Up until the 1970s, Germany's cultural policy stood primarily for "cultural care": for example, the entertainment of theaters, museums or opera houses. With the "New Cultural Policy", participation became the focus. Leading goals such as "cultural democracy", "civil rights culture" and "culture for all" rely on the participation of all citizens. Cultural policy as social policy had to get rid of the elitist - an expanded concept of culture no longer only to stand for literature and art, but also for lifestyles, values and beliefs. At local and state level, cultural policy is mostly a distribution policy. No urban stage in the Federal Republic could hold its own on the "market". Accordingly, more culture means more costs. At the same time, art thrives on the ideal of being able to develop free of interests.
In addition to visitor orientation, the demand today includes, among other things, a new organizational culture for public cultural companies, the consideration of the actors as "knowledge employees", the development of multidimensional cultural financing or the formation of creative alliances. That is all correct and necessary, but it also remains to be warned against pushing too hard an adaptation of market action, too harshly throwing overboard the principles of a cultural area that is also cumbersome and mortgage-laden. Cultural management and cultural policy remain related, a relationship that has to be balanced again and again.
The scarcity of public funds also leads to concrete problems of cultural funding: the majority of the funds are tied up for institutions such as municipal museums; these often have too tight administrative budgets and lose innovative strength and scientific value; More and more third-party funders such as foundations, but now also the federal government, are increasingly raising expectations regarding the content of local cultural businesses, which are forcing them into a conflict between legal entities and funding backdrop.