Christoph Stölzl is dead: Berlin's Senator for Culture headed the German Historical Museum

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Historian and politician: Christoph Stölzl (1944-2022)

Photo: Reto Klar / Funke Photo Services

A legacy of his very short tenure as Berlin Senator for Science and Culture was that Christoph Stölzl managed to keep the artistic director of the Berlin State Opera, Daniel Barenboim, in the capital.

Now, a few days after Barenboim announced his departure from the Staatskapelle, news comes of Christoph Stölzl's death.

He died on Tuesday at the age of 78 in Bavaria, as the Franz Liszt Weimar University of Music announced on Wednesday.

Stölzl was president of the university for twelve years until June 2022.

Born in Westheim near Augsburg in 1944, Stölzl grew up in Munich's educated middle class.

He studied history, literature and sociology.

At the age of 36, Stölzl became director of the Munich City Museum.

"As a young team, we banged our heads and provoked with exhibitions," he recalled in an interview with the dpa.

Museum director, journalist, senator

In 1987, Stölzl became the founding director of the German Historical Museum in Berlin.

He remained in the position until 1999.

A year later, he switched to journalism as deputy editor-in-chief and head of the features section at Die Welt.

The political Stölzl was only briefly organized in the FDP.

In 2000 he became a non-party senator for science, research and culture in Berlin for the CDU.

However, his term of office ended a good year later due to early elections.

He became a member of the CDU and later became head of the state and a member of the federal executive board.

In his political career, Stölzl repeatedly encountered strong opposition with extremely polarizing statements.

"Berlin is losing a strong cultural voice and the Berlin CDU is losing a special former state chairman," said Kai Wegner, state and parliamentary group chairman of the Berlin CDU state association.

Stölzl has »created great things for our city that stays«.

Big plans for the exile museum

In the years that followed, he worked in various positions at universities, for example in Berlin and Weimar.

After the turbulent resignation of the director Peter Schäfer, the historian worked as a confidante at the Jewish Museum in Berlin.

Christoph Stölzl still had big plans: he was intended to be the founding director of the Exile Museum Foundation.

Its CEO, former Secretary of State for Culture André Schmitz, speaks in a statement of an "unimaginable loss."

With his encyclopaedic knowledge, his fine irony, his charm and his never-ending enthusiasm for the Exile Museum project, he infected and convinced all those he spoke to, according to Schmitz.

»We are infinitely grateful that he brought his vast experience as a historian, journalist, cultural manager and museum man to our project and that we were able to learn from him.«

In 2020, Christoph Stölzl received the Great Federal Cross of Merit, among other things for his services to the historical processing of the Second World War and the Holocaust.

feb/dpa/AFP