{"id":2687,"date":"2026-04-07T02:37:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-07T02:37:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/2687\/"},"modified":"2026-04-07T02:37:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-07T02:37:08","slug":"germanys-ultra-right-culture-minister-weimer-continues-his-rampage-against-freedom-of-art-and-expression","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/2687\/","title":{"rendered":"Germany\u2019s ultra-right culture minister Weimer continues his rampage against freedom of art and expression"},"content":{"rendered":"

Germany\u2019s Minister of State for Culture Wolfram Weimer is pursuing his rampage against freedom of art and expression. The Office of the Commissioner for Culture and Media (BKM) has announced a new measure to sharply intensify censorship. According to Weimer\u2019s instructions, all members of juries in the field of cultural funding are to be recorded in lists to be handed over to the government.<\/p>\n

Wolfram Weimer, May 2025 [Photo by Martin Rulsch \/ CC BY 4.0<\/a>]<\/p>\n

The proposal was reported by Der Spiegel magazine, which has obtained relevant internal email correspondence. The lists are to be submitted to the ministry within three days for \u201cinformational\u201d purposes. They are to be \u201cshareable\u201d (for example, with Germany\u2019s intelligence agency, the Verfassungsschutz?), \u201cas significant political pressure is building here.\u201d The ministry stated that this was intended to provide an overview of numerous jury-based procedures and explain them \u201cin the parliamentary arena\u201d if necessary.<\/p>\n

Apparently, this measure is intended to enable a comprehensive review of juries by the Verfassungsschutz using the controversial Haber method, in order to purge juries in a timely manner before they decide on cultural funding measures that do not align with Germany\u2019s \u201cnational interest.\u201d Such a selection of juries would, under certain circumstances, make it unnecessary to reverse awards, scholarships or funding decisions after they have been made\u2014with the involvement of the Verfassungsshutz \u2014as was recently the case with the German Bookstore Prize<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Since Weimer\u2019s censorship measures in regard to the Berlinale <\/a>and the Bookstore Prize, calls for his resignation or dismissal have been mounting. In the S\u00fcddeutsche Zeitung, Claudius Seidel justifies such calls by arguing that Weimer is not up to the task, because he understands too little about culture or is simply overwhelmed. In fact, Weimer\u2019s course is in alignment with the reactionary, anti-democratic concept the ruling CDU\/SPD government (a coalition of the Christian Democratic Union CDU, Christian Social Union CSU and Social Democratic Party SPD) has assigned to cultural policy.<\/p>\n

Chancellor Friedrich Merz has confirmed this. Weimer\u2019s actions meet with \u201cbroad approval\u201d not only from him but also \u201cacross the entire cultural and media sector,\u201d though \u201cnot from everyone and not at all times,\u201d Merz claimed. Weimer is fulfilling the task for which he was appointed, i.e., enforcing a backward-looking policy and eradicating left-wing tendencies in the cultural sector.<\/p>\n

The sanctioned bookstores are now suing Weimer. The Berlin bookstore Zur schwankenden Weltkugel has filed an urgent motion with the Administrative Court, its attorney Jasper Prigge announced. The culture minister is to be prohibited from publicly labelling the bookstore and its staff as political extremists. In an interview with Die Zeit, Weimer had said: \u201cIf the state awards prizes and uses taxpayer money, it cannot do so for political extremists.\u201d<\/p>\n

Attack on Berlin\u2019s Cultural Funding<\/p>\n

The latest attack by Weimer\u2019s agency is directed against the Capital Cultural Fund (HKF), which includes two representatives each from Weimer\u2019s ministry and the Berlin Senate Department for Culture. The HKF is a program funded by the federal government with \u20ac15 million [US$17.3 million] annually to promote art and culture in Berlin.<\/p>\n

Here, too, Weimer\u2019s agency intervened in the jury\u2019s decision, which had intended to award \u20ac30,000 to a project for the translation of significant 20th-century Palestinian authors. The jury had selected this project\u2014along with 75 others\u2014from a total of 400 submissions. Of all the projects, this specific one\u2014proposed by translator and literary scholar Miriam Rainer\u2014was struck from the list, despite being not a political action program, but a purely literary endeavor.<\/p>\n

The translation proposal was endorsed by the Cultural Fund\u2019s curator, Leonie Baumann, the former rector of the Wei\u00dfensee Academy of Art. The project focused on three Palestinian authors who have long since passed away: Samira Azzam, Ghassan Kanafani and Mahmoud Darwish. In response to an inquiry from the S\u00fcddeutsche Zeitung, a spokesperson for Weimer asserted the jury\u2019s selection of projects was merely a recommendation. These recommendations were \u201cnot binding on the Joint Committee.\u201d However, until now, the committee had always followed the jury\u2019s recommendations.<\/p>\n

Poet Mahmoud Darwish [Photo by Amer Shomali \/ CC BY 3.0<\/a>]<\/p>\n

The jury members viewed the move as \u201cintimidation.\u201d \u201cIndependent juries are not a symbolic accessory in public cultural funding, but rather an institutional safeguard for artistic freedom,\u201d they explained. The juries assured that \u201cdecisions are made based on professional diversity, collective responsibility, and with distance from partisan political expediency.\u201d If their decisions were compromised, this would \u201cpermanently damage trust in the integrity of cultural funding.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

The reasons for the project\u2019s \u201cpostponement\u201d were not passed on to its initiator. A spokesperson for the Berlin Senate Department of Culture stated that the funding had been \u201cplaced on hold\u201d to \u201cclarify open questions.\u201d What these questions entailed was not explained. Rainer rejected suggestions to the initiator that she modify the project by pairing Palestinian texts with Israeli ones and withdrew her application. Her concern, she noted, was precisely the lack of translations of Palestinian literature.<\/p>\n

Another of Weimer\u2019s recent actions has also caused outrage. He intends to halt the planned expansion of the German National Library in Leipzig. The National Library is the country\u2019s central archival library and national bibliographic centre. It is legally obligated to store, preserve and protect all German and German-language publications\u2014both in print and digitally\u2014with the support of the federal government.<\/p>\n

The planned storage facility at Deutscher Platz in Leipzig was intended to serve the long-term archiving of the National Library\u2019s holdings. Designed as a highly functional and climate-controlled repository, it was intended to ensure the secure storage of approximately 35.5 million media works for about 30 years.<\/p>\n

Weimer justified halting the project by arguing that the collection of physical media works was no longer appropriate for the foreseeable future; the National Library should focus more on its digital collection.<\/p>\n

Following fierce criticism from, among others, the German Publishers and Booksellers Association and library circles, he initially backtracked and explained that the final review of the planning documents by the federal building authority was still pending and that long-term financing had not been secured.<\/p>\n

Buchenwald Memorial<\/p>\n

While the legal battle surrounding the Bookstore Prize and the debate over the National Library were still ongoing, a new front opened up for the Minister of State: the Buchenwald Concentration Camp Memorial.<\/p>\n

Two Buchenwald associations have issued an open letter calling on Weimer to refrain from appearing at the commemoration of the liberation of the concentration camp on April 12. The letter was signed by the chairpersons of the Buchenwald-Dora Camp Working Group and the Buchenwald Camp Community, Katinka Poensgen and Horst Gobrecht.<\/p>\n

The letter accuses Weimer of failing to engage positively with the legacy of the survivors of Buchenwald and other camps. Among other things, it cites Weimer\u2019s repeated misuse of a quote by Heinrich Heine as evidence of his lack of understanding.<\/p>\n

Heinrich Heine<\/p>\n

The famous Jewish-born German writer Heine (1797\u20131856) had allowed himself to be baptized as a Lutheran so he could practice law after passing his bar exam, which was forbidden for Jews at the time. He commented on this with the words: \u201cThe baptismal certificate is the ticket to European culture.\u201d As is well known, Heine abandoned this plan, chose the profession of a writer (becoming a friend of Karl Marx in the process) and later regretted having been baptized.<\/p>\n

Weimer, however, turns Heine\u2019s scathing indictment of the oppression and exclusion of Jews upside down, claiming that Christianity, the \u201cbaptismal certificate,\u201d is the true and sole foundation of European culture.<\/p>\n

As early as 2013, he took up arms against the alleged cultural decline of Europe with the Heine (mis)quote in the magazine Schweizer Monat. Europe was becoming \u201cincreasingly silent in the realm of ethical cultural forms\u201d; with this religious masochism, Europe was killing \u201cits cultural primal force,\u201d he wrote at the time. Weimer makes a similar argument in his \u201cConservative Manifesto.\u201d In it, he laments that Christianity has been \u201crelativized, fought against, and ultimately abandoned\u201d for \u201cseveral centuries\u201d\u2014which he claims is leading to Europe\u2019s decline.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

The open letter from the Buchenwald associations states that Weimer\u2019s interpretation of the Heine quote means \u201cfor many of the former prisoners of the Buchenwald camp\u2014and also for us as descendants and political successors of survivors\u2014that, from their perspective, we do not belong to the realm of European culture.\u201d<\/p>\n

The \u201cInternational Committee of Buchenwald, Dora, and Commando Camps\u201d had already criticized Weimer\u2019s censorship of the bookstore award in a press release: \u201cThe public stigmatization of bookstores or publishers by government agencies \u2026 is reminiscent of traditions of exclusion and cultural control, the consequences of which were devastating.\u201d<\/p>\n

Weimer, however, is sticking to his appearance in Buchenwald. He has received backing from the director of the Buchenwald Memorial, Jens-Christian Wagner; the president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, Josef Schuster; the Thuringian Minister of Education, Christian Tischner (CDU); and the Federal Government Commissioner for Antisemitism, Felix Klein.<\/p>\n

Wagner stated that Weimer, \u201cby participating in the commemorative event marking the 81st anniversary of the liberation of the camp in Buchenwald, is sending an important signal of support for our work.\u201d Klein criticizes the associations for allegedly \u201cmixing aspects of current politics with the fundamental concerns of remembrance culture in a manner worthy of criticism.\u201d What purpose does a culture of remembrance serve, if not to draw lessons for the present?<\/p>\n

Weimer holds a conservative-neoliberal worldview and is well-established and well-connected in those circles. He worked as a journalist for newspapers and magazines on the right and served as editor-in-chief of the newspaper Die Welt, the Berliner Morgenpost, Focus, the magazine Cicero (which he founded), and finally the magazine The European. He was never responsible for culture in these roles.<\/p>\n

His books, in which he advocates a return to homeland, family, and faith, attest to his mindset, which borders on a \u201cblood and soil\u201d ideology. In \u201cThe Conservative Manifesto\u2014Ten Commandments of the New Bourgeoisie,\u201d for example, it states: \u201cWhile generation after generation, for millennia, has taken for granted the continuity of one\u2019s own family, one\u2019s own blood, the clan, the tribe, the nation, the culture, and civilization as a sacred moment of life, this consciousness is suddenly shattering into pieces.\u201d<\/p>\n

Weimer also laments the lack of \u201cspatial expansion\u201d of Europe after 1945\u2014ultimately, the loss of colonies (or perhaps \u201cliving space in the East\u201d?). A thesis he applies in practice today by deeming colonialism projects unworthy of funding.<\/p>\n

Like numerous far-right politicians, starting with Donald Trump, Weimer unabashedly links his political office to business and personal enrichment.<\/p>\n

At the beginning of his term, he came under criticism for his involvement in the Weimer Media Group, which he had founded in 2012. He has since transferred his shares to a trustee. The company is now run by his wife, and Weimer himself likely continues to benefit from its revenues.<\/p>\n

The Weimer Media Group\u2019s business model is based on brokering contacts with political decision-makers for large sums of money. For instance, it organizes the Ludwig Ehrhard Summit every year at Gut Kaltenbrunn on Lake Tegernsee and awards the \u201cMedia Freedom Prize\u201d there. Participation comes at a cost: \u20ac1,000 to \u20ac3,000 for regular attendees, and between \u20ac20,000 and \u20ac100,000 for partner companies to participate in panel discussions.<\/p>\n

For these hefty sums, participants gain exclusive access to high-ranking politicians or other prominent figures who can advance their careers or economic success.<\/p>\n

Politically, Weimer\u2019s views certainly overlap with those of the far-right Alternative for Germany, AfD. For instance, he has criticized what he considers Germany\u2019s overly lax migration and integration policies as \u201ca form of reparations through cultural self-destruction.\u201d He referred to the basic income security benefits as \u201cmigrant money.\u201d He has also cast doubt on whether climate change is manmade and railed against \u201ccompulsory fees\u201d for public broadcasting.<\/p>\n

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