In the late 1960s Anselm Kiefer was one of a number of young German artists who explored the possibilities of coming to terms with their country’s Nazi past by confronting the taboo placed on the visual icons of the Third Reich in the post-war Federal Republic. This photograph is from a series showing Kiefer giving the Hitler salute in various historically and culturally charged landscapes in Switzerland, Italy and southern France during 1969. The writing across the bottom of the image, "Über uns der gestirnte Himmel, in uns das moralische Gesetzt" (the starry sky above me, and the moral law within me), is taken from the final pages of Emmanuel Kant’s 'Critique of Practical Reason' (1788). By juxtaposing references to National Socialism and moral philosophy, Kiefer suggests that there is only a fine line separating these two systems of thought.