Berlin is a modern typography hub, the influence Spiekermann has in the DACH region and maybe even beyond is hard to overestimate.
Apart from that if you come to Berlin and you are the kind of person that would have liked the Buchstabenmuseum you should try to get an opportunity to visit the crashed space station.
> Fixed costs and a lack of financial support are forcing us to take this step. In addition, the general cultural situation in Berlin is very precarious. It was a very difficult decision for us.
Via Deepl, original here: https://www.instagram.com/p/DLuAW5DIANV/
Can someone please elaborate this for someone who is absolutely clueless about Berlin?
Sister comments get excited about population growth, gentrification, rising rent prices, and everyone's favorite c-word. Those are all real things that are happening in berlin, that are favorite bogeymen to complain about at parties. None of them apply here.
Rising rents are much more of a residential problem. Prime commercial rents are also rising, but at 1.1%/yr... and non-prime/specialty commercial like the subway arches in Hansaviertel are generally stable or declining since COVID.
The museum cites loss of premises as a factor. The Deutsche bahn leases the subway arches typically on 5 or 10 year terms. Since they moved in 2016 it sounds like DB is declining to renew the contract and they are facing another move.
But the really big elephant in the room is a lack of funding. The museum has always been proudly privately funded and volunteer operated. But that still exposes them to indirect effects from public funding cuts, and berlin cut 13% of its culture funding in 2024. Private donations are down 6% year over year, and what there is has seen significant diversion to political and Ukraine support efforts. Similar impacts happen in volunteer time, but we're all waiting on the 5-yearly survey from 2024 to be released to get real data.
Fixed costs are often the killer for museums, and the buchstaben museum blamed these in particular. Heating and electricity, and general climate maintenance in nonstandard spaces like the subway arches is always expensive, and museums are relatively energy intensive to begin with. Wholesale electricity costs jumped 5-7x in 2021-22. They've since come back down to a more modest 30-40% increase, but that's still a huge problem for a small, privately funded institution like this. Especially coupled with public funding loss, reduced private donations, and staring down a move.
Bear in mind, German non profits can't create endowments like American ones can. Most categories can't even roll budget from one year to the next!
Hope this helps you understand why so many privately funded cultural institutions are dying in Germany and Berlin right now.
Berlin has been relatively underpopulated ever since WW2 which seems to have contributed to a de-gentrified situation which allowed an unique culture to grow. But time's are changing.
Look at this pop graph: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin_population_statistics Still hasn't caught up with the peak in the 1930:s.
https://www.rbb24.de/politik/beitrag/2025/02/chialo-einsparu...
They appear to work with many institutions in a consultancy capacity so I hope that this will still continue in future even though the museum itself has to close.
Nobody is going to make money on museums. As such, you either provide for them through tax dollars or you convince people to donate.
If you believe that you are better at picking winners (slop startups vs non-slop startups) than the rest of the investment world, then that's a valuable skill that you could use to earn a lot of money that you could then use to support museums if you choose.
Long live the overlords.
It opened in 2016.
This post is likely the most attention it has ever received.
