Nobody doubts that the Staatsoper Berlin needs to be renovated. The roof leaks; the toilets are a disgrace; some of the stage machinery dates back to 1920. Given the extent of the overhaul needed, nobody should really be surprised that the experts have come up with a price tag of € 100 million for the job. The national government has already offered to put up € 15.5 million. But who will pay the rest? The question hangs unanswered over the Berlin operatic horizon, a painful reminder of what everybody in the city's subsidy-dependent cultural milieu is trying to forget: Berlin is broke.
Since Berlin's financial crisis was outed early last year, the city has lumbered on much the same as before; technically speaking, a city cannot become bankrupt, and so the figures tend to be conveniently ignored. After all, it remains the capital of a prosperous country. But the truth is that Berlin is in a bad way. Its debts at present amount to some € 68 billion, and the city has to borrow more money just to pay the interest.
Under the circumstances, it was clear that Eberhard Diepgen had to go. The city's former mayor had maintained the apparent status quo in the decade after the fall of the Wall, but he concealed Berlin's steadily mounting debts from the outside world. Casual observers may have suspected a conflict of interest when Diepgen's friend and off-sider Klaus Landowsky, head of the conservative CDU's parliamentary faction, was appointed chief of the city's bank. Landowsky now held two well-paid full-time jobs; it was a bad move for Berlin. But it was only in February last year that the truth began to emerge. The bank had been lending unimaginably vast sums of money to blatantly unviable financial concerns; the companies in question had reciprocated with large "donations" to the CDU. Their endeavours failed, the bank collapsed, and Berlin was left with the bill. When it all came out, Landowsky resigned from both positions — eventually — but to date he has still not been prosecuted for any crime.
Diepgen's loss of office also spelled the end for Christoph Stölzl, the cultural senator whose failed plan to amalgamate Berlin's three opera houses made him uniquely unpopular. But Stölzl knew all along that he wasn't accepting a popular job. His predecessor, Christa Thoben, stayed in office for just six weeks before throwing in the towel. It was impossible, she declared, to solve the city's cultural problems when there simply wasn't enough money to go around. That fact hadn't deterred Peter Radunsky, who had bumbled along for years before Thoben with the simple method of changing nothing. Stölzl, however much he was hated, was the first post-reunification cultural senator to acknowledge that Berlin's cultural situation was untenable, that the city had to change if it was to have a future. The question is how?
When the Wall fell, Berlin found that, as one city which had for decades been two, it had two of everything — or four, or eight, or hundreds. But it isn't so easy to just shut down one of every pair. Even today, Berlin has more museums than rainy days. Not to mention eight full-time symphony orchestras, several professional chamber music ensembles, and three opera houses. Each threat of closure or amalgamation is greeted by howls of protest; the result is that everything is slightly underfunded. Since those who work for cultural institutions are government employees and cannot be sacked, most organizations are unable to respond to requests for budget cuts simply because they have no option but to continue to pay their staff. Instead, they run up debts. However often private sponsorship is discussed as an option for plugging the budgetary holes, it remains an unrealistic solution. Berlin has no tradition of sponsorship; its inhabitants are not wealthy by German standards, the lucrative firms are based elsewhere, and there are no tax incentives for potential donors. For the time being, culture remains a government responsibility.
With an annual cultural subsidy that works out at € 179 per inhabitant, Berlin spends significantly more than any other German state on the arts. It can justify this by explaining its new status as a European cultural capital. That status matters a lot to Berlin, even though the city isn't yet quite sure what it means to be a cultural capital, and has yet to define its role in that capacity. The problem is that there still isn't enough money to go round, and the federal government is not willing to pick up the tab for all the shortfalls.
As the city's most prominently expensive and frequently mismanaged institutions, it's Berlin's three opera houses that come most under fire. Matters aren't helped by their lack of communication and unfortunate habit of all programming the same operas each season — all three houses, for instance, currently have both La Bohème and Elektra in their repertoire. To iron out the administrative bumps, to sharpen managerial wits and to help Berlin's opera houses to set and meet standards that would bring the city onto a par with the better opera houses in other parts of Germany, what is needed, more than anything else, is vision. The problem can't only be money. Stuttgart, Hamburg, and Leipzig have all, to varying degrees, managed to produce better opera than any of the Berlin houses for less money. Germany has dozens of regional houses with programs which display more freedom and fantasy than those currently on offer in Berlin. But vision, unless you count Stölzl's bungled reform plan, has been the one thing conspicuously lacking.
With the election of Klaus Wowereit as Berlin's new mayor, many heaved a sigh of relief. Young and smart and eloquent, Wowereit had actually hoped for the position of cultural senator, and was known to go willingly to opera premieres. His provisional cultural senator, Adrianne Goehler, was a canny woman with experience, personality, and a brilliant secretary of state. Things seemed to be looking up.
But now the honeymoon is over. Wowereit's left-leaning SPD needed to form a coalition in order to govern Berlin, and its decision to team up with the PDS, successor of former East Berlin's communist party, has necessitated a few compromises. As Wowereit has negotiated the new power structures, his interest in culture has visibly dwindled as it is eclipsed a little more each day by his interest in simply holding onto office. Finally, in a placatory deal with the PDS, he offered the party the cultural portfolio.
Socialism is not necessarily at odds with high culture, but the PDS's appointment betrayed a genuine lack of sympathy for Berlin's beleaguered arts organizations. Thomas Flierl, trained in philosophy, has little knowledge of or interest in opera and symphonic music. He's best known for his consistent opposition to innovative initiatives during his time as construction advisor to Mitte, Berlin's developing centre. His interests lie in off-theatre and small community-based projects. Flierl and his catastrophically unqualified secretary of state Krista Tebbe are unlikely to hold the keys to any of Berlin's cultural problems.
So the status quo continues. While the water drips through the roof of the Staatsoper, Klaus Landowsky can be found, a few blocks away, dining with friends at one of the city's most exclusive restaurants. Wowereit has sold the city's birthright for a mess of pottage, and until some new faces or new ideas show up in the European cultural capital, the city will remain mired in a state of provincialism.
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