Italy’s cultural scene shines in Germany. The ambassador’s letter

To the Editor – Dear Editor, your analysis accurately captures a phenomenon that deserved to be reported. Banks, television, ports, trains: the four areas you identify effectively convey the image of an Italy that invests, competes and makes its mark in Germany. Allow me to add a fifth, one that is less easily measured in terms of market share but no less significant: culture, understood in the broadest sense, from creativity to research.

Umberto Eco liked to point out that Europe is founded, even more than on political and economic grounds, on a profound cultural unity. For centuries, scholars, artists and musicians have travelled across the continent, teaching, studying, performing and creating across borders: one need only think of Mozart and Vivaldi, whose music we listen to without ever asking ourselves which country they belong to. This is also a useful lens through which to view what is happening today between Italy and Germany. And, after all, it is hard to imagine a more European border than the one separating two countries that have been seeking each other out, influencing and enriching one another for centuries.

Claudio Magris has written memorable passages precisely on the significance of borders, showing how they can be not merely lines that separate, but also places where identities meet and are transformed. This is perhaps the most interesting aspect of Italy’s presence in Germany: not a culture that simply arrives from outside, but a culture which, the moment it crosses the border, blends, reinvents itself and becomes part of the German cultural landscape.

Here in Germany, too, the Italian presence has become more widespread, visible and contemporary in recent years. In 2024, Italy was the guest of honour at the Frankfurt Book Fair and, in the same year, the focus of the European Film Market at the Berlinale: two of Europe’s most important cultural showcases. But the phenomenon extends far beyond the major events dedicated to publishing and cinema. One need only look at the institutions: today, Italian professionals are at the helm of major German cultural and musical organisations. Since the 2024/25 season, Daniele Gatti has been principal conductor of the Sächsische Staatskapelle Dresden, one of the oldest and most prestigious orchestras in the world; Andrea Lissoni directs the Haus der Kunst in Munich; Daniele Maruca heads the Feuerle Collection in Berlin; Emanuele Marconi is in charge of the Musikinstrumenten-Museum in Berlin; and from next season, Francesco Angelico will be Generalmusikdirektor of the Staatsoper in Hanover. These are just a few examples among many others.

It is a movement with deep roots. In his Italian Journey, Goethe described his arrival in Rome as entering a world capable of transforming his outlook on life: “A new life begins,” he wrote. Two and a half centuries later, the journey continues in both directions: it is no longer just Germans coming to Italy in search of art and beauty, but Italians choosing Germany as a place to study, conduct research, lead institutions, and create and develop new ideas.

When it comes to research, the figures are perhaps even more telling: there are around 5,000 Italian researchers and scientists working in Germany. They represent the third-largest international community, after Indians and Chinese. In terms of tenured university professors, Italy is second only to Austria. Added to this presence is an equally significant one within Germany’s major research organisations: from the Max Planck Society to the Helmholtz Association, and from the Fraunhofer Society to the Leibniz Association.

Here, the line between culture and scientific expertise becomes particularly fine. Research, like art, thrives on mobility, cross-fertilisation and exchange: on people who cross borders and bring with them methods, knowledge, curiosity and networks of relationships. This is perhaps the most concrete meaning of that European ‘cultural unity’ Eco spoke of: not the idea of erasing differences, but that of making them work together.

Berlin is currently offering a particularly vivid snapshot of this Italian cultural vitality. On 9 September, NIGHT, Maurizio Cattelan’s first major solo exhibition in Germany, opens at the Neue Nationalgalerie. And to mark Berlin Art Week (9–13 September), the Embassy has also put together a programme that brings together Italian heritage, contemporary art and major German institutions: from Caravaggio’s *Magdalene in Ecstasy*, juxtaposed with a site-specific work conceived by the Flemish artist Berlinde De Bruyckere for our spaces, to an event featuring Cattelan himself, right through to the collaboration with the Hamburger Bahnhof for the closing event of Giulia Andreani’s *Sabotage* exhibition.

It is the same spirit that guided us between late May and early June, when we launched the first Italian Week: over a hundred initiatives across Germany dedicated to contemporary Italian creativity, brought together online to showcase an Italy capable not only of preserving its heritage, but also of producing new ideas, forms of expression and visions. The response was such that it encouraged us to turn the initiative into a regular event, one that is growing ever larger.

There is, therefore, also a side to Italy which, as well as investing and competing, is winning over Germany with its ideas. This cultural and scientific capital accompanies – and, to some extent, helps to explain – those entrepreneurial successes about which you so aptly write.

Perhaps this is precisely where one of the keys to the relationship between our two countries lies: not in the mere export of products, but in the ability to facilitate the exchange of people, knowledge and imagination. Italy brings businesses and investments to Germany, of course, but also musicians, researchers, artists, curators and writers. And Germany, in turn, offers these creative forces fertile ground. More than a conquest, it is an exchange: and this is probably the most European way to secure a future.

Best regards and continued success in your work.

Fabrizio Bucci

Italian Ambassador to Germany