The German far-right AfD is preparing to turn culture into a test of political loyalty in Saxony-Anhalt, using control of public funding to decide which artists, theatres and museums are sufficiently “German” to deserve support.

With polls suggesting the AfD could win an outright majority in the state election on September 6, the party’s cultural policy has become a serious concern for theatres, museums and other publicly funded institutions.

The proposed declaration would require recipients of state money to promise not to “hold in contempt” Germany or German culture.

Anti-German art

AfD cultural policy spokesperson in the state parliament Hans-Thomas Tillschneider has offered his own definition of what the party considers unacceptable.

“Anti-German art is German art that doesn’t want to be German,” he said. Asked to explain further, Tillschneider pointed to a feminist reinterpretation of a classical opera as an example of work that should not receive public funding.

The policy has particular significance in a state with a rich cultural heritage and a long history of political battles over what constitutes German culture.

Bauhaus in the firing line

Among the AfD’s principal targets is the Bauhaus, the influential school of art, architecture and design founded in Weimar in 1919 and closed by the Nazis in 1933 after being branded insufficiently German.

The movement remains one of Saxony-Anhalt’s most important cultural exports, with the Bauhaus Dessau foundation operating as a major international cultural institution.

The AfD wants to replace the region’s “moderndenken” branding campaign with one called “deutschdenken”. Barbara Steiner, director of the Bauhaus Foundation, has pointed out that the proposed slogan echoes a 1938 speech by Adolf Hitler.

Rather than celebrating the Bauhaus tradition, the AfD’s cultural programme puts figures including medieval German king Henry I, Otto von Bismarck and philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche at the centre of its preferred historical narrative.

Direct struggle

The party’s proposals form part of a wider attempt to use state cultural policy to promote a narrowly defined conception of German identity while marginalising work it considers insufficiently patriotic.

For cultural organisations dependent on public funding, the implications could be significant if the AfD secures the political power suggested by current polling.

The September election could therefore turn what has until now been a cultural policy debate into a direct struggle over who decides what is funded, exhibited, performed and remembered in Saxony-Anhalt.