CDU on culture and media

The CDU wants to keep funding and expanding existing music education programs because, in its view, music supports children's development and language learning. It also plans a recorder project, culture buses and a new institute for cultural education.

The CDU wants more music for children. Children starting school should get a recorder. Buses should take rural children to cultural places. A new institute should steer all the programs.

In the recorder project, children starting school receive an instrument and teachers get matching materials. Culture buses are to bring young people from rural areas to the cities and, in turn, carry offerings from cultural institutions to the countryside. An institute of cultural education is to centrally coordinate the measures already in place.

The CDU wants to make heritage protection more practical and affordable. The register of protected buildings is to be updated, the law adjusted, and agency responsibilities streamlined. Buyers of listed buildings are to receive funding for renovation.

Old buildings are often protected by law. The CDU wants to make these rules simpler. Owners should get money for repairs. The list of protected buildings should be checked again.

The register of protected buildings is to be brought up to date by the end of the legislative term so owners can plan better. In justified cases, it should be possible to apply for removal of monument or ensemble protection. Buyers of protected buildings are to be supported with funding for renovation and upkeep. Advice and funding options, especially for village and town centers, are to be shown in a central database. The upper heritage authority is to handle only especially significant monuments.

The CDU wants to actively support traditions, customs and cultural identity and create a dedicated Heimat (homeland) division in the agriculture ministry. Dialects are to be strengthened in daycare centers and schools, local studies sharpened in elementary school, and a "House of Hessian History" prepared.

The CDU wants to do more for local identity and old customs. One ministry should get its own division for this. Children should learn more about dialects in daycare and school. Town signs may also show the name in dialect. A new building should show the history of Hesse.

A "Dialect Round Table" with experts from schools, academia and the arts is to develop proposals, alongside a social media contest and stronger dialect research. Municipalities are to get the legal option of adding the dialect name to town signs. The #hessenverliebt campaign is meant to get students excited about the state. The location of the House of Hessian History is to be chosen by competition. The platform's reasoning is that regional culture and language are losing importance.

The CDU wants to give special support to cultural life and clubs in rural areas because, in its view, they shape quality of life and cohesion in villages. It plans mobile cultural offerings and more construction and modernization of sports facilities.

The CDU wants to give more support to culture and clubs in the countryside. Museums should come to villages by bus. Rural movie theaters should get funding. Sports fields, gyms and swimming pools should be renovated.

Museum buses are to stop at schoolyards and market squares to bring museum offerings to all parts of the state. Rural movie theaters and traveling cinemas showing current films in community halls are to receive funding. The CDU wants to keep supporting cultural education, for example through the “LandKulturPerlen” program. The program describes sports and cultural clubs as what holds village communities together, which is why fields, gyms and pools are to be modernized.

The CDU wants to keep alive the memory of the flight, expulsion and deportation of Germans after World War II. To that end, the day of remembrance is to be secured, the topic expanded in school lessons, and research and cultural preservation funded.

After World War II, many Germans had to leave their homes in the East. The CDU wants people to remember this. The day of remembrance in Hesse should stay. Students should learn more about it. Towns and counties should look after the memorials.

The party refers to Section 96 of the Federal Expellees Act, which makes preserving the cultural heritage of the expulsion regions a task of the state. Archives, museums and libraries are to be secured and studied, and the research focus at the University of Giessen and the Herder Institute is to be strengthened. Because the associations are losing members, municipalities and counties are gradually to take over the care of monuments, memorial stones and heritage rooms. School trips to relevant memorials and museums are to be funded, and the topic is to get more space in class. The CDU also wants to expand contacts with Germans who stayed in their regions of origin in Europe.

The CDU wants to support Hesse's entire cultural scene, from major institutions to traditional customs and choirs, film, music, literature and urban arts. Volunteers are to be relieved, for example by having the state cover GEMA (music licensing) fees and by simplifying funding procedures; the party also rejects what it calls cancel culture.

The CDU wants to support culture across Hesse. This includes theaters, museums, choirs, carnival, film and books. Clubs should have less paperwork. The state should pay GEMA fees for clubs. These are fees for playing music in public.

For non-commercial events held by nonprofit associations, the state would cover GEMA fees through framework agreements. Grant rules are to be simplified and modernized, including through initiatives at federal and European level. A "Kulturbus" would make it easier for school classes to reach cultural and memorial sites, and the "Kulturkoffer" program for children and young people would be expanded. Support for music schools, community arts, literature, libraries, film, film festivals and rural cinemas is also to continue or grow. The CDU expects the public broadcaster Hessischer Rundfunk to raise its stake in the state film company and provide more money for outside productions.

The CDU wants to continue museum funding, keep strongly supporting the three state museums and maintain a fixed budget for art acquisitions. A non-commercial NFT platform is meant to make museum holdings that are not on display known to the public.

The CDU wants to keep funding museums in Hesse. Museums should be able to buy important works of art. Many artworks sit in storage. The CDU wants to show them online. Children and young people should learn more about art.

Funding continues in partnership with the Hessian Museum Association, with special attention to volunteers in regional museums. At the state museums, educational outreach for young people is to be strengthened. The German Leather Museum in Offenbach and the Jewish Museum in Frankfurt will keep receiving support for their operations. A new "Heimatbudget" is planned for cultural sites of supra-regional importance. Municipalities are encouraged to cooperate voluntarily along the lines of the Kulturfonds Frankfurt RheinMain.

The CDU wants to preserve Kassel's documenta as a globally important art exhibition and thoroughly overhaul its structures to that end. Dealing with the events surrounding antisemitic content at the most recent edition is to be a priority.

Documenta is a big art show in Kassel. At the last show there were images hostile to Jews. The CDU wants this to be examined closely. Documenta should get new rules and a new structure. There may also be a museum of its own.

The reorganization is to include how crises and complaints are handled. According to the platform, there must be no place for antisemitic or discriminatory content. The CDU wants to examine how the exhibition can have an impact during the five years between editions. One possible approach it names is a separate documenta museum in Kassel that would permanently show selected works and could be linked to the planned documenta institute.

The CDU wants to give priority in future budgets to renovating state-owned palaces, castles and gardens and to turn the palace administration into a major provider of cultural education in rural areas. Funding for heritage conservation is also to grow, with faster procedures at the authorities.

Hesse has many palaces, castles and gardens. The CDU wants to repair and preserve them. There should be more learning programs there. Old protected buildings should also get more help. The offices in charge should decide faster.

The HERKULES cultural building program is to be carried out over the coming years; so-called "third places" are also planned as community meeting points. The State Palaces and Gardens and the Museumslandschaft Hessen Kassel would receive more money, become more digital and work more closely with municipalities and tourism associations. In heritage conservation, upper and lower authorities are to cooperate more closely and municipalities are to get more leeway. Private initiatives and associations that preserve individual monuments would get more support. A central archaeological finds depot is also to be built in the coming legislative term.

The CDU wants to keep funding and renovating the three state theaters and to increase state support for festivals. The independent theater scene is also to receive state money so that ensembles can plan reliably.

Hesse has three big state theaters. The CDU wants to keep paying for them and repair the buildings. Festivals should also get more money. Independent theater groups should get money from the state. This helps them plan ahead.

Cooperation with the theaters in Giessen and Marburg and with the Bad Hersfeld Festival is to continue and grow. More state money is planned for other established festivals, including those in Bad Vilbel, Fulda and Heppenheim, the Rheingau Musik Festival and the Weilburg palace concerts. The CDU wants to hold talks with the city of Frankfurt and the broadcaster Hessischer Rundfunk about the future of Frankfurt's municipal stages and the HR symphony orchestra. In music, the "Jugend musiziert" competition, the state music council and the state music academy would keep receiving support.

The CDU wants to draw up Hesse's first overall plan for memorials and sites of remembrance. It would rest on three pillars: the victims of National Socialism, the history of East Germany, and sites of democratic history.

Memorial sites remind people of important and terrible times in history. The CDU wants to make a big plan for them. It should remember the victims of the Nazi era. It should also remember East Germany and the history of democracy.

According to the platform, memorials, learning sites and border museums contribute to an understanding of democracy and to historical and civic education. The plan is meant to respect the distinct character of each of the three pillars and to develop the institutions further; volunteers are considered indispensable. The Point Alpha memorial is to be expanded to show the role of the Federal Border Guard, customs and Bundeswehr engineers at the inner-German border. The Schifflersgrund border museum is also named as an important site of remembrance.

The CDU calls for a fundamental reform of public broadcasting aimed at quality, transparency, stable license fees and balanced reporting. It stands by an independent Hessischer Rundfunk (Hesse's public broadcaster) and the state media authority, and takes a critical view of EU media regulation.

The CDU wants to change public broadcasters like ARD and ZDF. They should report in a neutral way and work openly. The broadcasting fee should stay as stable as possible. Hesse's own broadcaster should stay independent. The CDU is critical of new EU media rules.

Opinion and advocacy journalism is to be clearly labeled. Independent outside reviews are to check regularly whether programming principles are met, and the results are to be published. Funding is to follow the broadcasters' mandate, with fees kept as stable as possible. Hessischer Rundfunk is to focus more on regional content and reach more young people digitally. The CDU wants better conditions so that media professionals settle in Hesse. It sees the European Media Freedom Act as a threat to Germany's federal media system.

The CDU wants to expand media literacy programs across Hesse and bundle existing offerings in a single concept. People of all ages should be able to assess information and spot fake news.

The CDU wants people to handle media well. They should be able to spot false news. The many programs for this should work together better. Older people should also learn more about digital media.

The basis is Hesse's media law, which the CDU calls the most modern in Germany. Safe use of digital media is to be taught in schools and in adult education. The youngest users in particular are to be protected from harmful content by learning to use media independently. Older people are to get support in gaining digital skills. Media use is to be accessible for people with disabilities.