning to everyone except Roger Waters who spent the evening in Berlin (Yes Berlin) desecrating the memory of Anne Frank and the 6 million Jews murdered in the Holocaust.”

The Simon Wiesenthal Center publicly called on German authorities on Wednesday to investigate the concert in Berlin. “There are few artists whose anti-Israel vitriol can match Waters’s,” the center wrote in a statement. “Despite his protestations to the contrary, Waters has for years straddled the line between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism.”

Any accusations stemming from the concert would come as Germany faces a more general debate about the rise of anti-Semitism in the country, 78 years after the end of the Holocaust. In addition to an overall increase in the number of reported anti-Semitic crimes in the country, there was widespread debate after a group of cultural institution leaders published an open letter denouncing not only BDS, but also a parliamentary resolution declaring BDS inherently anti-Semitic. And an art installation featuring anti-Semitic caricatures at the Documenta art festival in Kassel last year sparked another round of self-examination among cultural elites.

The city of Frankfurt tried to prevent Mr. Waters from performing this Sunday at the Frankfurter Festhalle, a concert hall that is partly owned by the city. In November 1938, thousands of Jewish men were taken to the arena after the night of pogroms known as Kristallnacht before being shipped off to concentration camps. But a judge in Frankfurt supported Mr. Waters, who filed an emergency order against the city on Monday, citing the constitutional right to artistic freedom and the fact that there was no evidence that Mr. Waters would break the law.

In March, the city of Munich ruled that it could not legally go back on a contract with the musician for a show he played at the Olympic Stadium last week. Instead, the city decided to allow organized protests outside the venue on the day of the concert.

Alex Marshall contributed reporting from London.