Arts & International Affairs: Vol. 3, No. 2, Summer/Autumn 2018 | Page 23

ARTS & INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS
tend to sideline the Cold War legacy of West German cultural diplomacy programs. West
German cultural diplomacy did play a part in the maintenance of Western hegemony
during the Cold War, and contemporary cultural diplomacy programs should interrogate
this dubious legacy critically. Raphaela Henze has recently underscored the importance
of post-colonial perspectives in cultural diplomacy and international arts management
(Henze 2018:2–3). When the former German foreign minister Frank Walter Steinmeier
(who was elected German President in March 2017) defined cultural diplomacy as a
contribution to “world reason” (Weltvernunft) in 2015, he failed to identify the self-critical
negotiation of Germany’s contribution to Western hegemony as a pillar of his vision
for German cultural diplomacy (Adam 2016; Steinmeier 2015).
A critical engagement with West Germany’s contribution to Western hegemony could
be realized by supporting critical studies on the colonial legacy of West German cultural
diplomacy and by providing platforms for continuing dialogue on this legacy. 10 In doing
so, the Goethe-Institut could build on what is widely perceived as one of its major
strengths: the facilitation of intercultural dialogue. 11 Only a critical engagement with the
problematic aspects of (West) German cultural diplomacy and its history can create a
common ground with local audiences on which cooperatively designed programs can
take place with the potential to reach a general sense of equivalency and mutuality.
Mario Dunkel is a Juniorprofessor (assistant professor) of music education
at the Music Department of the Carl von Ossietzky University of Oldenburg.
He holds a PhD in American studies from TU Dortmund University. His
main research areas are music and politics, music and diplomacy, the history
and practice of jazz, as well as transcultural music pedagogy. His articles
have been published in American Music, the European Journal of Musicology,
Popular Music and Society, and other journals. He is the principal
investigator of the European research project “Popular Music as a Medium
for the Mainstreaming of Populist Ideologies in Europe” (2019-2022, funded
by the Volkswagen Foundation).
10 See, for instance, Nikolaus Barbian (2014) recently made similar arguments regarding the lack of
critical interrogations into the history of West German cultural diplomacy.
11 On the Goethe-Institute’s reputation as a facilitator of dialogue, see Sacker (2014). According to Ulrich
Sacker, contemporary strategies of nation branding tend to integrate rather than deny problematic
aspects and “negative characteristics” into an envisioned national image. Sacker (2014).
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