Berlin Mayor Kai Wegner is having to replace another member of his administration just five months before the next election to the capital’s House of Representatives.
Wegner’s culture senator, Sarah Wedl-Wilson, resigned on Friday over funding for projects against anti-Semitism.
The 56-year-old said she was taking responsibility for shortcomings outlined in a report by the court of auditors, which had criticized the funding of several projects as unlawful.
Wegner now has to find a successor for the post for the second time during his term.
A year ago, then culture senator Joe Chialo resigned over the scale of cuts in the cultural sector.
Wedl-Wilson, who was born in the United Kingdom, previously headed the Hanns Eisler School of Music in Berlin, then became state secretary and was promoted after Chialo’s resignation.
The funding scandal concerns the criteria which were used to fund certain projects and the question of whether the projects were chosen under political pressure.
The Berlin state court of auditors described the funding of 13 projects in the field of preventing anti-Semitism amounting to €2.6 million ($3.05 million) as “evidently unlawful.”
It said the cultural administration had violated the state budget code and other rules with its procedures for processing and paying out certain funding applications.