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Parzinger: The SPK has not authorised any corona funds
Press release from 01/26/2024
At no time has the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation granted funds from the "NEUSTART KULTUR" coronavirus programme to itself or its institutions.
"The coronavirus pandemic has also hit the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation hard. We were and are therefore grateful that the then Minister of State for Culture provided almost 20 million euros so that we could compensate for the slump in museum income. In addition, there was funding for federal and state projects, but these were only administered by the SPK. What the broadcaster Deutschlandfunk Kultur claims in this context, and what has been picked up by some media without verification, is false and without foundation. We reject these insinuations in the clearest possible terms. To put it bluntly: nobody at the Foundation has anything to reproach themselves with here. We are responsible for the management of many federal and state projects, but that does not mean that we only act in the interests of our own organisations. On the contrary. When it comes to funding programmes, we are an applicant like any other," said SPK President Hermann Parzinger.
The SPK comments as follows on the online report "Rettungsanker und Geldsegen" from 25 January 2024(https://www.deutschlandfunkkultur.de/neustart-kultur-kulturmilliarde-corona-kritik-100.html#I)
On the facts:
The German Digital Library (DDB), a federal and state institution, is supported by a network of 18 cultural and knowledge institutions. Its office is located at the SPK, but it is not an institution of the Foundation. The DDB received around 5.58 million euros from the "NEUSTART KULTUR" programme for the project "User-oriented restructuring of the German Digital Library portal". The aim was to further expand the digital heritage on the Internet. One component of this project was the targeted digitisation funding in cultural institutions throughout Germany, which generated a total of around 2.15 million euros.
As part of this funding programme, a total of 60 projects were funded throughout Germany, of which only four projects came from the SPK, which as an institution can of course also submit applications to the DDB. These four projects received a total of around 160,000 euros of the total 2.15 million euros.
A jury, which included staff from the SPK's Institute for Museum Research, decided on the applications. However, when it came to the SPK's applications, these jury members were excluded from the decision-making process. They therefore did not cast a vote. A total of seven institutions outside the SPK were involved in the multi-stage funding procedure in order to ensure a balanced review of the project applications across all disciplines.
The DDB-funded projects from the SPK were as follows: "Contextualisation of archaeological finds: digitisation of the photographic documentation of the excavations of the Museum of Islamic Art in Samarra (today: Iraq) 1911-1913" (Museum of Islamic Art), "Early posters 1840-1913 in the Art Library of the National Museums in Berlin" (Art Library), "The Ralswiek coin find on Rügen. Standardised publication of the largest Viking Age find of Islamic coins in Germany" (Münzkabinett), "Sanaa/Koran fragments" (Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin). Two further projects submitted by collections of the National Museums in Berlin were not approved.
Further information on the project "User-oriented restructuring of the German Digital Library portal" and the DDB's funding programme for digitisation projects:
The nationwide joint project "museum4punkt0", which was set up well before NEUSTART KULTUR, was structured in a similar way to the DDB. Museums of various types and sizes throughout Germany developed digital applications for museum operations. A project team at the SPK coordinated this network and took on the overarching tasks. Only in this way was it possible to network the network members and reutilise the individual projects. The partners involved in the first phase of the project were: Humboldt Forum Kultur GmbH, the German Emigration Centre Bremerhaven, the German Museum, the Langenstein and Bad Dürrheim carnival museums with other museums of the Swabian-Alemannic carnival and the Senckenberg Museum of Natural History Görlitz and the National Museums in Berlin.
The joint project received a total of 15 million euros in funding as part of NEUSTART KULTUR. This enabled the network to be expanded to 18 partners initially and to 27 in the final phase. The original project partners also received funding to expand their projects. The SPK itself neither decided on the content of the new project partners in the federal states nor on the allocation of funds from the NEUSTART KULTUR programme. The decision on the participating museums was made by the BKM for the NEUSTART funds. The key criteria for selecting the project partners were, on the one hand, the range of museum disciplines and, on the other, the broadest possible regional distribution.
Around 1.9 million euros of the NEUSTART KULTUR funds made available for museum4punkt0 were channelled into projects at the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, and around 3.7 million euros into the network coordination (project management, public relations, subsequent use, etc.) administered by the SPK, which worked for all participants, but not for SPK institutions.
Further information on the extension of the project:
Website of museum4punkt0 with results, manual and reutilisation options: https://www.museum4punkt0.de/
The SPK received further funding from NEUSTART KULTUR for the following projects:
"Keyboard - Keyboard - Interface. An educational project for blind, visually impaired and sighted people" at the Musical Instrument Museum of the Staatliuchen Institut für Musikforschung, and "Digital Wunderbox", educational programme of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin. These projects received funding from the Federal Cultural Foundation's dive.in programme for digital interactions.
https://www.kulturstiftung-des-bundes.de/de/projekte/erbe_und_vermittlung/detail/dive_in_programm_fuer_digitale_interaktionen.html
The Staatsbibliothek's "Development standards for indexing publishers' archives" project received funding via the BKM programme for the promotion of digital presentation and mediation of federally funded museums, exhibition venues and memorials under the NEUSTART KULTUR economic stimulus programme.
The SPK received a further 20.1 million euros in funding from the NEUSTART KULTUR programme for pandemic-related revenue shortfalls and additional requirements. These were applied for directly from the BKM.
In total, the SPK and its institutions received from the Neustart Kultur programme:
20.1 million for pandemic-related revenue shortfalls
approx. 3.4 million for project-related tasks within the DDB (office, technical operation, etc.) as part of the project "User-oriented restructuring of the German Digital Library Portal", some of which was passed on to the project partners DNB and FIZ Karlsruhe in the usual procedure
approx. 160,000 euros for projects funded via the digitisation funding line of the German Digital Library (as part of the project "User-oriented restructuring of the German Digital Library Portal")
5.6 million euros for sub-projects as part of the museum4punkt0 joint project
approx. 356,000 euros for three further projects, which were applied for via a funding programme of the German Federal Cultural Foundation and directly from the BKM
All of these projects were of enormous importance for the visibility of culture in the coronavirus era and have achieved things ranging from the digitisation of objects to innovative mediation formats that would otherwise not have been possible.
