A story I was watching throughout December was the threat of Berlin cutting its funding for arts and culture. Right before Christmas, the city did indeed cut funding by $130 million which represents 12% of funding.
A lot of arts professionals in the US are probably thinking their city’s arts and culture budget isn’t anywhere near the $130 million being cut. In fact, many would feel blessed if their city had $1.3 million culture budget. So to a certain extent arts and cultural funding in Germany may still be the envy of much of the world.
This said, a lot of employment contracts aren’t being renewed and exhibition plans are being scrapped in Berlin. The laws associated with funding in Germany don’t allow private support to make up the difference.
German museums without private funding face particularly steep challenges, with fixed costs around operating collections consuming around 80 percent of budgets in many cases, leaving many exhibitions and auxiliary programs vulnerable to cancellation.
Some experts have pointed out that public museums in Germany aren’t legally able to rely on private philanthropy the way peer organizations in the U.S. and other parts of Europe do, making their futures, compared to international creative hubs less certain.
An article earlier in December on Deutsche Welle looking at the impending cuts in Berlin raised the same question about whether Germany would be home to creative hubs any longer even as the city of Chemnitz, a 2025 European Capital of Culture, face budget cuts.
The eastern state of Saxony also faces a critical budget situation, with serious consequences for the cultural landscape of museums, theaters and orchestras. Hillmann said the theaters in Zwickau, Freiberg, Annaberg-Buchholz, Görlitz-Zittau and even Chemnitz — which will be a European Capital of Culture in 2025 — fear for their existence.
Much as in the US, the chair of the German Stage Association, Lutz Hillmann, cites the work theaters in Germany are doing in the public sphere, moving beyond just presenting performances to become public gathering spaces and provide services to youth. Likewise, the role of culture in promotion democratic discourse in a time of divisive social dynamics was also raised.
Olaf Zimmermann, managing director of the German Cultural Council, takes the same line. “Right now, cultural venues are urgently needed to debate current issues, to offer places for democratic discourse, to stimulate reflection or simply to create cohesion,” Zimmermann wrote in the most recent issue of the association’s publication.
Thank you for writing about things on this side of the ocean.
However: one small correction: there are no laws against private funding, donors etc. to support cultural institutions. The tax laws are different making it maybe a little less attractive for donors to give but they do. In droves. In fact: that is one of the solutions being proposed: to find more donors or do more public/private partnerships.
On the other hand: the budgets to support the arts have been increased over decades. The economy is in trouble, workers are being laid off in droves – so everybody needs to accept cuts, the arts are no excemption. The way it has been communicated in Berlin could have been much better. But you have to remember: Berlin alone has three opera houses: Staatsoper, Deutsche Oper, Komische Oper (now undergoing reconstruction and renewal at an estimated cost of about 450 Mio €, roughly 450 Mio $ – there were talks of stopping the renovation altogether or postpone it for a couple of years).
It will be especially difficult for smaller institutions or the “freie Szene” meaning off and off off production companies.
The support for the arts in Germany is being handled by the various states or the local city goverments. The federal government has no say in the support except for some major projects like the Berlinale Film Festival. Most of the states and cities are cutting back (notable exception: Hamburg) on their support for the arts. But none have the size of the budget in Berlin, but the arts are suffering almost everywhere.
Consequences: less employment for self employed artists, less productions (Komische Oper just cancelled a new production), raising of ticket prices (e.g. Schaubühne in Berlin) etc.
Thanks for the clarification. I wonder who they spoke to that said it was illegal for them to accept private funding