There was a growing risk of a global culture war amid rising anti-freedom tendencies among world powers, warned Wolfram Weimer, Germany’s Minister of State for Culture, singling out the US as a particular cause for concern.
In a speech at the Order Pour le Mérite for Science and the Arts event in Berlin on June 1, Weimer described an emerging “global culture war” that threatened the independence of science and the arts, not only in authoritarian states but increasingly within Western democracies.
“The United States in particular stands for an anti-freedom current,” Weimer said, claiming that repressive attitudes were beginning to take hold in places where freedom of thought was once a given.
The Order Pour le Mérite for Science and the Arts, founded in the 19th century by King Frederick William IV, is one of Germany’s most distinguished cultural institutions, with around 80 members worldwide, including numerous Nobel laureates. It operates under the patronage of President Frank-Walter Steinmeier. During the ceremony, four new members were inducted into the Order.
Weimer argued that neo-nationalist ideologies were no longer confined to regimes including China and Russia but were also gaining traction in countries such as India and the US. All those nations, he claimed, now exhibited an underlying hostility to Enlightenment values of individual liberty, progress, tolerance, fraternity, constitutional government and separation of church and state.
Weimer described this “attack on the Enlightenment” as a broad pushback against reason, pluralism and cultural autonomy.
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Although he acknowledged that democracies could not be equated with dictatorships, he warned of what he said was an unmistakable drift towards cultural repression in both contexts. “In the West, too, there are more nationalisms that are taking shape and taking on repressive features,” he said.
Weimer ‘s concern was echoed by Hermann Parzinger, Chancellor of the Order and former president of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation.
Parzinger warned of a “culture war from the Right” taking root within Germany, particularly at the municipal and state levels.
He pointed to efforts by right-wing forces to influence cultural programming and staffing decisions — not only in eastern regions but increasingly in western Germany, including northern Hesse and the Ruhr area.
“All I can say is: Resist the beginnings,” he cautioned.
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