Minister of State for Culture Claudia Roth sees only limited possibilities for government agencies to influence the presentation of art, such as at the controversial documenta in Kassel.
On Tuesday, the Greens politician commented for the first time on the report she commissioned from the Berlin legal scholar Christoph Möllers on "fundamental legal limits and fundamental legal protections of state cultural funding".
Berlin/Kassel - "An important point in this report, which explores the possibilities and limits of state intervention in public funding, is that it is fundamentally categorically excluded to subject artistic programs to state advance control," said Roth in one of the dpa statement available in Berlin.
"The anti-Semitic incidents at documenta fifteen should not have happened," Roth said.
In order to "draw the necessary lessons" from this, she conducts numerous discussions, for example with representatives of the Jewish community.
She also referred to her proposals for a structural reform of the documenta.
"The high value of artistic freedom never relieves us in politics, in relation to the state and society, from the obligation to do everything we can to combat anti-Semitism, racism and misanthropy," said Roth.
The fight against anti-Semitism remains the central task of the federal government.
In the 50-page report, which is also available to the dpa, Möllers summarizes his results in 14 theses.
In it he writes, among other things: “The freedom of art can also protect against state access within the framework of proportionality in cases of racist or anti-Semitic tendencies.
That is the liberal scandal of the constitutional order.”
Before documenta fifteen last year, the first voices were raised accusing the Indonesian curator collective Ruangrupa and some invited artists of being close to the anti-Israel boycott movement BDS.
Shortly after the show opened in mid-June, a work with anti-Semitic imagery was discovered and taken down.
Other works later triggered harsh criticism and calls for the exhibition to be stopped.
dpa