Claudia Roth’s Administration: An Interim Assessment of Her Cultural Policies

An interim assessment of Claudia Roth’s administration.

Her political temperament is notorious; enthusiasm and empathy characterize the public appearances of Minister of State for Culture Claudia Roth (Greens). And it is actually difficult to escape her attacks of charm when – as at the opening of the Berlin International Literature Festival (ilb) – she rightly generously praises the eleven-year-old student Celia for her reading from Erich Kästner’s “Pünktchen und Anton”. And in fact, there was a lot more to it than just the imperative of friendliness when, at the reopening of the House of World Cultures, Claudia Roth thanked the mother of the new HDKW director Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung, who had come from Cameroon, for making it possible for her son to study in Germany have. For the moment, the personnel seemed like the fulfillment of a social promise of permeability and diversity.

Claudia Roth’s interim assessment: Sometimes extremely harsh

Claudia Roth intervened extremely harshly and destructively in the leadership crisis of the Berlinale, the flagship of German cultural life in the world. It could not be overlooked that there had long been a crackling atmosphere in the dual leadership, which had received a lot of praise, consisting of managing director Mariette Rissenbeek and artistic director Carlo Chatrian. Overnight, however, to propagate an artistic director model with the prospect of leadership from a single source as the ideal solution and to generously offer Chatrian a role in the second row was tantamount to humiliation on an open stage.

The never-ending wave of solidarity, which has now been joined by more than 400 film people from all over the world, including Martin Scorsese, Paul Schrader and Christian Petzold, remains a mortgage for the declared new beginning, which can hardly be perceived as anything other than willful self-dwarfism.

Claudia Roth overlooked the elephant in the room at Documenta

Unfortunately, the damage to the Berlinale is not an isolated case. At the halfway point of the administration, an unsatisfactory top note that marks a lack of cultural policy sensitivity and a sense of proportion should be prominently displayed in the interim report card of the Green Minister of State for Culture. Her mass release of announcements and statements at the start of her term in December 2021 failed to disguise the fact that she missed the elephant in the room. When repeated references to possible anti-Semitic statements became public in the run-up to the Documenta art exhibition, she dismissed them as slanderous attacks. Despite a discussion with Josef Schuster, chairman of the Central Council of Jews, Roth was unable to regain his trust in the disastrous course of the Documenta.

Without having direct administrative responsibility for Documenta, she has not succeeded in gaining the authority appropriate to the office to interpret the debate that is getting out of hand. This was astonishing given the political experience that Claudia Roth has brought to various top positions in her career.

Roth as Minister of State for Culture: A lot of sweeping and tinkering required

After almost two years, the impression has become more and more solid that Roth is only partially able to utilize the expertise gathered in her office. This was particularly evident in such a difficult issue as the return of cultural assets from colonial contexts to their countries of origin.

At the price of diplomatic upsets and social irritation, Claudia Roth and Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock traveled to Nigeria in the winter of 2022 under increased public attention to return almost two dozen of the now famous Benin bronzes. What was intended as a generous symbolic political gesture cannot now escape the accusation of having emerged from the spirit of a paternalistic divide. Instead of triumphant stagings at the highest diplomatic level, the exchange of expertise and negotiations between museum people would probably have been a better procedure.

Too much, too loud, at the wrong time – Claudia Roth’s administration so far has been accompanied by a noisy exuberance, which in the case of the Berlinale has become a problem that is difficult to resolve. Cultural policy depends not least on clever moderation, which is able to bring idiosyncratic artists into conversation with busy designers. Instead of turning back the complex, interwoven legacies of the predecessor, the craftsmanship of the moment would consist of careful further development. In the coming months, however, the Minister of State for Culture will have to spend a lot of time sweeping up and tinkering with things.

Harry Nutt