The Bergische Symphoniker has got caught in a financing dispute between two neighbouring towns, Remscheid and Solingen, that pay for its upkeep. The sum under contention is a mere 300,000 Euros. But unless someone coughs up the cash next month, the musicians will go unpaid and the orchestra will go into insolvency. Its prospects are not looking good.
The orchestra, whose music director is Peter Kuhn, was formed 17 years ago though a merger of two municipal ensembles. First there were two, now there is one. Then there was none…
Read on here (auf Deutsch).
Remscheid (pop. 114,000) and Solingen (pop. 161,000) share this fulltime orchestra. They are arguing about the 60:40 ratio of payment based on population. The 300k difference comes to about 1 Euro per resident of the two cities. My impression is that this is more about political poker than a serious threat to the orchestra, but only time will tell. It is incredible how many small cities in the Ruhrgebiet of Germany have their own orchestra and/or opera house. If only the rest of us could even approach these standards.
As much as I love music, shouldn’t these small orchestras be self sufficient? Why do they rely so heavily on tax payers money, many of which don’t even attend their concerts?
I was told as kid, that if you can’t afford it, you don’t buy it. You don’t go around pressing others to buy it for you and make it their responsibility.
The Arts have always needed subsiding in some areas, especially orchestras. Paying for what you don’t use is a basic part of living in a modern society. Those who told you about not buying what you can’t afford hadn’t heard the news about how people buy homes and business people often start and finance their companies.
In those cases, the lenders expect to be repaid. In money.
I notice you ignored the first two sentences.
As for mortgages and businesses, you are still buying what you can’t afford.
Would you be content with a music-free world?
“As for mortgages and businesses, you are still buying what you can’t afford.”
er… no.
1. Mortgages are given (by any responsible lender) on the basis of what you CAN afford to repay, and subject to demonstration of the same.
2. Businesses rarely raise any finance from loans per se (and Governments who go around saying “the banks ought to lend more to business so they can invest” are just posturing). Broadly, businesses tend to raise capital by selling a share of the business and other similar ways of raising funds.
In both situations, the parties are paying for what they can afford.
Here, however, a small group of people wish there to be an orchestra, can’t afford it, and think the best thing to do is to persuade a small number of other people (in the local governments) that they ‘should’ have an orchestra, for whatever reasons, and in turn to force a whole lot of uninterested people to pay for it. Rather different.
Anon, That’s paying for what you will be able to affort; and can’t now. And you have also ignored “Paying for what you don’t use is a basic part of living in a modern society.”
Cf. Baumol’s Cost Disease: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol's_cost_disease
The thin edge of the wedge. Once the effects of the contraction in German exports (how many Greeks are buying new Volkswagens this year?) hit home throughout 2013, you’ll see more of this, I’m afraid.
Unfortunately the money has been wired to Greece to bail out their insolvent banks. Expect more culture and infrastructure cuts in Germany to finance the EuSSR.
@Culture Vulture: Nein! Nein! Nein! Off topic here, but the banks being bailed out in Greece are actually the German and French ones. I’m afraid the “Lazy, corrupt Greeks” trope is wearing a bit thin as the facts emerge. This is more like a money laundering operation on a massive scale. At least 80% of last year’s rescue package went straight to insolvent banks http://www.presseurop.eu/en/content/news-brief/1599061-greek-aid-will-go-banks (like Deutsche Bank – http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/05/deutsche-bank-12-billion-losses_n_2247360.html ) outside of Greece, in places like the UK, France and Germany. This isn’t being done to finance the EuSSR, but to bailout creaky lenders from north of the Alps without having to disclose this fact to the German taxpayer. If German orchestras suffer from funding cuts in the coming years I’m afraid they’ll have to look to the bankers if they want culprits.
Um, or the Greeks who borrowed from said banks without being able to repay their loans, perhaps?
@Anon Would that ’twere so simple. If I sell you a car which I know to be malfunctioning, I have committed, at the very least, an act of dishonesty, and more probably, fraud. This is so regardless of whether you have the means to make the payments or not. Thus it is with debt instruments, only in this case the behavior is more clearly fraudulent. Of course, in order to sell something you know is going to blow up in the purchaser’s face, you have to be aggressive about it, hence the practice of “predatory lending”. In addition to all of this, you have to recognise the concept of odious debt. Audi alterem partem, is all I’m saying.