Organizations Engaged In Cultural Relations : Germany

Cooperation with foreign countries in the field of cultural affairs and international cultural exchanges within the framework of cultural agreements are largely handled by legally independent organizations acting on their own responsibility. They are financed from the budget of the Federal Foreign Office as part of Germany’s cultural relations. The most important of them are the Goethe Institute, the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, the Institute for Foreign Relations, and INTER NATIONES (see also the chapter “Foreign policy").’

Cultural capital Weimar. In 1985 the European Community first selected a city to be the cultural capital of Europe: Athens. Luxemburg, Thessaloniki, Stockholm and other cities followed. In 1999 the German city of Weimar will have this honor. At the same time, Weimar will also celebrate the 250th birthday of the man with whose name the city was first linked: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, the greatest German polymath and literary figure, who lived almost exclusively in Weimar from 1775 until his death in 1832. In his day the city was already a center of European intellectual life.

Over the course of the entire year 1999, a multitude of events are scheduled: a unique opportunity for Weimar to showcase in a contemporary manner its impact on Germany’s intellectual life, arts and sciences and to recall its great symbolic significance for German democracy. For it was here, in 1919, that the constitution of the Weimar Republic was drafted and adopted.