Berlin’s top culture official, British-born Sarah Wedl-Wilson, has stood down over a funding scandal involving the the irregular distribution of €2.6m in public money for programmes to fight antisemitism.
As culture senator for the Berlin regional government, Wedl-Wilson had already sacked a state secretary in her department, Oliver Friederici, over the affair this week, but the opposition called him a mere scapegoat.
The city’s mayor, Kai Wegner, who is waging a tough fight for re-election in September, said on Friday he accepted her resignation.
“Sarah Wedl-Wilson has assumed political and personal responsibility – for that she deserves respect,” said Wegner, who must now find a replacement to manage the department with a €110m annual budget for the remaining five months of his term.
Wedl-Wilson, who for weeks had resisted accepting blame in the affair, earlier on Friday declared she was leaving office “above all to prevent harm to the vital fight against rising antisemitism in Berlin”.
A state auditor’s investigation released this week found that the funds were “arbitrarily” and “clearly unlawfully” distributed to 13 projects on a list compiled by lawmakers from the co-ruling Christian Democrats (CDU), despite concerns raised by culture office staff that the groups had not been properly vetted.
Media reports said Friederici, whom Wedl-Wilson fired on Tuesday, was among the most outspoken whistleblowers.
Wedl-Wilson, who does not belong to a political party, signed off on the funding nevertheless, after a pressure campaign by the CDU representatives.
The public inquiry focused on recipients including the Zera Institute, an “interdisciplinary thinktank”, which received €390,000 in support from the public purse.
Soon after its founding in 2024, the director, Maral Salmassi, called the Jewish billionaire philanthropist George Soros, a frequent target of antisemitic propaganda, a “parasite” on social media, according to the news magazine Der Spiegel. She later apologised.
Last September, Salmassi compared the Guardian to the Nazi publication Der Stürmer over a report in which Israelis were asked about their opinions of the war in Gaza. Salmassi described her remarks as a “polemical provocation”.
Matthias J Becker, who was hired by the institute to research antisemitism online, allegedly falsely claimed to work at the University of Cambridge, Der Spiegel said. He told the magazine he had not misrepresented his affiliations.
After the report, Salmassi posted a statement on the institute’s website condemning a “politically motivated press campaign” against her and the organisation.
The review by the Berlin auditing office that led to Wedl-Wilson’s resignation focused on the process of awarding funding to the 13 groups and not the merits of their work. It must now be decided whether the organisations will have to pay back any public financing they received.
Wedl-Wilson, who has British and Austrian nationality and a background in classical music management, took office last May, succeeding Joe Chialo of the CDU, who stepped down over swingeing cuts to subsidies for the arts in the capital.
She thanked Wegner for the trust he had placed in her as a political outsider. “As a British woman and an independent, it is by no means a given that I was able to hold and shape this office,” she said.
German officials have raised the alarm over a sharp rise in antisemitic offences since the 7 October 2023 attacks by Hamas against Israel and the ensuing Gaza war. Pro-Palestinian activists have challenged the definition of such acts as too broad for also encompassing criticism of the Israeli government.
Werner Graf, the opposition Green party’s candidate to unseat Wegner, said the affair had undermined the fight against anti-Jewish hatred in Berlin, the city where the Holocaust was planned. “This has caused immeasurable damage not only to the fight against antisemitism, but also to trust in democratic institutions as a whole,” he said in a statement.
