Cultural worker

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Cultural creator is a collective term for all people who shape culture , such as artists or theater producers . The term is a word creation that was created at the latest towards the end of the 1920s and was used particularly in the field of cultural policy.

Concept history

The term “cultural worker” first appeared in cultural studies in the 1920s, later under National Socialism and immediately after its end also in the Soviet occupation zone and in the GDR . It is still used today.

The term entered public discourse in connection with the establishment of the Reich Chamber of Culture in 1933. Although the law does not explicitly speak of “cultural workers”, on August 18, 1934, after Paul von Hindenburg's death, German visual artists (“artists”) spoke in the call of the cultural workers for a referendum about the unification of the Reich President and Chancellery in the person of Hitler .

In totalitarian systems, the use of the term was associated with the definition of socio-political tasks of the “cultural workers” in favor of the respective system. In the justification of the law on the establishment of the Reich Chamber of Culture in September 1937, it was said: “The task of the state is to combat harmful forces within culture and to promote valuable ones, according to the standard of the sense of responsibility for the national community. In this sense, cultural creation remains free. But it is [...] necessary to bring together the creative people in all their fields under the leadership of the Reich to form a uniform will. ” This term also appeared in the preface to the handbook of the Reich Chamber of Culture published by Hans Hinkel in 1937 . Wilhelm Emanuel Süskind recorded in 1946 in the conversion of the term "cultural workers" in the dictionary of inhumanity .

In the Soviet occupation zone, the ordinance announced in April 1949 on the preservation and development of German science and culture [...] and a. the provision of two rest homes "for scientists, artists and cultural workers" and at the same time stipulated their consideration for such care: "The proposal [...] to increase the activity of cultural workers, writers and artists [...] is approved."

The Leipzig Duden of 1951 provided the keyword “cultural workers” with a footnote: “linguistically more correct: the culturally creative”. The footnote no longer appeared in the following Duden editions.

After 1990, the Society for German Language counted the designation “Kulturschaffender” among the GDR-specific words capable of surviving.

literature

• Dolf Sternberger , Gerhard Storz , WE Süskind : From the dictionary of the monster . dtv, Munich 1970, ( ISBN 3-548-34335-X , newer edition)
• Wilhelm Mensing : Kulturschaffende - or: The corruption of language is the corruption of man , in: Rockmusiker - The culture magazine of the German Rock Musicians Association , June 1991, p. 21 ff.

See also

List of cultural workers in the GDR

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Cornelia Schmitz-Berning: Vocabulary of National Socialism . Walter de Gruyter, Berlin 2007, pp. 364–366.