After resignation due to funding scandal: Wegner deputy Stefan Evers becomes Berlin Senator for Culture

According to Tagesspiegel information, the district chairmen of the CDU agreed on Tuesday evening that Evers should take over the post. The Finance Senator present in the group agreed to take on the post in addition to his previous position. The “Berliner Zeitung” first reported.

Evers himself confirmed the personnel details to the dpa news agency on Wednesday morning. He explained: “I do this in the knowledge that the management of the administration is in very good hands and, together with the Senate Administration team, I want to make my contribution to strengthening the cultural administration’s ability to act, to ensure trust among those involved in the Berlin cultural scene and to further advance the reforms that have been initiated.”

Resignation due to funding scandal

The independent Senator for Culture Sarah Wedl-Wilson resigned on Friday. In doing so, she drew the conclusions from a report by the State Audit Office, which assessed the funding of 13 projects in the area of ​​anti-Semitism prevention worth 2.6 million euros as unlawful. Wedl-Wilson signed the funding notices after she had been put under massive pressure by CDU budget expert Christian Goiny, among others.

The former justice senator and ex-member of the Bundestag Thomas Heilmann (CDU) was also considered Wedl-Wilson’s successor. Transport Senator Ute Bonde (CDU), who was not involved in the internal debates, said on RBB Inforadio on Tuesday morning: “He has led a department for a long time. And so he knows how he has to tackle it now. And that’s what he will do.” The next day she was proven wrong.

Stefan Evers, 46, has been mayor and senator for finance since April 2023. The lawyer was general secretary of the Berlin CDU from 2016 to 2023 and is currently deputy chairman of the party. He is considered by party friends to be a shrewd strategist with great loyalty to the governing mayor.

Evers was first elected to the Berlin House of Representatives in 2011 and won the direct mandate in the Adlershof/Altglienicke constituency in the 2023 re-election. Evers was previously a district councilor in Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf. Evers was born in the Ruhr area.

SPD top candidate Steffen Krach criticized the decision. This is a “really special signal to culture,” as Evers is responsible for “the biggest savings in the cultural sector,” said Krach. The office of Senator for Culture is also “not a part-time job”.

The Green Party’s leading candidate Werner Graf explained: “The stumbling decision to succeed the resigned Senator for Culture is the final proof that Kai Wegner can no longer get the situation under control. He neither has his Senate under control as governing mayor, nor does he apparently still have any authority in his party as party chairman. This mayor’s time is over.”

Tobias Schulze, parliamentary group leader of the Left, explained: “This decision shows once again that Kai Wegner and the Berlin CDU are a total failure in terms of cultural policy. How little do you have to like culture to put the senator in front of the cultural administration as boss, who had prescribed the toughest cuts to Berlin culture in decades?