There is heated discussion in Germany around the stance taken by the new culture minister Wolfram Weimer, who has banned his employees in the Federal Chancellery (the government agency where the country’s federal government is based) from using plurals with asterisks and non-standard characters in official communications. But that’s not all: he also said that no publicly funded agency should use gender-inclusive language. Weimer, minister of culture since May 6, 2025 in the government of Friedrich Merz, is an independent: a journalist, he has long been editor-in-chief of major newspapers such as Die Welt and Berliner Morgenpost and in 2004 founded Cicero magazine, a monthly political and cultural magazine with a conservative orientation. In 2012 he also founded, together with his wife Christiane Goetz-Weimer, the Weimer Media publishing group, of which he was managing director until his appointment as minister of culture.
The issue, which is causing controversy in Germany, began last August 3, when Weimer issued an order to his Chancellery employees (470 people between Berlin and Bonn) to ban the use of asterisks in order to distinguish gender in official communications. Weimer later confirmed everything to the Bild news outlet: “For the Commissioner for Culture and Media in the Federal Chancellery, the rules of the German language apply. In the Federal Chancellery, letters, emails and memos are not gender-specific. Instead of using asterisks or a capital ’I,’ we greet recipients with the greeting ’Dear Ladies and Gentlemen.’ In this way, we also adhere to the guidelines of the Rat für deutsche Rechtschreibung [editor’s note: the Council for German Spelling, a kind of Crusca of Germany).” According to the German culture minister, the use of asterisks for plurals would also be divisive: “Forced genderization in no way reflects the way the vast majority of people in our country speak. On the contrary, genderization exacerbates the divisions in our society. Language should unite, not divide.” He added, also to Bild, “Language is an important means of social understanding, not a playground for ideologues. Therefore, I reject any paternalistic language education.” Weimer’s aim is also to “preserve our language culture in the land of poets and thinkers,” so much so that genderization “is not only unnecessary, but also damages the beauty of our language.”
Instead, it is in these hours that Weimer called on publicly funded institutions, for example museums, foundations and broadcasters, to follow this line. Weimer told the Deutsche Presse-Agentur news agency that this is a shared responsibility for the comprehensibility of state-funded communication. “Those who speak about public issues should choose language that is understandable to all and widely accepted,” the minister reiterated.
In Germany, the discussion is not new. As in Italy, gender-inclusive language with special characters (in Germany, asterisks, underscores, colon and capital “I” are used, while in Italy, in addition to asterisks, the schwa, the inverted “e,” a phonetic symbol, is widely used) is not in common use and is used occasionally in artistic and student circles, while it is rarely adopted at the institutional level. Some states have expressly banned it: this is the case in Thuringia, Bavaria, Hesse and Saxony. Similar bans have also been imposed by the Federal Ministry of Education.
But the debate is open, and not everyone agrees with the minister, who has in turn been accused of paternalism by the Deutscher Kulturrat (German Cultural Council), an association, founded in 1982, that represents federal cultural associations. “We reject state paternalism,” said its director, Olaf Zimmermann. “The very idea of independence of public broadcasting from the state and artistic freedom implies that these institutions are essentially independent. Therefore, they must also be able to decide for themselves how to express themselves.” Criticism also comes from the Deutsche Journalistenverband, the Association of German Journalists: “Wolfram Weimer’s initiative,” said President Mika Beuster, “violates freedom of expression. Whether newsrooms of public broadcasters use gender-neutral language in their articles ”is not the business of a state minister for culture,“ Beuster added. Also of the same opinion is the chairman of the Culture Committee of the Bundestag (the German parliament), Sven Lehmann (Greens): ”Is Mr. Weimer really the State Minister for Culture or a cultural missionary activist?“ he told Deutsche Presse-Agentur. ”It is bad enough that he imposes language bans in his department. But the fact that he now wants to restrict independent cultural institutions is clearly going too far. Weimer’s formula for his cultural policy is apparently preaching freedom and issuing bans."
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| Germany, culture minister bans plurals with asterisks: 'language is not a playground' |
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