“We do it for a sense of identity”

Created: 01/14/2023 14:06

By: Astrid Amelungse-Kurth

New Year's reception of the Friends of Lake Starnberg Museum (from left): Matthias Riedel-Rüppel and Benjamin Tillig discussed the role of culture, Annette von Czettritz from the Friends and Mayor Patrick Janik listened with interest, Elke Link moderated.

© Andrea Jaksch

In times of a pandemic, culture has a particularly difficult time, even today.

What to do?

A theater director and a museum director discussed this at the New Year's reception of the Friends of the Lake Starnberg Museum.

Starnberg

- "Culture is not everything, but without culture everything is nothing" - Karl Valentin already knew that.

But how do you manage to make cultural institutions attractive in times of crisis and to direct society's interest to the small local gems?

That was the topic of a discussion that the Friends of the Starnberger See Museum had invited to their New Year's reception.

Matthias Riedel-Rüppel, director of the small museum in Haar, and Benjamin Tillig, director of the Lake Starnberg Museum, were on the stage, along with Berg's deputy mayor, Elke Link, who moderated the discussion.

The whole thing was musically accompanied by the lively duo "KlangZeit", who provided fresh air in terms of world music.

Marie-Josefin Melchior (violin) and Johann Zeller (accordion) are groovy, lively and cheeky and entertained the audience very well.

Culture is essential for social life.

That alone proved the huge interest in the event.

The Chair of the Circle of Friends, Annette von Czettritz, welcomed more than seventy guests.

Among them were the founders of the museum, Starnberg's mayor Patrick Janik and his deputy Angelika Kammerl along with former mayor Ferdinand Pfaffinger, city and district councilors such as Annette Kienzle and Martina Neubauer, numerous artists from the surrounding communities and many people interested in culture.

Cultural places are places of refuge, places of preservation, places that reflect the zeitgeist, places of conversation.

"A stage is more than just making money," said Matthias Riedel-Rüppel, who afterwards also rated the pandemic as an "amazing opportunity", although it was a threat to the existence of many.

But how should things continue after the pandemic?

“Culture thrives on more than looking at stages on the computer.

When culture comes into the living room, you become comfortable.” And: “We culture practitioners have to be honest and change,” he emphasized, “we have to work across genres”.

At the moment the big topic is to mobilize the audience again.

"It will be a long time before we have a (new) normality again."

Starnberg colleague Benjamin Tillig has been in charge of the Lake Starnberg Museum since 2019 and has published the book "Looking at Treasures".

"Sneaking around the museum alone during lockdown wasn't fulfilling," he said.

"Then there was the big question of meaning." During this time he thought about what a museum actually is and what we need culture for at all.

"We do it for a sense of identity," he said, and it's about meeting people.

“The biggest danger was losing heart.

We haven't lost him.

Not even the strength.” Above all, he would like to thank the Management Board.

"His support is great." Tillig is aware that he was in the comfortable position of being protected and he knows that it is also right "not always to do events that are sure to be full".

For the future, he has resolved to further expand the importance of the museum.

But he also needs further support as a basis for this.

Politicians must now be responsible for starting everything up again and “getting things going”.

"I want to mediate, to dig deep," he said.

"Today I am more concerned than before with the depth and the upkeep of the museum."

Of course, this also requires money.

"We don't have it," said Annette von Czettritz from the Circle of Friends.

"We need every penny, every member and every membership fee."