50 years of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation: a great success story
Press release from 07/24/2007
On 25 July 1957, the law on the establishment of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation was passed by the German Bundestag.
The Chairman of the Board of Trustees, Minister of State for Culture Bernd Neumann, emphasised: "The Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation (SPK) is a great success story. The SPK, which originally emerged from the collections and archives of the Prussian state, is now one of the largest and most important cultural institutions in the world. The 17 museums, the Berlin State Library, the Secret State Archives of Prussian Cultural Heritage, the Ibero-American Institute and the State Institute for Music Research have now been linked together to form a dense network of cultural diversity. The foundation, which is representative of the state as a whole, is 75 per cent funded by the federal government, which has taken over the entire financing of the building work since 2002. The federal government will provide more than 212 million euros for this alone in 2007.
The most important measures for the future are the completion of the Museum Island through the renovation of the museums and the construction of the new entrance building, the renovation of the State Library "Unter den Linden" and the construction of the Humboldt Forum on the Schlossplatz. The latest developments in the planning for the Humboldt Forum in particular will enable the museums for non-European cultures, which are currently housed in Berlin-Dahlem, to be accommodated in a worthy manner in the future.
An important personnel decision for the future of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation was also made in June of this year. Hermann Parzinger will succeed Klaus-Dieter Lehmann as President of the Foundation from March 2008.
I wish the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation a successful future, as well as skilful and far-sighted management of its future tasks. I would also like to thank all of the Foundation's employees, without whom the successes of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation to date would not have been possible."
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