Municipal Support for the Mannheim Philharmonic Orchestra

The Mannheim Philharmonic Orchestra makes a valuable contribution to the cultural offerings of the city of Mannheim and the Rhine-Neckar metropolitan region. The young, international orchestra regularly performs with the greats of classical music and offers outstanding concert experiences for the region. In addition, the orchestra reaches a worldwide audience by broadcasting its concerts live on the Internet, by now up to 3 million people per concert, thus contributing significantly to the positive image of the city of Mannheim as a city of music and culture.

With its free educational concerts, the Mannheim Philharmonic Orchestra also makes intensive efforts to provide musical and cultural education for children and young people from all social and cultural segments of the population in the metropolitan region, and provides an introduction to classical music for everyone in a low-threshold manner.

Despite this valuable contribution to the city and region, the Mannheim Philharmonic Orchestra's application for institutional funding from 2022 was rejected by the city of Mannheim. And this in the midst of the pandemic, which poses existential problems for all those involved in the cultural sector, and despite the fact that the orchestra was deemed worthy of support in the two previous years.

The lack of support from the city makes it impossible for the Mannheim Philharmonic, on the one hand, to maintain its extensive program and, on the other hand, to make promising and lasting efforts to obtain funding from the state of Baden-Württemberg. The rejection of funding therefore hits the orchestra twice: the current program has to be restricted and sustainable planning for the future is made massively more difficult.

With this petition, we want to achieve that the Mannheim City Council recognizes the value of the Mannheim Philharmonic Orchestra for the city and the region and reconsiders institutional funding for the orchestra from 2023.

Please help us with your signature to demonstrate the orchestra's eligibility for funding and thus ensure the Mannheim Philharmonic's long-term existence and further development in and for Mannheim!