Zilkens'
News Blog

Zilkens' News Blog 41 2026

He certainly has courage, the Chancellor! Just to drive straight into the Sunday bombardment of Kyiv by Russian forces, to assure the Ukrainian people of Germany’s solidarity in their fight for freedom. None of the ‘Blues’ and none of the ‘reds’ – from the reddish to the deep reds – are to be seen there. The colour of hope – well? – yes, green is actually more likely to be spotted there. But the negative grumbling from the German news landscape refuses to die down. Just calm down for a moment and give this complex situation a bit of breathing space. ‘Think Positive’ used to be written on the flipchart of a friend of mine, who was the chief financial officer of an insurance company, a few years back.

On 21 September, the following was published on the Federal Government’s website: “Warranties are defined as sureties and guarantees provided by the Federal Government in accordance with the current Budget Act. Section 3 of the current Budget Act (HG) authorises the Federal Government to provide sureties, guarantees or other warranties up to a total amount of 1,012,710,000,000 euros. This may be done for all manner of domestic and foreign trade purposes, e.g. to cover COVID-19 risks, liability risks under the Atomic Energy Act or to secure international projects; but also in the field of art and culture, where the Federal Government guarantees compensation for damage that might be caused to exhibited works of art.” The emphasis is added by the author of these lines. We’re rich! 1 trillion 12 billion in sureties, guarantees and warranties! That’s twice as much as the entire annual budget, and the best bit of all: art and culture get a share too, if they suffer any damage. Except that the federal government’s liabilities in this area are rather modest. ‘Art is expensive’ – reads the famous and presumably no longer politically correct Mrs Müller, believing the narrative. In reality, many state and local museums are struggling because there is no money for culture, because the administrative apparatchiks never think to make themselves redundant and thus free up funds for better causes.

Cutting red tape? Great, we all want that – it’s just a shame we now have to implement EU directives: have you ever heard of the VSAAG? No? Long version: Insurance Reorganisation, Resolution and Supervisory Amendment Act – even longer version: Act implementing Directives (EU) 2025/1 and (EU) 2025/2 establishing a framework for the reorganisation and resolution of insurance undertakings and amending the supervisory framework for insurance undertakings! And the draft of this thing has 206 sections! Two hundred and six! The costs to businesses and to the public purse are also set out! This legislation creates jobs and prevents job losses in the civil service. In a free market economy, companies can go bust – even insurance companies! And, of course, this has an impact on the industry and on consumer confidence. But laws like this take away people’s autonomy! They ensure that everyone thinks there is no longer any risk. If, out of personal greed (‘We’re too poor to buy cheap things,’ as my grandmother used to say), you constantly think only ‘cheap, cheap, brilliant’ and then get little value for money, that is a purely personal risk. And there’s no need for 206 paragraphs and arbitrary estimates of follow-on costs if you trust citizens to take responsibility for themselves. And, dear MEPs and bureaucrats – you do Europe a greater service by doing less than by engaging in such excessive regulation.

Art travelers were spoilt for choice this weekend: Art Jakarta and Art Vilnius at the same time! Not exactly the hubs of the art trade – but it’s great that these events exist and that people have the chance to experience art from other regions. You do need to have a bit of an interest in it, though. It makes the market bigger and allows you to discover different perspectives and cultures.

ICOM-CC (Cultural Connections) spent three days in Oslo in mid-September discussing global issues. The preprint volume of the ICOM-CC conference, now available, contains 152 academic papers. Particularly relevant to our topics are papers on sustainable art transport, new packaging concepts, risks associated with technology loans, crisis management, and the increasingly difficult loan negotiations between museums in tropical and temperate climate zones. However, the essays are currently only accessible to registered participants. Let’s hope that interested members of the public can gain access to them soon. It might help.

Cities, particularly those with a long history, take pride in this. They maintain museums where this history is beautifully presented, helping every resident to feel a little prouder of where they live. – This also fosters a sense of attachment to the locality. Of course, we are aware of the scarcity of public funds – which is precisely why there are friends’ associations for such institutions. The membership fees are manageable – usually just 50 EUR a year – but where are the members? In a city with a population of over a million, there are barely 300 to 500 citizens willing to step out of the ordinary and join the association to give the city’s museum, of which they are proud, a bit more breathing space. For the city’s businesses and its supporting class (which does exist, even if some people don’t want to see it), it should surely be a matter of course to be a member there – then we’d quickly reach 10,000 paying members, and that would help.

Less helpful – and here we are back at the start of today’s report – are the recent comments by the Federal Government’s Commissioner for Eastern Germany on the status of German unity in 2026, which she undoubtedly made without consulting the person who sets the political agenda. A sensational observation – the financial situation between East and West is characterised by significant disparities. Instead of now calling for a special economic zone for eastern Germany – one in which the economic development of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) would be facilitated without major barriers to entrepreneurship (offering the courageous a chance, albeit with personal risk) – she is clamouring for redistribution, inheritance tax and wealth tax, believing she can thereby achieve something. In doing so, she is presumably in tune with her party’s sentiments but not with the development of prosperity and SMEs in the new federal states. There are still people in this country who pay the solidarity surcharge. Infrastructure projects have been financed on a massive scale as a result – but not the SME sector. In this respect, a special economic zone in the East would be a model that could also be used to combat disillusionment with democracy – and galleries, of which there are only a few of international renown in cities such as Dresden, Erfurt and Leipzig, would find fertile ground in which to establish themselves and grow.

In Brussels, the Patrick Derom Gallery, in collaboration with the Kunsthaus Lempertz, has organised the first retrospective of Ai Weiwei in Belgium. He, too, is an ‘artist in exile’ –

With this in mind, Stephan Zilkens and the team at Zilkens Fine Art Insurance Broker GmbH in Solothurn and Cologne wish you a ray of light in this week’s darkness.