Looking back at the programme of Berliner Festspiele between 2012 and 2021, “long-term themes” emerge across the years in numerous performances, exhibitions and discursive events that constitute a kind of continuous debate. In addition to issues like sustainability, the relationship of work to form or of East to West Germany thirty years after reunification, identity politics is also an instructive filter for forming a better understanding of the changes in the profile of events over the last ten years. A range of programme elements as well as internal measures within Berliner Festspiele, such as courses and workshops, considered themes of identity politics that have been the subject of critical debate in Germany for around ten years, particularly in the cultural sector. These aim to increase diversity in programmes and institutions, facilitate the representation of minorities and those who are marginalized, and question the West’s colonial legacy. These debates are embedded in battles over cultural policy and political arguments that take on a life all their own, turning into conflicts over identity in which the political right and left each have different concepts of homeland and culture.

After a brief sketch of what is meant here by the phrase identity politics,...