FDP on culture and media

The FDP wants a culture act for Hesse that secures arts funding over the long term and sets a stable legal framework. State spending on culture is to be made permanent and increased, while funding procedures are to be made less bureaucratic.

The FDP wants a culture law for Hesse. The law should secure money for culture for the long term. The state should spend more on culture. Applying for funding should be easier. More money should reach the artists.

The act is meant to give artists, venues and institutions planning security. Higher fees for performers and rising energy and staff costs should not lead to a smaller cultural offering. The state's various funding instruments are to be reviewed and readjusted. Funding structures should be transparent, digital and easy to access; the FDP rejects ideological requirements for arts and culture.

The FDP wants to give schools their own culture budget, based on the number of students and managed by the schools themselves. Music schools are to get more state money so that lessons are available across the whole state.

Schools should get their own money for culture. The amount depends on the number of children. The school decides how to use it. Music schools should get more money from the state. To get it, they need well-trained teachers.

Only music schools with professionally trained teachers and certification as a recognized music school in Hesse would be funded; uniform standards and more transparency are planned for private music schools. An additional voucher system would tie funding more closely to the students. The FDP also wants to support theater for young audiences, youth competitions in music and painting, academies and the Juvenale youth festival. School theater centers would be strengthened and two more, for the central and southern regions, moved forward.

The FDP wants libraries in Hesse to stop charging fees and to be allowed to open on Sundays. It sees libraries as easily accessible places for education, culture and digital participation.

Libraries should cost nothing. They should be allowed to open on Sundays too. The state should give towns and cities more money for this. There should be libraries all over Hesse. They should become meeting places for everyone.

Municipalities would get more state money for equipping and networking libraries. A library development plan would coordinate needs and secure a network across the whole state. Libraries are to develop into central meeting places.

The FDP wants to give the state theaters and state-funded stages long-term planning security through a theater pact and to keep all venues. For museums, it calls for a plan for cooperation and distinct profiles, plus help with digital offerings.

The FDP wants to make an agreement with the theaters. It is called a theater pact. It lets theaters plan for the long term. All venues should stay. Museums should work together more. They should also show their art digitally.

The pact would set out the theaters' tasks, structure and cooperation; the houses are to work closely together. On museums, the FDP backs the decentralized approach and wants professional cultural management that brings in municipal and private museums together with the Hessian museum association. Museum shops would get marketing help. Digitalization includes cataloging cultural assets, digital reproductions, publicly available data, the use of artificial intelligence and free licenses.

The FDP wants to continue funding the preservation of historic monuments and to reconcile their protection with their use. For major privately owned monuments whose owners cannot afford the upkeep, it seeks a model based on the British National Trust.

The FDP wants to keep funding historic monuments. Some owners cannot afford to keep up their monument. They should be able to hand it over to the public. The public owner must then preserve it.

The FDP argues that monuments are best preserved when they are in use. Outstanding monuments in private hands could be voluntarily transferred to public ownership, which would then be obliged to maintain them. The party also wants the Paulskirche in Frankfurt to be recognized as a German national monument. To that end, it wants to act jointly with the federal government and the city of Frankfurt in the church's anniversary year.

The FDP wants to keep funding the documenta art exhibition but to revise its structures together with the city of Kassel and the federal government. The reason is the antisemitic incidents at documenta 15, which are to be examined by researchers.

The documenta is a big art show in Kassel. The FDP wants to keep funding it. At the last show there were incidents hostile to Jews. So the documenta should be organized in a new way.

The platform calls the documenta one of the most important exhibitions of contemporary art, with special significance for Kassel and northern Hesse. The FDP wants to preserve artistic and curatorial independence as far as possible while requiring compliance with the law and with values such as fighting antisemitism. The academic review of the incidents is meant to yield recommendations for the entire publicly funded cultural sector. In the party's view, publicly funded art should be guided by such values.

The FDP wants Hesse's collections to research the origins of their holdings, especially Nazi-looted art and objects from colonial contexts. Works that were acquired unjustly should be returned where possible.

Museums should check where their objects come from. Some objects were stolen from their owners, for example in the Nazi era. Such objects should be given back if possible. This also applies to objects from former colonies.

The platform names the full digitization of Hesse's collections as the basis for this research. For human remains, restitution should be examined and carried out as a priority. The FDP aims for close cooperation with the societies and regions the objects come from.

The FDP wants to preserve memorial sites and places of remembrance and to develop a statewide memorial concept. Every student should visit a memorial for the victims of National Socialism once during their school years.

The FDP wants to preserve and support memorial sites. Every student should visit a memorial for the victims of the Nazis once. Local projects such as Stolpersteine also get support.

The planned memorial concept is meant to cover remembrance work, education, and teaching. The FDP also wants to support civic engagement and local projects such as Stolpersteine (stumbling stones), memorial plaques, and documentation. The redesign of the Hadamar memorial is to be funded by the state because, according to the platform, it is of statewide importance.

The FDP supports public broadcasting and the Hessischer Rundfunk (Hesse's public broadcaster) but considers the parallel national services of ARD and ZDF no longer necessary. In the future, a single institution should fulfill the nationwide mandate, while the Hessischer Rundfunk stays responsible for regional programming.

The FDP wants to keep public broadcasting. But ARD and ZDF should become one broadcaster for all of Germany. The Hessischer Rundfunk stays responsible for Hesse. It should trim its programming.

The platform wants to distinguish between a national and a regional broadcasting mandate. The FDP expects the Hessischer Rundfunk to streamline its programming on its own responsibility. It names information, education, advice, culture and, to a limited extent, entertainment as core tasks. Entertainment should continue to account for less than 20 percent of program spending and no more than 20 percent of airtime.

The FDP wants to transfer the hr-Sinfonieorchester and the hr-Bigband into a public-law foundation. The state and the Hessischer Rundfunk would fund it jointly so that the ensembles are secured for the long term.

The Hessischer Rundfunk has an orchestra and a big band. The FDP wants to put both into a foundation. The state of Hesse and the broadcaster should pay for it. This should keep the music groups going for good.

The platform describes both ensembles as an essential part of Hesse's cultural life. It points to their work in education, schools, and youth programs and to their role for culture and tourism in rural areas. The transfer to the foundation is to take place as part of the broadcasting reform.

The FDP aims for a noticeable cut in the broadcasting fee and sees no need for further increases. The Hessischer Rundfunk's old pension burdens would be spun off, the Beitragsservice (fee collection agency) abolished, and the fee collected by the tax offices.

The FDP wants the broadcasting fee to go down. The Hessischer Rundfunk should save money. The fee collection agency should be closed. The tax office should collect the fee instead.

Broadcasters should be adequately funded but also use every chance to save money and cooperate more to avoid duplicate programming. The Hessischer Rundfunk's legacy pension commitments, along with the reserves, would go into a "pension bad bank" without taxpayers being liable. Staff and pension costs would be capped at 30 percent of the total budget, and retirement provision would run through legally independent, funded pension institutions. The FDP expects collection by the tax offices to cut administrative costs and reduce uncertainty about data protection.

The FDP wants to abolish the license requirement for broadcasting and replace it with a simple notification to the state media authorities. Private broadcasters should get enough frequencies and more room to expand.

Private broadcasters need a license today. The FDP wants to change that. Broadcasters should only have to notify the media authority. Live streaming should need no license at all.

Live streaming would be exempt from licensing in general, whether commercial or not. The FDP wants to reform Hesse's private broadcasting law so that it fits digital developments. It wants to keep supporting local and regional private radio stations. Rules from the analog era that it regards as bureaucratic hurdles would be dropped.