Code of conduct on anti-Semitism: The pressure on Claudia Roth is growing

2024-03-08 14:17:53

With the end of the Berlinale, criticism of Minister of State for Culture Claudia Roth has become louder again. Filmmakers Yuval Abraham and Basel Adra used the awards gala honoring their film “No Other Land” to accuse Israeli government policies of “apartheid” and the “slaughter” of Palestinians. The Green politician applauded.

In an interview with “Spiegel” she was quite self-critical afterwards, but did not find a satisfactory answer to the question of why she did not protest immediately and on site against the anti-Israel propaganda on the Berlinale stage. The Minister of State sees her role primarily as “in the area of ​​tension between the role of the state and artistic and cultural freedom, to ensure that such events do not happen like this.” A year and a half after the fiasco of Documenta 15 in Kassel and a few other anti-Israel and anti-Semitic incidents in which such events took place in something similar, Claudia Roth apparently hasn’t made much progress.

There were calls for resignation from the CDU. Now their support in the Chancellery also seems to be dwindling. As the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and Media (BKM), she reports directly to the Federal Chancellor. And Claudia Roth invited him to an event organized by her “Culture in the Chancellery” format last week. But Olaf Scholz, who had sharply criticized the “one-sided positioning” against Israel at the Berlinale and thus also his cultural representative, did not appear for “private reasons”.

also read

Instead, Chancellery Minister Wolfgang Schmidt came and read out a short speech that the Chancellor should have given. But he probably didn’t want to offer Roth any support. The Chancellor’s statement was more of a collection of banal phrases, like it Stefan Koldehoff on Deutschlandfunk formulated, about the “culture of democracy” and that “anti-Semitism and misanthropy are not art”.

Is Claudia Roth refusing to take responsibility?

At the same time, the managing director of the World Jewish Congress, Claudia Roth, became specific in one open letter accuses inaction. “I don’t understand how you understand your office as Minister of State for Culture,” writes Maram Stern. Even after the documenta, Roth “refused to take responsibility. The same thing happened again at the Berlinale. It’s as if you were just a normal visitor to the festival and not the responsible minister.”

In the situation after October 7, 2023, in which Jews are “fearful again,” he expects “no half-heartedness” from German politics, said Stern: “If art becomes anti-Semitic, if artists express anti-Semitic expressions, then, Ms. Roth, Your place is not at the side of the artists, but at the side of the Jews.”

also read

The Minister of State is now working on how to create the political framework to protect the freedom of art and expression enshrined in the Basic Law, but also to prevent discriminatory, racist and anti-Semitic incidents in the cultural sector. It wants to support cultural institutions in developing a code of conduct.

“The point of these codes of conduct is that they are developed independently by and in the respective institutions.” This is supported by the BKM “with expertise and advice,” a Roth spokeswoman told this newspaper. “The implementation of such codes of conduct also requires a process of training, awareness raising and other accompanying measures.”

Berlin anti-Semitism clause suspended

A move by Berlin in this direction recently failed. The attempt by Berlin’s Culture Senator Joe Chialo (CDU) to impose an anti-discrimination clause on publicly funded cultural institutions had to be suspended due to legal concerns.

The governing mayor of Berlin, Kai Wegner (CDU), has now taken over the proceedings. According to a Senate spokesman, he wants to create a “legally secure basis so that extremists are not financed by the state.” The Senate Department for Labor, Social Affairs, Equality, Integration, Diversity and Anti-Discrimination and the Judiciary Administration are primarily responsible.

also read

“The legal concerns that led to the withdrawal of the anti-Semitism clause proposed by Berlin show that skepticism is warranted when it comes to this approach,” comments Claudia Roth’s spokeswoman. The Minister of State for Culture has commissioned a report from the constitutional lawyer Christoph Möllers on the legally secure formulation of rules of conduct and effective advocacy against anti-Semitism, racism and group-related inhumanity. Next week it will be presented and discussed at a meeting with the culture ministers of the federal states and the leading associations of the municipalities.

Here you will find content from third parties

In order to display embedded content, your revocable consent to the transmission and processing of personal data is necessary, as the providers of the embedded content require this consent as third party providers [In diesem Zusammenhang können auch Nutzungsprofile (u.a. auf Basis von Cookie-IDs) gebildet und angereichert werden, auch außerhalb des EWR]. By setting the switch to “on”, you agree to this (revocable at any time). This also includes your consent to the transfer of certain personal data to third countries, including the USA, in accordance with Art. 49 (1) (a) GDPR. You can find more information about this. You can revoke your consent at any time using the switch and privacy at the bottom of the page.

On the occasion of the Documenta scandal, Christoph Möllers had already assessed the “fundamental rights limits and fundamental rights protection requirements of state cultural funding” and also found artistic freedom to be worthy of protection from political control. However, the state has a duty to warn the institutions it supports if anti-Semitic or racist statements are evident in the works shown.

There are now high expectations for the new report. Claudia Roth is called upon to derive a mandate for action from Möller’s legal findings and, above all, to implement it soon. Otherwise Roth’s understanding of the exercise of the highest state office for culture would no longer be understandable.