Her program had only been running for a year, when the then Federal Minister of State for Culture already had the superlative ready: “Restart culture” was “the largest economic stimulus program for culture in the history of the Federal Republic to date,” said Monika Grütters (CDU) in June 2021. Back then She added another billion on top of the one billion euros the federal government had already spent to help the cultural sector get back on its feet after the Corona slump. No other industry received “comparably tailored help” during the pandemic, the minister praised herself and the federal government. “The help has proven to be tailor-made and successful.”
Cultural workers also praise the fact that the donations have achieved a lot of good. But there are doubts that they were always made precisely. This shows a large-scale Research by Deutschlandfunk, which provides an overview of what the money was spent on. Accordingly, there were various violations of the rules and anomalies in the awarding of cultural grants. And only part of the money was used: of the two billion euros, 1.66 billion were called up.
When analyzing the approved applications, it became apparent that some artists and institutions had been funded several times, even though this was actually impossible, reports Deutschlandfunk. Companies could also have submitted applications to several organizations. Some would have received several hundred thousand euros, others even several million – and in the end, thanks to the program, they would have made higher profits during the pandemic than before. Deutschlandfunk names several houses that offer events in various cultural sectors and were therefore able to apply for subsidies in different programs. Some of them would have received more than half a million euros.
The dual role of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation
As another example, Deutschlandfunk cites the company CTS Eventim, which sells tickets, organizes concerts and operates stages. She received around ten million euros from the funding pot and at the same time also received regular Corona economic aid – in the years 2020 to 2022 more than 270 million euros from Germany, the EU and Switzerland, according to the report. In 2022 she achieved a record profit of 384 million euros. However, Eventim explains that this was mainly generated abroad, not in Germany.
The case of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation (SPK) is noteworthy, which, according to information from Deutschlandfunk, was awarded a total of 26 million euros by “Neustart Kultur”. According to the report, it was also one of the approximately 40 bodies that decided on the allocation of grants on behalf of the federal government. A problematic double role in this case: According to Deutschlandfunk, 13 of the foundation’s 16 applications were approved by bodies connected to it: “Nine times it was the foundation itself; four times it was the German Digital Library (DDB), which is responsible for the organization and organization of the foundation the personnel are closely intertwined,” reports the broadcaster.
The Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation rejects this: In the nine applications, the applicants and decision-makers were located in different parts of the foundation, “so that there was a separation in terms of content, organization and personnel.” And for the four DDB projects there was a jury that also included members of the foundation, but: “The applications from the SPK institutions were examined and evaluated to the exclusion of employees of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation.”
Because a summary of all individual funding is not available anywhere, the authors of Deutschlandfunk report that they carried out extensive research and compiled the data themselves over a period of 18 months. In the end, almost 54,000 funding processes were analyzed.