Designated Cultural State Minister Wolfram Weimer defends himself against the accusation of being a right-wing ideologue and announces his intention to use his position to push back against the Alternative for Germany (AfD). “I am a cultural advocate, not a cultural warrior” Weimer told “Stern.” “I have been writing against the AfD and the ugly machinations of right-wing populism for years.” Nationalism is foreign to him and instead, he is a passionate European.
The partial and sometimes heated criticism of his appointment can be explained by Weimer as “political camp thinking.” There is always a side that suspiciously looks at the other and distrusts them. He has always been skeptical of that. “The broad space of the bourgeois center, regardless of whether we see the world from a more red, yellow, green, or politically black-turquoise perspective, should remain in open discourse, listen to each other, respect each other and find political compromises” said the journalist and publisher. “If we in the center can no longer achieve this discursively, then the populists from the right and left will push us in a completely different way.”
He sees one of the central tasks of the new government as “through constructive, issue-oriented policy of middle-of-the-road solutions, also through a cultural mode of democratic cohesion, to push back against the AfD.” As the new Cultural State Minister, he wants to “strengthen and support the wonderful diversity of the great German cultural landscape.” Anyone who expects a cultural revolution or any cultural fight from him will be disappointed.