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Monika Grütters
Monika Grütters
Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media (Germany); Incumbent; Merkel Cabinet IV
Minister of State to the Federal Chancellor
	Assuming office; 17 December 2013
Chancellor	Angela Merkel
Succeeding	Bernd Neumann
Member of the German Bundestag
	Incumbent
	Assumed office ; 18 October 2005
Personal details
Born	19 January 1962 (age 62); Münster, West Germany (now Germany)
Political party	Christian Democratic Union
Alma mater	Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn

Monika Grütters (born 19 January 1962 in Münster) is a German cultural politician (CDU) and the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media since 2013. She has been a member of the German Bundestag since 2005 and was chairwoman of the Committee on Culture and Media Affairs from 2009 to 2013. Since December 2016, Grütters has also been the chairwoman of the CDU Berlin and an elected member of the CDU Federal Executive Board.

Education and professional life

After graduating from high school in 1981, Monika Grütters studied German language and literature, art history and political science at the University of Münster and at the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn from 1982 onward, where she graduated in 1989 as Magister Artium. After having worked in the press and public relations department of the Bonn Opera during her studies from 1987 to 1988, she worked in the same area from 1990 to 1991 at the then Museum for Transportation and Technology in Berlin and from 1991 to 1992 for the publishing house Bouvier. Between 1992 and 1995 Grütters was spokesperson of the Senate Administration for Science and Research (State of Berlin).

From 1991 to 1999, Grütters has been a lecturer in cultural management at the Hanns Eisler College of Music in Berlin. Since 1999, Grütters holds an honorary professorship at Freie Universität Berlin for the Master's program Arts and Media Administration.

Grütters also worked as a PR officer for the Bankgesellschaft Berlin from 1996. From 1998 to 2013, she was Spokeswoman of the Board of the Brandenburger Tor Foundation. She is a member of the Central Committee of German Catholics and spokeswoman of the committee's "Culture, Education and Media" section since 2013.

Political career

Monika Grütters joined the Young Union in 1978 and the Christian Democratic Union of Germany (CDU) in 1983. Since 1998 she has been a member of the state executive of the CDU Berlin. Grütters was a member of the Berlin House of Representatives from 1995 to 2005. In this role, she was the spokesperson for science and cultural policy and from 2001 to 2005 also deputy chairwoman of the CDU Parliamentary Group.

Grütters is member of the German Bundestag since 2005 (electoral district of Marzahn-Hellersdorf). She always entered the Bundestag via the regional list of candidates for Berlin and chaired the Committee on Culture and Media Affairs from 2009 to 2013. In the 2013 federal election, she was again as the CDU's top candidate for Berlin.

Following Frank Henkel's resignation from the position of chairperson to the CDU Berlin on 13 October 2016, Grütters was unanimously nominated by the executive committee and state executive of the CDU Berlin as a candidate for his successor on the following day. At a small party convention of the CDU Berlin on December 2, 2016, Grütters was elected as the new chairwoman with 78.4 percent of the votes.

Additionally, Grütters was elected at the CDU's federal congress in Essen with 70.37 percent as successor to Emine Demirbüken-Wegner in the Executive Board of the CDU and thus in the higher party circle around Chancellor Angela Merkel.

Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media

On 17 December 2013, Grütters succeeded Bernd Neumann (CDU) as the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media. She thus holds the title of a Minister of State to the Federal Chancellor and is head of a so-called Supreme Federal Authority (oberste Bundesbehörde) with headquarters in both Berlin and Bonn. Albeit often stated in the press, Monika Grütters does not cover the function of a German "culture minister": according to the German Basic Law, cultural and educational matters are still subject to the sovereignty of the Länder. In the context of cooperative cultural federalism, however, the Federal Government Commissioner is responsible for cultural and media matters of national importance.

During her term of office in the third Merkel cabinet, the overall budget for federal cultural affairs increased by more than 30% up to 1.67 billion within the federal budget between 2013 and 2018. In 2015, Grütters presented an amendment to the German law on the protection of cultural property (Kulturgutschutzgesetz) which has been subject to controversial debates. Beyond these discussions, Grütters has significant responsibility for the successful state funding of the Barenboim-Said Academy in Berlin. As an institutional response to the discovery of major artworks of unclear provenance and ownership in the private Gurlitt collection, Grütters launched the German Lost Art Foundation (Deutsches Zentrum Kulturgutverluste) in 2015.

In February 2018, the Federal Chancellor announced that she would take over Monika Grütters for a second term in her fourth cabinet.

Sources and external links

Official