Culture war How Gaza has deepened divisions in the German arts world

Two weeks after Hamas's brutal attack on Israel on 7 October 2023, Berlin's senate for culture commissioned a legal report to establish whether a cultural centre in the German capital's Neukölln district had violated the city's antisemitism prevention guidelines and should lose its funding as a result.

- Philip Oltermann

In question were statements that the cultural centre had posted on its social media channels in response to Israel's retaliation against Gaza - including phrases such as "apartheid state" and "settler colonialism". The investigation was also looking at the centre's plans to host a wake by a Jewish organisation to commemorate the victims of 7 October.

The Oyoun cultural centre occupies the space where art and activism overlap: it is dedicated to championing works from a "de-colonial, queer-feminist, neurodiverse and class-critical perspective". This has got it into difficult terrain: a strident stance on the war in Gaza has been criticised by some members of its own community.

Yet when it came, the report commissioned by the Berlin senate was clear: "No antisemitic activity on behalf of Oyoun is identifiable," it concluded. It was a finding that made its next move particularly surprising: despite the conclusion, it announced it would be withdrawing the centre's funding of about €1m (£857,000) a year.

Less than 10 years ago, Germany was held up as a beacon of openness and inclusivity in a western world rocked by Brexit and Donald Trump. Angela Merkel's decision to take in thousands of refugees displaced by the war in Syria boosted her country's reputation in progressive circles, with many international artists and academics choosing to make the German capital their new home.

Yet the conflict in the Middle East is highlighting fissures in society. The war has put society in many western countries under intense strain. But nowhere in Europe has the fallout been as focused on the cultural sector as in Germany, where an international and ethnically diverse arts scene has rubbed up against a particularly strong pro-Israel consensus among the politicians and officials who oversee its finances.