“Friends of Russia around the Chancellor”: Scholz in criticism

Representatives of Vladimir Putin sit in the sponsoring association of a Berlin museum. The Chancellery is now said to have prevented their exclusion – because they were too close to the Kremlin?

Berlin – Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) and his advisors come into focus in an explosive case involving a Berlin museum. The sponsoring association of the German-Russian Museum Karlshorst has always included representatives of the Russian Ministry of Defense and Foreign Ministry. Their prominent ministers Sergei Shoigu and Sergei Lavrov are among them Vladimir Putin's inner circle and key warmongers in Ukraine. Non-Russian members of the sponsoring association therefore want to end the cooperation. But a veto is said to have come from the Chancellery. There is an accusation that Scholz is surrounded by “friends of Russia”. The case is explosive. And he is complicated.

Russian foreign and defense ministries are members of a Berlin museum

“The museum is actually in a difficult situation at the moment,” says its director Dr. Jörg Morré told our editorial team. Karlshorst is located in the east of Berlin and deals with German-Russian history in the 20th century. The members of the sponsoring association “Museum Berlin-Karlshorst eV” are made up of institutions, most of which come from Germany and Russia. The official club members also include the Russian Foreign Ministry and the Ministry of Defense. However, the association is fully financed by the German state.

In addition to the members, the museum's scientific advisory board also includes German and Russian representatives. As early as 2023, consideration was given to kicking the Russian members out of the club because of the war in Ukraine. Nothing came of it.

At the beginning of this year, the non-Russian advisory board members emphasized that they did not want to work in a committee with their Russian colleagues, which means that 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. That means: the Russian ministries. But also: The German Ministry of Defense (BMVg), the Foreign Office (AA) and State Minister Claudia Roth (Greens) as the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and Media (BKM). The latter reports directly to the Chancellery.

Strack-Zimmermann (FDP) on the blockade: “Friends of Russia around the Chancellor”

According to FDP defense politician Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann, the German ministries have agreed to the advisory board's request. Then the Chancellery intervened: “The fact that the Chancellery blocked the exclusion of Russian state advisory board members after the approval of the AA, BKM and the BMVg shows that the Russian forces of persistence in the Chancellery are greater than feared,” Strack-Zimmermann tells our editorial team. For the Free Democrat, warmongers continue to sit in a museum financed by German taxes. “This is intolerable and unacceptable, but shockingly it appears to be supported by the Federal Chancellery.”

Strack-Zimmermann sees the “Karlshorst case” as dangerously symbolic. “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. “This offends the battered Ukraine and sends a fatal signal of weakness to Russia.”

Is there an internationally binding treaty between Germany and Russia?

When asked by our editorial team about the blockade allegation, 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?

The Chancellery refers to contracts, the government spokesman refers to “verbal notes between Germany and the Russian Federation that are binding under international law,” which, according to the Chancellery, are the basis for the association’s founding in 1992. 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.”

Museum director in a dilemma between historical and current responsibility

Until then, Shoigu and Lavrov's ministries will continue to be part of the state-funded Karlshorst Museum. Museum director Morré is caught in a dilemma between historical and current responsibility. On the one hand, the museum's exhibitions remind us of the atrocities committed in Germany during the Nazi era. “On the other hand, Russian pol
itics 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,” says Morré . In order to prepare history without propaganda, the museum is now increasingly working with Russians living in exile – apart from the official representatives of Russia.