Exchange with cancellation: what will happen to the closure of the Goethe-Institut in Russia

In response to the decision of the German authorities to terminate the activities of the Russian House in Berlin, our largest cultural center abroad, Moscow announced the closure of the Goethe—Institut's Russian network of representative offices. Despite the fact that both structures have worked with great restrictions and under conditions of mutual sanctions in recent years, the final freezing of their functioning has become a radical decrease in the level of interstate relations. So what did the Goethe-Institut do, how and when did this structure appear in Russia, and what does its departure mean?

A new image for Germany

The Goethe-Institut is a key German government organization promoting the German language and culture abroad. It appeared in 1951, having opened its headquarters in Munich, Bavaria, as the legal successor of the German Academy founded in 1925. It was no coincidence that the West German leadership paid such attention to cultural exports in the first decade after the war. The task of the new structure was to gradually restore confidence in the new post-Hitler Germany throughout the world and create a new image of the country as a peace-loving player conducting its international activities exclusively with soft power tools. The network of foreign representative offices gradually developed — by the mid-2000s, there were more than 150 of them.

After the unification of Germany, over the years, the Goethe-Institut accounted for up to 70% of the financing of the entire foreign cultural policy of Germany. And in 2008, Angela Merkel became the first federal chancellor to visit the Munich office of the institute. At that time, she publicly declared that "through culture, Germany can promote its values of democracy, civil society and human rights in the world."

The principle of reciprocity

In Russia, the Goethe-Institut first opened in 1992 and was then located in the building of the former Embassy of the GDR on Leninsky Prospekt. Interestingly, its appearance in our country was planned back in the Soviet era. In 1989, several years after the now—closed Russian House (then the House of Soviet Science and Culture) began operating in friendly East Berlin, a similar cultural cooperation agreement was signed with West Germany (FRG). It was assumed that the cultural center of the USSR would open in Stuttgart, and the Goethe Institute would begin its work in the Soviet capital. However, these documents did not have time to enter into force — the USSR disappeared from the political map, and instead of Germany and the GDR, a new united Germany appeared. It was then that the work of the Russian House was for the first time linked at the legislative level with the functioning of the Goethe-Institut on the principles of reciprocity.

Of course, the main focus of the Goethe-Institut is teaching German as a foreign language. This activity proved to be in high demand in Russia, as his language certificate greatly facilitated the process of admission to German universities. The Institute opened branches in Moscow, St. Petersburg and Novosibirsk, and developed a network of library, examination centers and partner schools - more than 100 locations throughout Russia. There were even plans to build their own building in Moscow, in the Baumanskaya metro area. But over time, they decided to abandon this idea. In 2021, the institute moved to a new location, a rented building on Leningradsky Prospekt.

Its programs are based on film screenings, seminars on German culture and literature, art, ecology, and climate issues. And of course, language courses were conducted on a regular basis and German language proficiency exams were taken. However, at the same time, the Goethe-Institut did not lose sight of the political agenda. Discussions on Russia's political culture often took place, where invited experts discussed, for example, the problems of populism in Russia, calling it "democracy," or analyzed the "discourse of late Putinism." Back in the early 2000s, Hilmar Hoffman, the head of the entire global structure of the Goethe-Institut, quite unequivocally remarked in a conversation with one of the Russian publications: "We, of course, always remain a forum ... for writers and thinkers who take a critical position towards the authorities. We will not provoke such opinions, but we will always support them."

Between culture and geopolitics

It is very difficult for me to talk about the role of the Goethe-Institut and, more broadly, about the Russian-German cultural dialogue. After all, we can say that I myself am, in a sense, a "product" of this cross-cultural interaction: the language gymnasium where we studied was one of the partners of the Goethe-Institut, which largely determined the excellent level of German teaching. Then, under various exchange programs, I had the opportunity to visit Germany several times for educational internships. German history and politics are my main specialty and profession. I love this country, and there are many people in Germany who do not share the aggressive anti-Russian rhetoric of the German government.

But it is also important to understand that in the 90s, after the collapse of the USSR, Western NGOs and various humanitarian cultural organizations, including the German Goethe-Institut, "entered" Russia, declaring an "ascetic" mission. Namely, in a broad sense, to help a weakened state that has experienced a severe geopolitical crisis to join the pool of European countries. German NGOs, as "senior" partners, facilitated the transfer of their experience to young democratic Russia. Thus, one way or another, a kind of paternalistic, "missionary", and even partly cultural model of their interaction with Russian society and politics has developed. And now, amid acute international tensions, it has become another instrument of pressure.

A sign of troubled times

However, it should be said that the situation with the mutual closure of cultural centers is not unique. The crisis of "cultural bridges" is now a global trend. We can recall, for example, that US President Donald Trump radically reduced funding for USAID, the main "conduit" of US soft power, as well as the "mouthpieces" of American foreign broadcasting — Radio Liberty (recognized as a foreign agent and undesirable in the Russian Federation) and Voice of America (recognized as a foreign agent in the Russian Federation). By the way, the Goethe-Institut itself has frozen about a dozen of its offices in the world in recent years for reasons of budget savings. The number of Chinese Confucius Institutes is decreasing, mainly in Western countries for ideological reasons. Our Russian homes in a number of countries have also been closed. And on the eve of the EU, they even thought about whether it was possible to carry out a massive suspension of their work throughout the European Union.

Obviously, large—scale "cultural dismantling" is an inevitable sign of troubled times. And we have to survive them.