But I believe above all that I wanted to build the palace of my memory, because my memory is my only homeland.

His works are characterized by an unflinching willingness to confront his culture's dark past and unrealized potential in works that are often done on a large confrontational scale well suited to the subjects. The theme of all the work is the trauma experienced by entire societies and the continual rebirth and renewal in life. In the early 1980s he created more than thirty paintings painted photographs and watercolors that refer in their titles and inscriptions to the Romanian Jewish writer Paul Celan's "Todesfuge" ("Death Fugue").

The poems of Paul Celan have played a role in developing Kiefer's themes of German history and the horror of the Holocaust as have the spiritual concepts of Kabbalah. His works are characterized by an unflinching willingness to confront his culture's dark past and unrealized potential in works that are often done on a large confrontational scale well suited to the subjects. In his entire body of work Kiefer argues with the past and addresses taboo and controversial issues from recent history.