Monika Grütters was in office longer than any of her predecessors. A balance sheet – culture

“I have the nicest office in Berlin.” Monika Grütters raved about this to everyone who visited her on the eighth floor of the Chancellery. There was always an exuberant greeting, which was followed by a few steps onto the terrace, where Grütters let his arm wander over the Reichstag and the Brandenburg Gate. And on the way back inside the flirtatiously dropped remark: “… one more floor higher than the Chancellor!”

Grütters performed this scene with so many of her guests that there can be no doubt: this is how she wants herself and her office to be understood. In fact, there is a lot of her in it, her charm and her pride as a ruler; their conviction that culture moves in higher spheres than politics, but at the same time belongs at the center of power; also her penchant for indulgence, this hunger for something wonderful, which she has seldom been able to satisfy in the past eight years.

And of course Grütters also meant the most beautiful office in Berlin when he said the “most beautiful office in Berlin”. She would have liked to continue. That it’s over now, even though she fought so much, even though she gave so much to culture, must feel unfair.

Can you measure the performance of this culture-loving politician in euros?

Eight years. None of her four predecessors lasted so long, none of them shaped the office created by Gerhard Schröder in 1998 with so much political skill, passion and will to power. When it took office in 2013, the federal government’s cultural budget was 1.3 billion euros. Eight years later there are 2.1 billion, an increase of more than 60 percent. Added to this is the corona aid she fought for, two billion for the “Neustart Kultur” program and 2.5 billion for the special fund for cultural organizers.

Isn’t it a little unfriendly to measure the performance of this culture-loving politician in euros? Not for Grütters. Nothing was more fun for her, nothing was more successful than getting money ashore and then distributing it. They were guided by three maxims. The state needs the culture and the culture needs the state. More money means more culture, and more culture is better. And, thirdly, every euro you spend means an increase in your account of fame and power. Grütters did not see herself as a manager or an intellectual key word, but as a state patron, as a democratically legitimized Medici, as the godmother of “my artists”. She did not believe in the neoliberalism of the nineties, whose supporters would like to let cultural institutions take responsibility for themselves.

She was in favor of more state, everything else did not make sense to her as a state representative. It worked at full speed to further develop Berlin into a representative German city of culture. But she also had a broader impact, constantly inventing new scholarships and prizes, also considering industries that had previously managed on their own, pop, comics, clubs or bookstores, and thus wove an increasingly dense network, the threads of which all came from her and her 300+ Employees ran together. Although cultural sovereignty remains with the federal states and municipalities, which account for 83 percent of German cultural expenditure, Grütters dominated the debate. Without a doubt, she has succeeded in one thing, namely to raise the status of culture in public and political perception. It was not only her hard work, her good relationship with Finance Minister Olaf Scholz and her closeness to the Chancellor that helped her. But also a cold-blooded understanding of political practice that couldn’t be further from aestheticism.

Grütters invented committees to legitimize lonely decisions

Together with her long-standing right-hand man, Günter Winands, she pushed through her ideas as hard as she could. Others form working groups when they no longer know what to do; she invented committees to democratically disguise their decisions. Sometimes she made good choices, like at the Berlinale when she almost single-handedly appointed Carlo Chatrian and Mariette Rissenbeek as new directors. Sometimes she went wrong, for example when she named Neil MacGregor the “founding director” of the Humboldt Forum. He was supposed to save the project and equip it with glamor, but it only caused more confusion – also because he was not an “intendant”, but a consultant with a 30 percent job.

In general, Grütters was a master of political trickery. She then used Gurlitt’s “art treasure” as proof that Germany was serious about coming to terms with the Nazi art theft when it had long been clear that Gurlitt had hardly any looted art – in contrast to German museums.

Or the matter with the Museum der Moderne: When the Bundestag approved more than hoped for – in addition to 130 million for the construction and a cost buffer of 70 million – they promptly had a more expensive variant planned. But then there was just no more buffer. (Costs of up to 600 million euros are now expected.)

The recent appointment of Klaus Biesenbach as director of the Neue Nationalgalerie was such a maneuver. First of all, an advertisement for the position was sought for a doctorate in art historian who also has experience with construction projects. When no sufficiently prominent candidates applied for them, Grütters broke off the process, founded a search committee and brought Biesenbach from LA.

Open detailed view

What one can hardly blame Grütters, on the other hand, is that she used her ever more direct access to the institutions to influence the content. A few impulses from the sedate industry would sometimes have been good. But little came from her on the big issues such as immigration, climate change or diversity, which also affect cultural institutions.

She spoke out in favor of more diversity, but filled most positions with German men

It looked similar with the cultural-political questions. Since she had enforced the Cultural Property Protection Act against widespread opposition, the most difficult phase of her term in office, she has acted more shyly. The restitution debate, for example, was initiated internationally by Emmanuel Macron and in Germany by Bénédicte Savoy. Grütters agreed in many ways with their demands. But although she could have earned eternal fame with a change of course at the Humboldt Forum, the key points, discussion groups and a few positions for provenance research remained.

She also often spoke out in favor of more diversity in the institutions, but then filled most positions with German men. And she could have realized years ago that the era of luxurious signature buildings would come to an end. But instead of turning the museum of the 20th century into a model for innovative, sustainable architecture, two seventy-year-olds with Herzog & de Meuron, whose great times are long ago, are now building a shed that is so overpriced and ecologically disastrous that the Federal Audit Office has one uttered a sharp reprimand.

Only two of Grütters’ big plans really failed. One is the Humboldt Forum, behind whose hand-carved sandstone facade a conceptual ruin is hidden. The scolding with which Federal President Steinmeier covered the project, which had fallen out of time at the opening, was also directed at the Minister of State.

Under Grütters, the culture industry was in the money. Now are lean times

The second is the reform of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, which Grütters had courageously undertaken for her second term of office, and which she then let slip through her fingers. Foundation President Hermann Parzinger, an even more sophisticated power man than herself, is more firmly in the saddle after the aborted reform than before.

These and other failures can also be traced back to the limits of responsibility that the minister, who is not a minister, continually encounters. The fact that Grütters had to coordinate with the countries at the SPK even though they hardly gave any money drove them to despair. The fact that she inevitably comes into competition with the Foreign Office, which is responsible for foreign cultural policy, did not lead to major conflicts only because her counterpart there, Michelle Müntefering, remained almost invisible.

Under Grütters, the cultural industry was in the money. Now lean times are likely to begin. If more happens in terms of content, it doesn’t have to be bad news.