2016 - News - Detail Page - Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz

It is a moving moment to be able to stand here on the stage of the Konzerthaus and say thank you. This building, opened in 1821, is not only festive, but also has the same roots as we do. It owes its existence to the same outstanding architect who marked the beginning of the Museum Island with the Altes Museum in 1830 - Karl Friedrich Schinkel.

In the meantime, we have been through dramatic developments.

In November 1943 and February 1945, fighter bombers set the Prussian museums and libraries in Berlin ablaze and reduced them to a field of rubble. The large-scale antique architecture collapsed, the collections stored in anti-aircraft bunkers were taken away, looted or damaged. Prussia was liquidated by order of the Allied Control Council. Germany and Berlin were divided and became an outpost of the Cold War.

Today, 60 years after the dissolution of Prussia and 50 years after the establishment of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, the world centre of art and culture has risen again from the ashes, not as a cooled image of history, but as a living bird Phoenix, a destination of longing for millions of people from all over the world.

Your presence, Mr President, sends out a striking cultural-political signal for this event. But that alone would only be a success for the day! Beyond the day itself, you have focused on the central importance of cultural and intellectual tradition and left no doubt that it is worth investing in a national institution such as the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation in order to have a focal point for our own identity, to strengthen our ability to engage in dialogue with other cultures and to create the conditions for openness and inspiration. Culture needs knowledge, needs history and tradition. No society can manage without reference to the past, but no society can develop without cultural exchange.

Mr President, we gladly and joyfully accept the task of acting as a cultural motor of urban change. We have every opportunity to prove ourselves as the agora of a dynamic society. Art and culture, knowledge and education are needed more than ever.

It may be a coincidence that the 50th anniversary of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation coincides with the 200th anniversary of Prussia's greatest period of reform in 1807, but then it is a coincidence full of connections. The reformers Stein, Hardenberg, Scharnhorst and Humboldt created the transition from a corporative state to a modern society not only through a new legal framework, but also through a social model that placed education at the centre. This was the dynamic feature of modernisation par excellence. This spirit also gave rise to the museums and the State Library, institutions that became world-renowned, true to the Humboldt-Schinkel principle "First delight - then instruct." We are children of this revolution from above. You can still feel this spirit today on Museum Island with the built programme of Schinkel and Stüler.

Prussia was not just a disaster, but a unique opportunity to focus life on education and culture, science and art, to stimulate openness and professional curiosity and to understand the aesthetics of world phenomena.

We have been given a second chance to restore, supplement and cultivate this cosmos of books, images, writings and sounds and to bring it to the centre of society.

This was made possible on the one hand by the far-sighted and modern formulation of the law establishing the foundation in 1957, with the reunification of Germany already envisaged at the time and the Unification Treaty of 1990, which enabled the federal government and all sixteen federal states to participate in this national foundation. In 1992, the legacy of Prussia was finally transferred over various phases into our constitutional reality of co-operative federalism - a political decision for which we must be deeply grateful.

The Foundation's path rightly leads through history, its departure through art and science.

The Board of Trustees, which is chaired by the Federal Government, until 1998 by the Minister of the Interior, and from then on by the Minister of State for Culture and the Media, and to which all the federal states belong, was and is the great enabler for us - a body that does not limit itself to supervision and principles, but takes a passionate interest in developments, demanding, promoting, but also recognising, courageous and far-reaching in its decisions. The current Minister of State, Bernd Neumann, has not only succeeded in continuing his predecessors' prioritisation of the foundation's budget, but also in accelerating the building process. We are deeply grateful and we are delighted that so many members of the Board of Trustees are here today, including former chairmen such as Mr Baum and Dr Christina Weiss.

The decision of the German Bundestag in June 1999 to make €1.5 billion available for the entire renovation of the Museum Island as a UNESCO World Heritage Site was outstanding for the Foundation.

In addition, the State Library Unter den Linden with the Great Reading Room (2008), the Speicherstadt warehouse district in Friedrichshagen for depots and workshops and the museum courtyards will be completed.

In July 2007, the Federal Cabinet approved the construction of the Humboldt Forum on Schlossplatz for non-European cultures on the basis of the Bundestag's referral. The equality of cultures becomes a programme in the centre of Berlin. The Museum Island, as a humanistic educational landscape linked to the name of Wilhelm von Humboldt, becomes a world centre for art and culture through the mediation of non-European cultures initiated by the thoughts and work of Alexander von Humboldt.

I would like to thank the Federal Government, the German Bundestag and the federal states most sincerely for their programmatic decisions.

I would like to thank all those on whose shoulders we have been able to rest, who have thought ahead and planned ahead, who have stood by us on the not always easy path and who have cleared away many a stone. I would like to mention my two predecessors, Hans-Georg Wormit and Werner Knopp, who set the decisive course.

Today, we are not only one of the largest cultural organisations in the world, we are also Europe's largest cultural construction site. From the very beginning, there has been a constructive and innovative dialogue between users, architects, building administrators, monument conservators and the foundation committees. That is not a matter of course. We are all the more grateful for the success and the presentable results, which have met with a very positive response from the public.

The public! That is our decisive measuring factor. We work for the public, which we take very seriously. It is not the quota audience of commercialised mass culture. It is the public that wants to experience the aura of art, the resistance to the trivial, something that endures. We create places of reflection, not of sensation. When we then experience the enthusiasm, that is the most beautiful gift. Thank you very much for that! Incidentally, the number of visitors to the museums will reach 5 million in 2007.

For the Berlin museums and the State Library, the public was and is not just the public. It was also the private commitment of patrons, friends and sponsors or collectors. The wealth and international standing of the collections is largely due to them. The Jewish middle classes played a prominent role in this. The naming of the new entrance building the James Simon Gallery is a reminder of this. Today, Berlin obviously has opportunities for civic participation again. Every foundation institution is supported by a sponsors' association, and the Museum Island Board of Trustees is supporting the progress on the island with great financial commitment. Collectors such as Heinz Berggruen, Erich Marx, Helmut Newton, Friedrich Christian Flick, Uli Richter, Marzona, Klaus F. Naumann, Otto van den Loo and others have entrusted us with their collections. We are full of gratitude for this commitment.

Finally, I would like to thank the museums, libraries and archives as well as the universities and non-university institutions in Germany and abroad for their willingness to co-operate. In the past, institutions were strong when they were autonomous; today they are strong when they are well networked. That is our maxim!

The Foundation itself is one of the largest non-university research institutions in Germany and it facilitates research thanks to its excellent source collections.

We will continue to utilise this successful collaboration in the future for our findings, but also for the opportunity to turn science into public knowledge. Many thanks to our partners.

The Foundation is in the process of reorganising its enormous treasure. With its 16 museums, it has the most comprehensive universal museum of all. With the State Library, it has the largest universal academic library in the German-speaking world, and with the Secret State Archives, it possesses a unique archive of knowledge about Prussia. The State Institute for Music Research and the Ibero-American Institute are deep-rooted information repositories and research centres.

A huge undertaking, simultaneously a treasure house, cultural tool and service centre. We can only do justice to the public's trust in us through our independence, our expertise and our respect for cultural heritage.

I would like to thank the employees of the Foundation in all its institutes and at all its levels, from the Director General to the custodian, who have not only supported the enormous changes of recent years, but have actively shaped them, who have recognised that opportunities are not gifts, but tasks that require a willingness to take risks, understood as a willingness to assume responsibility and make independent decisions. Only in this way have we been able to achieve what we have done, to make the Foundation an asset to society.

Finally, thank you very much! To all of you who have come here today. You have accompanied, supported and encouraged us. You have placed expectations in us. It is extremely important for us to fulfil these expectations in the future and to continue to have you at our side.