Cultural policy after the election: Sunday speeches are not enough

It would be somewhat unrealistic to assume that cultural policy will be the first thing discussed in the upcoming coalition negotiations between the CDU/CSU and the SPD. It is more likely that the appointment of the State Ministry of Culture will be part of the shifting mass that can be used to balance out imbalances in the proportions at the end.

After this federal election, cultural policy will be very important. The AfD is extremely active in this field. It represents a concept of culture that derives a current cultural identity primarily from origin and the past - tradition, customs, traditions, things like that - and not from debate, discourse, reflection.

The AfD's concept of culture is reactionary, and not just because the party talks a lot about people, national identity and being German, but also because culture is thought of in such an authoritarian way. As if culture were something that you can "have" and define once and for all and don't have to keep re-examining.

Aggressive and with political tricks

The AfD is trying very aggressively and using every trick in the book to push through this concept of culture politically wherever possible, currently mainly at the local and state level, with the election result behind it, and certainly more so in the next Bundestag. There is a lot to come for federal cultural policy, and Sunday speeches are not enough; it will have to be stable.

Two politicians have been warming up in recent weeks to be considered as candidates for the State Ministry of Culture: Berlin's Senator for Culture Joe Chialo (CDU) and Hamburg's Senator for Culture Carsten Brosda (SPD). Carsten Brosda, who was already considered as State Minister for Culture four years ago, is often seen making clever counter-arguments to the AfD's concept of culture.

In a double interview with Chialo in Die Zeit , Brosda says: "It becomes really problematic when the AfD re-essentializes the concept of culture, i.e. formulates a precise idea of ​​what culture should be like." Chialo, on the other hand, focuses on other topics in the conversation. He talks about dominant "left-wing milieus" in funding juries, and he says of customs, "that is a part of culture that is often spurned, but is important for many people's identification."

Chialo's austerity measures in Berlin

Chialo has the misfortune of being a senator in a federal state that has to make major cuts, and that is not his fault, but the way he has communicated the cuts and represented them politically is a disaster . And that is not the only reason. His cultural policy concepts - privatization on the one hand and at least flirting with disruptive recipes for the existing cultural scene on the other - are also questionable.

One does not get the impression that he could offer any substantial counter to the aggressive policies of the AfD. Especially since it is time to protect existing cultural institutions against the desires and attacks of the AfD (which would by no means rule out its reforms), and certainly not to undermine them in a neoliberal manner.

In Brosda's case, the question would be how well he could assert himself within the coalition, coming from the smaller coalition partner. The budget negotiations will not be any easier; Brosda is well connected, but he will by no means be able to draw on the full resources that he currently has in Hamburg.

Looking at Chialo, one asks a more fundamental question: Does the CDU really have no other candidate? Where are the bourgeois, cultural people with a sense of high culture and the avant-garde when it really matters, as it does now? There is a lot to defend in our cultural landscape. You can't just claim the will to do so. You have to be able to do it.