Members of the Senate Department for Education, including Falko Liecke, to whom the new staff unit will be subordinate.
The German Association for Political Education launched a petition under the leadership of several university professors. They want to prevent the Senate from controlling the Berlin State Office for Political Education. The state government wants to do this with a new staff unit, the management of which would then no longer be publicly advertised.
This direct influence would be a direct attack on the previous post-war consensus that public educational institutions and the state centers are responsible for themselves independently and non-partisanly based solely on their expertise.
The Senate administration is pragmatically justifying the staff unit in order to be able to bundle the tasks better. However, this would also give it direct influence on the content of the program, the materials and the funding of individual organizations, which would have to be coordinated with the staff unit, which is likely to be staffed on a party-political basis.
The fact that the Senate is not free from abusive political influence was demonstrated in July by Culture Senator Joe Chialo: Because he lacked a factual reason to withdraw funding from the Oyoun Cultural Center because of alleged anti-Semitic statements, a purely formal reason was ultimately found to allow it to expire.
If successfully implemented, the model could set a precedent nationwide and affect other educational institutions. And funding scandals such as those involving Chialo or Education Minister Bettina Stark-Watzinger show that wherever party politics can influence something, it will be influenced.
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