The closing window for diversity in Berlin’s cultural scene

The German arts world, once at the forefront of discussions on diversity and inclusion, is witnessing a dramatic reversal. In her recent feature for The Guardian, Berlin-based author Fatma Aydemir examines how the energy that once fueled anti-racist, feminist, and decolonial initiatives is fading, giving way to what she calls a “hollow neutrality.”

Drawing on the premiere of choreographer Joana Tischkau’s new performance Runnin’ at Berlin’s HAU theatre, Aydemir situates the arts in the broader context of political backlash, institutional fatigue, and the global retrenchment against diversity.

In sports, the Black athlete is often mythologised: supernatural speed, exceptional strength, genetics as magic. And yet, in public spaces, a Black person running is met with suspicion, fear or anger, she writes. 

The piece uses pedestrian movements—walking, standing, sitting—to highlight how the supposedly “neutral” body is anything but neutral when it is racialised. For the audience, Aydemir notes, this turned into a “playful mirror” of Berlin’s cultural landscape, where questions of participation and unconscious bias are increasingly absent from the conversation—not because they have been resolved, but because they are being deliberately sidelined.

This shift is quite dramatic from the one seen a few years ago following Black Lives Matter and #MeToo, when German cultural institutions rushed to embrace diversity initiatives. Panels, quotas, and commitments to change proliferated, particularly in Berlin. 

In the US, the backlash has been overt, with bans on diversity training in federal institutions and campaigns against teaching systemic racism in schools. In Germany, the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) has seized on similar rhetoric, attacking cultural institutions that platform marginalised voices as “anti-German” or “extremist.”

Progressive cultural workers often defended Eurocentric norms under the guise of “quality,” while diversity initiatives were dismissed as bureaucratic hurdles. In moments of public controversy, these disagreements have been weaponised by the political right.

Aydemir recalls the 2023 episode when the Haus der Kulturen der Welt awarded its international literary prize to Senegalese author Mohamed Mbougar Sarr. Two jury members later claimed that identity and race had overshadowed literary merit—allegations rejected by the HKW but eagerly amplified by the AfD.

The danger, Aydemir concludes, is not only political but cultural. When institutions retreat from diversity missions, the cost is more than representation—it is a narrowing of truth itself.

In the end, the so-called neutrality being invoked is itself a strategy—a return to the old status quo, dressed up as objectivity. Tischkau’s Runnin’, Aydemir writes, embodies this contradiction without ever needing to explain it outright.

By Sabina Mammadli