Over the past few years, the Federal Government, the federal states (Länder) and the municipalities have increasingly been handing over direct responsibility for running cultural facilities and programmes. This organisational restructuring of the cultural sector is not only strongly advocated by the state but also favoured by representatives of the business sector and groups in society, provided it does not involve an abdication of the state from its responsibility to ensure financing.
In institutionalising them, new models of sponsorship are favoured without the public sector withdrawing from the responsibility for guaranteeing and financing. A distinction must be made between two strategies:
- the partial detachment of cultural institutions from the obligations of budgetary and public service law and the administrative structures of municipalities and the state by choosing a different legal form such as a limited liability company or a foundation. However, the assumption that a change of legal form is also associated with a reduction in public funding must be contradicted by all experience; and
- the transfer of tasks (e.g. allocation of public funds, maintenance of facilities) to civil society institutions (usually foundations, associations). This strategy of working with intermediary organisations is mainly found at federal and state level.
Irrespective of these development trends, which certainly justify an upgrading of civil society actors or the third sector, it must be noted, however, that most municipal cultural institutions are still integrated into the structures and hierarchies of public administration.
The transfer of public tasks to private sponsors in the cultural sector began in Germany as early as the 19th century. Important nationally and internationally renowned cultural institutes such as the Bach Archive in Leipzig, the Beethoven House in Bonn, the Archive of German Literature in Marbach, the Goethe Museum in Frankfurt am Main, the Weimar Classic Foundation in Weimar, and the National Museum for German Art and Culture in Nuremberg are privately run but supported with public funds from all three levels of government. Many of these institutions are united in the Arbeitskreis selbständiger Kultur-Institute (ASKI).
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