Friends of Russia in the Chancellery? Explosive allegations about the Berlin museum

A Berlin museum and its Russian members are causing controversy. Chancellor Scholz and his advisors are coming into focus.

Berlin – In a sensitive case involving a museum in Berlin, Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) and his team of advisors are becoming the center of attention. The sponsoring association of the German-Russian Museum Karlshorst has counted representatives of the Russian Defense and Foreign Ministries among its members since its founding. These include the prominent ministers Sergei Shoigu and Sergei Lavrov, who are among the closest confidants of Wladimir Putin and the main actors in the war in Ukraine. Some members of the sponsoring association who do not come from Russia would therefore like to end the cooperation. However, the Chancellery is said to have vetoed this step. It is claimed that Scholz is surrounded by “friends of Russia”. This case is not only explosive, but also complex.

Russian warmongers are members of the Berlin museum

“The museum is actually in a difficult situation at the moment,” explains the museum’s director, Dr. Jörg Morré, to our editorial team. The Karlshorst Museum, located in the east of Berlin, is dedicated to German-Russian history of the 20th century. The members of the sponsoring association “Museum Berlin-Karlshorst eV” mainly consist of institutions from Germany and Russia. These include the Russian Foreign and Defense Ministries. However, the association is financed entirely by the German state.

In addition to the members, the museum's scientific advisory board also consists of German and Russian representatives. As early as 2023, due to the Ukraine war thought about expelling the Russian members from the club. However, this was not implemented.

FDP defense politician: “Friends of Russia in the Chancellor’s environment”

Earlier this year, the non-Russian members of the Advisory Board expressed their desire to stop working with their Russian colleagues. As a result, the advisory board is now unable to act in its advisory role. The members of the sponsoring association are responsible for the composition of the advisory board, including the Russian ministries, but also the German Ministry of Defense (BMVg), the Foreign Office (AA) and the State Minister Claudia Roth (Greens) as the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and Media (BKM ). The latter reports directly to the Chancellery.

Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann, defense politician for the FDP, reports that the German ministries have agreed to the advisory board's request. But then the Chancellery intervened: “The fact that the Chancellery is blocking the exclusion of Russian state advisory board members after the approval of the AA, BKM and the BMVg alone shows that the Russian forces of persistence in the Chancellery are greater than feared,” Strack-Zimmermann told our editorial team . In their opinion, warmongers continue to sit in a museum that is financed by German taxpayers' money. “This is intolerable and unacceptable, but shockingly it appears to be supported by the Federal Chancellery.”

FDP politician warns: Fatal signal of weakness towards Russia

Strack-Zimmermann sees the “Karlshorst case” as having a dangerous symbolic character. “It signals that the friends of Russia around the Chancellor still have a shockingly strong power to act,” criticized the chairwoman of the Defense Committee in the Bundestag. “That pushes the abused one Ukraine in front of your head and sends a fatal signal of weakness to Russia.”

When asked by our editorial team about the accusation of blockade, the Federal Chancellery pointed out that it would not comment on internal coordination processes. Nevertheless, there is also great dissatisfaction with the situation in the museum there, as a government spokesman said when asked: “From the Federal Government's point of view, a continuation of the cooperation with Russian state representatives as part of the work of
the Berlin-Karlshorst Museum is necessary because of the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine and the use of distorted historical narratives to legitimize this war by the Russian leadership is currently unimaginable.” So what is the truth in Strack-Zimmermann’s accusation of a blockade?

Are the Chancellor's hands tied because of international law?

The Chancellery refers to the contracts on which the association was founded in 1992, which the government spokesman refers to as “verbal notes between Germany and the Russian Federation that are binding under international law”. Accordingly, despite their war crimes in Ukraine, Putin and his government are entitled to appropriate representation in the museum association through an internationally binding treaty with the Federal Republic of Germany. The Chancellery continues: “The departments involved are currently working on finding a new, long-term, viable solution for the museum’s sponsoring association.”

Until then, the Shoigu and Lavrov ministries will continue to be part of the state-funded Karlshorst Museum. This means that museum director Morré finds himself in a dilemma between historical and current responsibility. With its exhibitions, the museum examines Germany's crimes during the Nazi era. “On the other hand, Russian politics is breaking with international law and has exploited public engagement with history to such an extent for its political purposes that a collaboration like that initiated in the Berlin-Karlshorst Museum 30 years ago is currently not possible,” said Morré . In order to ensure historical processing without propaganda, the museum is now increasingly cooperating with Russians who live in exile – far away from official Russian representatives.

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