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A new time for founders?
It's about the high unemployment rate, it's about the future of the social state, it's about new growth in the economy, and it's also partly about inland security and fighting terrorism. But it's not actually about culture politics in the the election campaigns in Germany in 2005. Firstly, the people are only barely interested in it, if at all, and secondly in the federal system in Germany, culture is dealt with on a state level.
Be that as it may, there is a culture election battle.
The clearest sign of this up till now was a two page interview with Angela Merkel, the chancellor candidate of the Conservatives in the supplement to the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. In this article, the head of the CDU and probable future chancellor talked about opera in general and Richard Wagner in particular, about singing and music making at home and about the weakness of German mass market culture. She claims to always be ashamed when abroad, because people of other nations have a remarkable command of their folk songs, and the Germans don't. But when she was asked a fundamental question to culture politics, Angela Merkel remained ambiguous: should protection and subvention of culture be made an aim of the German state by being written into the constitution? 'I don't believe that cultural activity in Germany will become better over night if we make it a national aim', she said. The Enquete Commitee for culture of the German parliament had however suggested exactly that. Therefore, Angela Merkel proposes that the commitee carry on working after the election.
Monika Gruetters, the candidate for the CDU in Berlin, the capital, has already shown her support for this aim. She is herself a politician for culture, and the fact that she herself is heading the regional branch of her party into the election campaign is sensational. As well as this, Monika Gruetters is regarded as a possible CDU candidate for the position of minister with cultural responsibilites in a new government. This position has existed for seven years. It was created in 1998 by Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder of the Social Democrats. The minister has been responsible for a national cultural foundation as well as a capital cultural fund. The present minister, Christina Weiss, has also done a lot to support German films and is responsible for conducting negotiations with Russia on the subject of art taken at the end of the second world war. For other political decisions abroad the foreign office remains responsible, for example the Goethe Institutes which exist world-wide.
However something is going to change in this devision in national cultural politics. There is for example a discussion about the need for a real national ministry of culture - inspite of federalism. The German Liberals for the F.D.P. certainly support this suggestion. They also want to have the first German Minister of Culture come from their ranks, as will be mentioned in the negotiations for a coalition with Angela Merkel after the election. The Social Democrats responded to this and announced at the beginning of August that they intend to make culture politics an important topic in the election campaign. They too want to create the position of a minister of culture with a position in the cabinett, however without a ministry. Monika Greifahn from the SPD who was earlier an activist for Greenpeace and presently heads the cultural committe in the Bundestag says: 'We cannot afford to make culture into a political feather-weight. ...(Culture is) a basic for life in our democracy'. The SPD with therefore also make culture to an aim for the state.
Seven years ago, at the time when the office of minister with responisibilities in culture and the media was created, the CDU put up strong resistance, officially in any case. But even at that time, Wolfgang Schaeuble, the head of the CDU from 1998 to 2000 said 'we could have thought of that too', and now in the election campaign the CDU has even said to this step 'inspite of much criticism in details we won't go back to a time before it' (Monika Gruetters).
The first minister with cultural responsibilities from Gerhard Schroeder has however become sceptical. Michael Naumann is a publisher and now edits the large German weekly 'Die Zeit'. In this magazine he wrote about the decreasing political influence in the art and culture milieu. This is something he has observed not just in Germany but also in France, Great Britain and in America. 'On cultural politics as a reservoir of hope in a society plagued with self doubt and trepidation for the future there lies (and who could deny this?) the dust of normality and possibly also the smell of futility.'
With this analysis he says almost the same as Christoph Stoelzl from the CDU, the one time cultural senator in Berlin and now candidate for the post of minister of culture in a government under Merkel. In an article for 'Cicero', the monthly magazine, Stoelzl disputes that the German election is about the constitution, a ministry or the financing of culture. Stoelzl refers to the demand from Angela Merkel for 'a new time for founders in culture', and he translates this into a discussion about values. Stoelzl writes: 'founding times are historical phases when the whole society is carried by a wave of optimism. They are times when the state creates positive conditions for courage under the citizens, when the state rips down blockades and shows a way from passivity to taking part in decision making'. For this reason, Stoelzl demands a new balance between state culture and the culture of the people and with this 'a translation of culture political weight to the people'. That however would need time. While corporate sponsoring of culture continually makes headway in Germany, there are very few private sponsors: about three to four percent of all spending on culture is financed by private individuals in Germany.
Next to this there is another form of cultural election campaigning, in particular from the Social Democrats. The SPD, currently in power but doing so badly in polls, has revived its old tradition of winning over artists as spokespeople. Guenter Grass, the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature campaignd for Chancellor Willy Brandt in 1972, and now he's doing the same for Gerhard Schroeder: 'I support the SPD because they have the courage to carry out necessary and painful reforms, because they search for the balance between ecology and economy, because they in a responsible manner saved us from being tied up in the devastating war in Iraq...'. With Guenter Grass fights a whole line of musicians, authors, actors, directors, painters... If artists in Germany were party politically active then almost always for the SPD. The Christian Democrats have nothing comparable, and neither do they want to, according to Norbert Lammert from the CDU for example. He is yet another candidate for the position as Minister of Culture, but maybe also the next president of parliament. 'If the SPD actually has its own cultural milieu, that's something for others to decide', says Lammert. 'In any case, the CDU doesn't, and it most certainly doesn't have to apologise for that'.
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Last updated: 31. December 2005