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.
"Though while the author wishes they could buy it in Walmart..." Who is "they"? The kids? The author? Something else?…