Behind the Scenes of the New Cultural Policy

Text: Michael Annoff, Translation: Melody Makeda Ledwon

For decades, strengthening participation of all civil society groups as audiences of publicly funded cultural programming has been a core task of cultural policy and education – regardless of income and leisure budget, origin, or presumed prerequisites such as prior knowledge and formal education. This effort has taken shape through a wide range of foci, including socio-cultural programs, multicultural and later making institutions more intercultural, audience development, multilingualism, free-admission Sundays and increased accessibility among many others.

Since the 1970s, democratization has been a key objective of cultural policy in the Federal Republic of Germany, while also fostering the development of statistical analysis as a specialized field of applied social research. Yet studies repeatedly show that public cultural programs are regularly used by only about one-tenth of the population.

Over the past ten years, this already difficult, ongoing task of democratization has been significantly expanded. Concepts of social diversity and intersectional critiques of discrimination have helped introduce critical perspectives on power into discussions of cultural participation, raising questions about the intersections of classism, sexism, racism, and ableism in the arts. This has also led to a shift in perspective: rather than focusing primarily on audiences, attention has increasingly turned to structural exclusion within the arts and cultural sector, including on the side of producers and those working in programming.1 Although cultural institutions have made progress with diversifying in recent years, they still lag behind demographic developments.2

Struggles for greater diversity and equitable opportunities are slow and never linear, as the timeline of Diversity Arts Culture illustrates. This text does not focus on a key event in the history of marginalized cultural production in Germany. Instead, it attempts to outline the established and widely accepted reference points for a democratic, people-oriented cultural policy. After all, contemporary diversity efforts still (at least implicitly) draw on the slogan “Culture for all.”

“New Cultural Policy” – A Social-Liberal Reform Project in a Post-Fascist Society

The origin of this still-relevant cultural policy slogan lies in the book of the same name by cultural policymaker Hilmar Hoffmann. Published in 1979, Hoffmann states in the introduction:

“Every citizen must, in principle, be enabled to make use of cultural programming in all fields and at all levels of specialization, with a time commitment and financial contribution such that no income-based barriers arise. Neither lack of financial resources nor unfavorable working hours, neither family nor children nor lack of private transport should, in the long run, create obstacles that make participation impossible.”3

This demand exemplifies attempts to extend the sociopolitical goals of the social-liberal 1970s to a cultural landscape that had previously been dominated by middle-class elites. To what extent can this approach still serve as a point of reference for anti-discriminatory efforts in cultural policy today – and where might it prove counterproductive?

Before addressing these questions through Hoffmann’s New Cultural Policy, it is worth taking a look at the author’s biography to better understand why his work has been recognized and appreciated far beyond the expert field of cultural policy: 

Born in 1925 into a merchant family, he belonged, as he himself put it, to the “Hitler Youth generation.”4 As a member of the Nazi Party and a paratrooper in the Wehrmacht, he became a passive follower (Mitläufer) in 1944 and is therefore part of a group of postwar intellectuals whose biographies were entangled with National Socialism. After the war, Hoffmann completed his studies in theater directing at the Folkwang School and began his rapid rise as director of the adult education center in Oberhausen, where he founded the internationally renowned Oberhausen Short Film Festival. In 1970, after five years as director of the adult education center, he became Frankfurt’s head of cultural affairs. There, he promoted socio-cultural and neighborhood-based art while also playing a key role in expanding Frankfurt’s museum district. 

At a time when there was no Federal Minister for Culture and Media, and Berlin was still divided, Hoffmann’s position had considerable public visibility, which he used to his advantage. His slogan, “Culture for all”, marked the beginning of an extensive series of publications on cultural policy, film history, Germany's National Socialist past, and even his hobby of pigeon breeding. This helped make Hoffman, a member of the Social Democratic Party (SPD), the most prominent cultural policy voice of the 1980s and 1990s, eventually leading to his appointment as head of the Goethe-Institut in 1993. Hoffmann became the central figure of a participation-focused transformation of the cultural landscape, which led to a significant expansion of cultural programming. His initiatives reportedly amounted to 1.4 billion Deutsche Marks – an enormous sum for a largely municipal political career.5 In recent years, his outstanding role in West German cultural policy has continued to be highly valued, as evidenced by the commemorative volumes published to mark his 85th birthday6 and the numerous obituaries following his death in 2018.7

From a discrimination-critical perspective shaped by identity politics, the catchy title “Kultur für alle” may seem misleading: in his book, Hoffmann did not pursue the comprehensive focus on participation cited above by addressing (disadvantaged) social target groups in a differentiated way. The “New Cultural Policy” of that time was – unlike today – not characterized by a highly differentiated focus on participation and specific target groups, but rather by a general process of democratization. A second, perhaps even more significant motive was the attempt to provide broader institutional frameworks for cultural production that were becoming increasingly unrestricted.8

Unlike what the book’s title and the quote shared earlier in the article might suggest, the first chapter focuses on the tasks and democratic foundations of cultural policy within the context of a social-liberal democratization of society. Subsequent chapters – „ Drama/ Theatre and Emancipation, Music Theatre, The Museum, The Library, The Media (Film, Cinema, Television, Media Center) und Amateur Art (Urban Culture, Alternative Culture) – extend these introductory reflections to individual sectors and fields, as well as to current developments of the time period. At the time – unlike today – such a comprehensive and cross-sectoral overview of cultural policy fields was anything but self-evident. The expansion of cultural fields in post-fascist Germany can be understood as a sign of the delayed strengthening of civil society and democratic structures beyond the political institutions themselves. Hoffmann’s concern was to “understand cultural development itself as a process that equally encompasses artistic creation, the richness of a historically evolved culture, and democratic society.”9 For this reason, in the second part of the introduction Hoffmann explicitly addresses the constitutional foundations of democratic cultural policy, which, in (West) Germany after National Socialism, had to be laboriously learned: freedom of the arts and the prohibition of censorship, arguments for publicly funded support through taxation, federalism and the cultural sovereignty of the states, the sharing of decision-making power within cultural institutions, etc.

Beyond these democratic foundations, the progressive character of the book lies in its cultural-political adaptation of a broad concept of culture. Drawing on cultural anthropology and referencing the former Foreign Minister and then Federal President Walter Scheel, Hoffmann argued that culture should no longer be understood solely in the traditional sense of bourgeois high culture, but rather in a broader sense that includes everyday forms of cultural expression. Nevertheless, he clearly distanced himself from Marxist concepts of culture and, more specifically, from Soviet cultural policies (without ever mentioning the GDR); he rejected the socialist idea of the collectivization of creative production. Instead, Hoffmann insisted that access to cultural programming should be considered part of welfare-state redistribution, aimed at compensating for the inequalities of an industrial division of labor.10 Accordingly, Hoffmann allowed competing normative justifications for democratic cultural funding to coexist: traditional middle-class high culture, with its understanding of art as an end in itself, alongside participation focused culture that emphasizes the functions of culture within civil society, such as education and the strengthening of democracy.

Two examples show what this would look like in practice: Hoffmann described the museums founded by princes and wealthy citizens in the 18th and 19th centuries as part of a gradual process of opening up to the public. At the same time, however, he argued that “the museum of yesterday must be adapted to the current state of educational and cultural policy progress.”11 This stems from the fact that “[a] democratic historical museum is not one that writes war chronicles in golden letters or glorifies the powerful as superhuman figures. […] A historical museum that does not also help convey a critical understanding of history and its political dimensions is anachronistic.”12

This cultural perspective, which was quite progressive for its time, becomes even more evident in the expansion of cultural policy into new areas such as neighborhood-based cultural work, as well as in a fundamental appreciation of all residents of a city who engage in creative arts. Hoffmann was not only concerned with supporting established traditional institutions. As one of the first cultural policymakers, he called for a kind of “seismographic” sensitivity to all cultural activities within urban society:

“This also includes events that take place outside museum platforms, across a wide range of settings – the indispensable micro-events of art and culture. Without them, opera performances and major museum exhibitions would be like pyramids in the desert.”13

In many ways, Hilmar Hoffmann’s ideas were groundbreaking. Although he was not the only thinker behind the “New Cultural Policy,” he was particularly skilled at bringing together its approaches and presenting them effectively. Without his groundwork, many newer funding instruments – such as cross-disciplinary funding programs or the Berlin Project Fund Arts Education – would be hard to imagine. However, Hoffmann’s innovative impact was more evident in the development of new cultural formats and institutions than in creating equitable, differentiated approaches to specific target groups. His cultural policy played a key role in making access to culture more diverse. At the same time, his main concern was how people could attend cultural events while balancing work, caregiving responsibilities, and limited free time. Examining these issues through an intersectional lens was not yet present in his work. This becomes especially clear in the final section of his book Kultur für Alle. The second-to-last chapter, „Kulturelle Zielgruppen“ (Cultural Target Groups) focuses mainly on programs for children, teenagers, and older adults. The subsection on “minorities” primarily addresses people struggling with alcoholism and former prisoners.14 As a member of the SPD, Hoffmann saw employment as the main driver of social inequality. As a result, he focused primarily on the social and economic question of how much money and free time people had available for cultural participation. The question of how these inequalities relate to social and cultural identities – central to today’s intersectional perspectives – remained in the background. His book therefore concludes with a “plea for a new leisure and cultural policy.”15  Here, leisure is understood as the unevenly distributed parts of life in which people are not engaged in alienated labor. “A new cultural policy must begin with the concrete needs and interests, above all of those who have been largely excluded from cultural participation by an education system that denies them equal opportunities – and whose leisure interests are therefore focused outside the sphere of cultural programming.”16

Participation-Focused Policy in a Society Shaped by Migration

Well into the 21st century, cultural policy largely failed to address the intersectional inequalities of paid work and care work – and, by extension, of leisure time. Despite the fact that, since the 1970s, millions of precariously employed migrant workers have taken on low-paid labor in (West) Germany. The continued focus of predominantly white cultural policy on developing socio-cultural formats – despite ongoing criticism of the dominance of bourgeois “high culture” – is evident in a publication marking Hilmar Hoffmann’s 85th birthday. Among roughly two dozen contributions in the edited volume Kulturelle Bildung braucht Kulturpolitik: Hilmar Hoffmanns Kultur für alle reloaded (Cultural Education Needs Cultural Policy: Hilmar Hoffmann’s Culture for All Reloaded), edited by Hildesheim professor Wolfgang Schneider, only one addresses Germany as an immigration society. In this volume, Sina Haberkorn contributed a short essay titled “Ein neues Publikum von Kunst und Kultur?” (“A New Audience for Art and Culture?”), which examines cultural understanding and cultural participation among people with a so-called migration background.17

Yet even here, after more than fifty years of a history of migration, individuals with a so-called migration background are still portrayed as “new” and reduced to the role of audiences. In this respect, the criticism that proponents of the New Cultural Policy, such as Hoffmann, overlooked the role of (labor) migration as a factor in ensuring equitable participation is justified. The fact that many cultural policymakers continued to delay addressing this issue in the following decades seems to confirm the critique of post-migrant theory: The belated recognition of Germany as an immigration society has, in recent years, created increased pressure for reform.18

What is less well known today, however, is that Hoffmann himself reflected on how cultural policy could respond once it became clear that millions of so-called guest workers would remain in Germany (and that new waves of migration and displacement were already emerging). In 1985, he published the much less widely known book Kultur für morgen. Ein Beitrag zur Lösung der Zukunftsprobleme. (Culture for Tomorrow: A Contribution to Solving the Problems of the Future) In it, he focused primarily on the labor market crisis of the time, the resulting scarcity of public funds, and the rise of new media (this referred mostly to video rather than to computers). In the chapter „Kulturelle Identität“ (Cultural Identity) Hoffmann devotes six pages to what he calls “guest worker culture.” His reflections are characteristic of the era and of the perspective of ostensibly progressive white Germans. They oscillate between acknowledging the broader societal importance of labor migration and reproducing paternalistic clichés – for example, when he refers to the “Third World” within one’s own country.”19 At the same time, Hoffmann did recognize the contributions of migrant workers when the CDU-led federal government was actively attempting to restrict migration and racism among the white population was increasing significantly:

“If we cannot imagine what it means to toil for little pay in subway tunnels, to collect other people’s garbage, and to spend evenings in poor living conditions – or if no one complains anymore about how harsh assembly-line work is – then politicians can easily […] remain silent about the burdens such work places on others.”20

Hoffmann went against the spirit of his time by claiming migrants have “a right to a home here” and “a right to their culture.”21 Unlike many cultural projects, he was not only concerned with folklore. He focused on developing an independent transnational identity:

“Anyone who speaks only of preserving a cultural identity – whether German or foreign – misunderstands the dynamic nature of this cultural process. What matters most is that foreigners can process their own life situation. They need material and social support to develop a culture that offers them a future.”22 [Hoffmann uses the term “life situation” to refer to migrants’ personal or family migration history.]

At the same time, Hoffmann leaned on racist stereotypes common at the time. For example, he referred to supposed integration barriers of Turkish “guest workers.” He also cited Turkish intellectuals who dismissed the popular culture of migrant workers as kitsch in a classist way, while stressing the equal value of Turkish high culture.23

Still, Hoffmann closely followed 1980s efforts to involve migrant cultural producers in processes of cultural “synthesis,” for example in West Berlin and Nuremberg. It is largely forgotten that a similar early participation project took place in Frankfurt under his leadership – yet even there, a paternalistic mindset is evident. In 1981, Frankfurt’s cultural administration provided 30,000 DM for fifteen “existing foreigner organizations.” Project manager Alexa Gade described a lively and inclusive scene of migrant organizations. Hoffmann recognized “that partial reliance on cultural infrastructure had a survival function.” However, the administration did not focus on supporting the creative independence of these groups. Instead, it focused on integration goals set by the dominant society, such as language learning. Shifting in how we study migrant cultural work will not be easy. Public administration archives contain little documentation of these early post-migrant initiatives, as they were often deemed irrelevant. At the same time, migrant organizations lacked the resources to build their own archives. As a result, much work remains to properly recognize cultural production from this period – and time is running out, as many who lived through this time are now nearing the end of their lives.

Hoffmann’s contributions to cultural participation are undeniable. However, he was not a pioneer of a truly anti-discriminatory cultural policy. His approach focused too much on compensating inequalities caused by unfair labor divisions, without addressing labor migration as a key factor. Still, today’s strongly identity-focused debates can learn from his program by paying more attention to paid and care work, and to unequal access to free time: Classism and class-based discrimination are still largely overlooked, especially in the cultural sector.

Translator’s note: Hilmar Hoffmann’s quotes, book and chapter titles are the translator’s own translations.

About the author

Michael Annoff approaches his work from anthropological, curatorial, and performative perspectives. From 2016 until January 2022, he held an academic position in Culture & Mediation within the Cultural Work program at FH Potsdam. Since 2018, together with Nuray Demir, he has been documenting the intangible heritage of post-migrant society through the project “Kein schöner Archiv”. In 2022/23, they were both Artists-in-Residence at the Bundeskunsthalle, where they curated the performative festival “DAS[neue]WIR. The Art and Its Institutions Will Belong to All of Us”.

• 1

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• 3

  Hilmar Hoffmann (1979): Kultur für alle. Perspektiven und Modelle. Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer, S. 11.

• 4

  Hilmar Hoffmann (2018): Generation Hitlerjugend. Reflexionen über eine Verführung. Frankfurt am Main: dielmann.

• 5

  Oliver Scheytt/ Norbert Sievers (2010): Kultur für alle! In Kulturpolitische Mitteilungen (130), S. 30.

• 6

  Wolfgang Schneider (Hrsg.) (2010): Kulturelle Bildung braucht Kulturpolitik: Hilmar Hoffmanns "Kultur für alle" reloaded; [Festschrift anlässlich des 85. Geburtstages von Hilmar Hoffmann]. Hildesheim: Universitätsverlag.

• 7

  Jürgen Kaube (2018): Ein Mann seiner eigenen Gründerzeit. Zum Tod von Hilmar Hoffmann. In Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. Online at: https://www.faz.net/aktuell/feuilleton/debatten/zum-tod-von-hilmar-hoffmann-15621075.html. Last accessed: 1. März 2023.

• 8

  Dazu in polemischer Form: Michael Annoff/ Nuray Demir: Hello White Diversity! Online at: https://kupoge.de/blog/2021/03/11/hello-white-diversity/. Last accessed: 1. März 2023.

• 9

  Hilmar Hoffmann (1979): Kultur für alle. Perspektiven und Modelle. Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer, S. 12.

• 10

  ebd., S. 17.

• 11

  Hoffmann specifically refers to the Frankfurt Historical Museum, but his remarks certainly apply to history museums in general.

• 12

  ebd., S. 114.

• 13

  ebd., S. 241.

• 14

  ebd., S. 263.

• 15

  ebd., S. 321.

• 16

  ebd., S. 328.

• 17

  Haberkorn, Sina (2010: Ein neues Publikum für Kunst und Kultur? Zum Kulturverständnis und zur Kulturnutzung von Menschen mit Migrationshintergrund. In: Schneider, Wolfgang (Hrsg.): Kulturelle Bildung braucht Kulturpolitik. Hilmar Hoffmanns Kultur für alle reloaded, 2010. Hildesheim: Universitätsverlag S.221-230.

• 18

  vgl. Foroutan, Naika (2018): Die postmigrantische Perspektive: Aushandlungsprozess in pluralen Gesellschaften. In: Hill, Marc/ Yıldız, Erol (Hrsg.): Postmigrantische Visionen. Erfahrungen – Ideen – Reflexionen. Postmigrantische Studien Band 1. Bielefeld: transcript, S. 15-28.

• 19

  Hilmar Hoffmann (1985): Kultur für morgen. Ein Beitrag zur Lösung der Zukunftsprobleme. Frankfurt am Main: S.Fischer, S. 120.

• 20

  ebd., S. 124.

• 21

  ebd., S. 121.

• 22

  ebd., S. 122.

• 23

  ebd., S. 123.