Letter to the editor on “No more room in the funding landscape” from February 7, 2024

As long-time supporters and participants in the “International Peace Conference”, which has been organized by people from the Munich peace movement with passion and great commitment for 22 years, we are shocked and outraged by the motion of the Greens and the SPD to withdraw city funding for the conference two weeks before the start. We share the view that it is probably only superficially about a cost-cutting measure, because the conference is “without recognizable municipal involvement”, as it is called in the nicest official German. The festive reception for the guests of the SiKo, which was decided by the Munich City Council in 2011, probably cost more than the 5-6,000 euros in funding for the peace conference, and it is obviously not about communal issues. The suspicion arises that in times when German society is supposed to become “war-ready”, an event that deals with criticism of war and rearmament policies and possible alternatives to them is no longer tolerated. We have always greatly appreciated the fact that the City of Munich has made the old town hall available to the Peace Conference and thus provided a worthy setting in keeping with the spirit of this event. It is a disgrace that this conference, which serves the democratic formation of opinion and the culture of discussion, is being torpedoed in this way by a red-green city government of all people by withdrawing funding that is important for the organization but hardly relevant for Munich’s city coffers.

Helmut Groß
Peace Initiative Bad Tölz-Wolfratshausen
Spethmannstrasse 10
83646 Bad Tölz