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.
