Leading Berlin theatres, museums and artists have condemned multibillion budget cuts as the death knell for the city’s creative future.
On Thursday Berlin’s city-state government backed a controversial emergency Bill that cuts €3 billion from the capital’s €40 billion annual budget.
Governing mayor Kai Wegener said the cuts were a painful but necessary step in light of a dramatic slump in city income and a spending “explosion” during the pandemic and since.
The city’s transport and climate budget has been reduced by a fifth, health spending by 8 per cent and education by 6.5 per cent. Particular fury has accompanied the 12 per cent cut to Berlin’s €131 million culture budget.
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Thousands of artists, social workers and nurses gathered on Thursday outside Berlin’s state parliament to protest against the cuts, announced with little notice last month.
“We are showing responsibility for all Berliners and future generations,” said Mr Wegener, leader of Berlin’s centre-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU), ruling in coalition with the centre-left Social Democratic Party (SPD). “There have been easier times in Berlin, no question, and the challenges remain considerable but Berlin remains a city of opportunities.”
Berlin’s diverse cultural scene, used to generous subsidies and grants, is less confident.
The city’s leading theatres and concert houses say budget reductions of about 10 per cent, starting next month, are impossible to realise as they have signed long-term performance contracts with artists for the next three years.
“What’s happening here is a declaration of political bankruptcy,” said Thomas Ostermeier, artistic director of Berlin’s high-profile Schaubühne theatre.
After last-minute lobbying, his and other leading theatres such as the Berliner Ensemble have had the proposed cuts reduced — but at the expense of budgets for freelance projects and artists.
They have pushed back, with little effect, at having to shoulder a heavier burden than theatres with multimillion-euro public budgets and managers on six-figure salaries.
For British pianist and composer Mark Pringle (33), the cuts endanger his subsidised rehearsal room — one of 3,000 offered by the city’s Kulturraum agency.
“This room is the basis of everything I do,” said Mr Pringle, who moved to Berlin in 2015. “If you don’t have a sustainable working situation for freelancers, there is no one to fill Berlin’s big houses with art and music.”
Beyond cultural creation, analysts warn the cuts to Berlin’s cultural expenditure will harm the wider city economy in the long term.
“Some 80 per cent of Berlin’s 30 million tourists annually say that culture is the most important reason for their visit,” said Peter Raue, a leading arts lawyer, to the Süddeutsche Zeitung daily. “Berlin’s cultural spend makes up just 2.5 per cent of the annual budget and is the most important source of the city’s attractiveness.”
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