> Fixed costs and a lack of financial support are forcing us to take this step. In addition, the general cultural situation in Berlin is very precarious. It was a very difficult decision for us.
Speaking as someone with a company in the arts based in berlin:
Sister comments get excited about population growth, gentrification, rising rent prices, and everyone's favorite c-word. Those are all real things that are happening in berlin, that are favorite bogeymen to complain about at parties. None of them apply here.
Rising rents are much more of a residential problem. Prime commercial rents are also rising, but at 1.1%/yr... and non-prime/specialty commercial like the subway arches in Hansaviertel are generally stable or declining since COVID.
The museum cites loss of premises as a factor. The Deutsche bahn leases the subway arches typically on 5 or 10 year terms. Since they moved in 2016 it sounds like DB is declining to renew the contract and they are facing another move.
But the really big elephant in the room is a lack of funding. The museum has always been proudly privately funded and volunteer operated. But that still exposes them to indirect effects from public funding cuts, and berlin cut 13% of its culture funding in 2024. Private donations are down 6% year over year, and what there is has seen significant diversion to political and Ukraine support efforts. Similar impacts happen in volunteer time, but we're all waiting on the 5-yearly survey from 2024 to be released to get real data.
Fixed costs are often the killer for museums, and the buchstaben museum blamed these in particular. Heating and electricity, and general climate maintenance in nonstandard spaces like the subway arches is always expensive, and museums are relatively energy intensive to begin with. Wholesale electricity costs jumped 5-7x in 2021-22. They've since come back down to a more modest 30-40% increase, but that's still a huge problem for a small, privately funded institution like this. Especially coupled with public funding loss, reduced private donations, and staring down a move.
Bear in mind, German non profits can't create endowments like American ones can. Most categories can't even roll budget from one year to the next!
Hope this helps you understand why so many privately funded cultural institutions are dying in Germany and Berlin right now.
Is there any political momentum to deal with this, for example allowing at least some level of endowments? I respect the purity of the ideal, but it sounds like it is backfiring right now.
The German tax laws for charities around having to spend donations in “a timely fashion“ are being loosened, but it’s really more a question of proper tax advice. It is a common myth in volunteer-run organizations than you cannot create long-term financial stability. You just have to lay out a plan and argue for it.
More of a problem is dependency on public funding or any kind of grant, where typically there are limitations on what you can use that grant money for, and “saving for the future“ is not one of them.
Partial explanation: Gentrification + increased costs because of inflation is my understanding.
Berlin has been relatively underpopulated ever since WW2 which seems to have contributed to a de-gentrified situation which allowed an unique culture to grow. But time's are changing.
What does this even mean? Does this mean "low cost of living"? I feel like gentrification due to post-war generational housing shortages is now just a catch all term for increasing cost of living in general.
Berlin lost over 1.5m inhabitants in the time since 1945 to its lowest point after reunification (due to being a divided city without much industrial jobs).
At it height 1 in 5 apartments were empty in Berlin which pushed rents down below 4 EUR per square meter. A 3 bedroom apartment for less than 500 EURs a month. This was de-gentrification the parent mentioned.
Since 2010 population grew and now Berlin has housing shortages like every other capital in Europe. Rents now top 20 EUR per sqm.
Sure it's mostly about cost of living but also relatively good access to abandoned buildings (and perhaps other services) that could be used for non housing purposes. A lot of Berlin clubs and art venues started in buildings that were abandoned if I understand correctly.
I recall that there were interesting similarities after depopulation events like the black plague. Suddenly there's a surplus of built infrastructure.
Berlin is the best proof that capitalism destroys culture. We should probably find a way to prevent that from happening. The current German and Berlin government would rather accelerate it though - besides the funding thing, they're currently ramming a highway expansion straight through a cultural area.
To answer the question in replies, good East Berlin developed in the relative anarchy when the Soviet Union collapsed and no new system was really established yet. (Being able to exchange deutschemarks for groceries is not capitalism - they had that in communism too.) The western end of Berlin, by contrast, wasn't culturally interesting in the same way, and didn't change much when the wall fell. Not that symphony orchestras and painting galleries aren't culture, but they're not the kind we're talking about here, the kind that develops bottom up when people are given the freedom to do what they want.
dang informed me by email that this is a bad comment and I deserve to be, and have been, punished for posting it.
"but it does indicate that an abundance of cheap housing/buildings makes culture thrive."
Not on its own, though. Plenty of abandoned/underpopulated cheap places in europe that do not thrive. But it certainly is beneficial.
(in the case of Berlin, there was for example a special effect, that all germans living in west berlin did not had to go to the army (to not having to shoot their relatives in east berlin) - so lots of counterculture people evading the army came to Berlin and they created culture)
Don't you think that a lot of that politics stems from politicians wanting the value of houses in places where they (or their friends) live to go up rather than down though?
But capitalism doesn't have an interest in prohibiting housing being built in certain areas or limiting density to a fraction of what was possible 130 years ago.
Berlin, like other large cities, suffers from cancerous population density growth. It's sucking the life away from nearby cities, while the cost of living keeps skyrocketing.
> Fixed costs and a lack of financial support are forcing us to take this step. In addition, the general cultural situation in Berlin is very precarious. It was a very difficult decision for us.
Via Deepl, original here: https://www.instagram.com/p/DLuAW5DIANV/