BKM explains that the bookstore prize was not awarded to three bookstores with reference to the protection of the constitution

The Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and Media (BKM) has informed the public for the first time of details about the administrative side of the decision not to award the German Bookstore Prize to three bookstores in Berlin, Bremen and Göttingen, contrary to the jury's vote.

On September 30, the news portal T-Online reported on the results of a request for information under the Freedom of Information Act. In October 2025, the specialist department of the Federal Cultural Authority responsible for the prize formally recommended in a submission to the house management that all 118 of the jury's suggestions should be followed, and in this submission it also recorded the fulfillment of the prize-worthiness conditions for the three companies that were later removed from the list by providing brief information about the profile of the respective bookstore. In an interview with “Zeit” in March 2026, Minister of State for Culture Wolfram Weimer stated that “fundamental doubts” on the part of his “specialist officials” had triggered the deviation from the jury’s proposal. The file quoted by T-Online suggested that, contrary to Weimer's statement, the concerns about the left-wing bookstores were only fed into the proceedings above the level of the specialist officials, either by one of the authority's senior officials or by Weimer himself.

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The proposal did not reach Weimer

The BKM press office now rejects this assumption in a press release that was circulated in the late afternoon of October 2nd, more than 48 hours after the T-Online publication. "In a management submission dated October 10, 2025, the responsible BKM specialist department recommended following the jury's vote. This submission did not reach State Minister Dr. Wolfram Weimer because shortly afterwards, information from publicly available sources had emerged at the BKM specialist level, which led to the formal initiation of the Haber proceedings at two bookstores at the end of October 2025.

In the second half of November, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution informed the responsible BKM department that in both cases there was 'information relevant to the protection of the Constitution', which was explained in response to an oral question."

The commissioner did not want and does not want to reveal anything about the content of the information and findings, which is why the Berlin Administrative Court in April prohibited him from publicly describing the booksellers who were deprived of the prize money as political extremists. All previous information on the formal side of the matter remained extremely vague. In March, Weimer's spokesman at the time told the F.A.Z. spoke of “random samples” without explaining why there might have been a reason for this after a jury trial had been completed.

What is politically significant in the presentation of the “chronological sequence” in the press release of October 2nd is the information that Weimar himself was not said to have ordered the review by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution and that he had not even been informed of the request for information in the so-called Haber proceedings. “State Minister Weimer was only informed about the initiation and outcome of the Haber proceedings in a management document from the beginning of December 2025. He then followed the vote presented to him not to award the prize to the two bookstores.”

What was also previously unknown was that the post-processing of the list of prize winners had two phases and that the third bookstore only subsequently fell out of favor. "In January 2026, the Haber proceedings were initiated again due to further publicly available information about a third bookstore. After corresponding feedback from the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, it was decided not to award the prize in this case either."

He created the mistrust himself

As long as it remains unknown what the bookstores are accused of, it is difficult to assess the rationality of the procedure, even assuming the accuracy of the official reports about its operation. He himself created the distrust with which announcements from Weimer's house are read. So you stumble across the passive formulation in the press release that “indications have emerged”. It is typical for the justification of bureaucratic decisions that all preparatory actions are subsumed into the overall event. But where the Office for the Protection of the Constitution is involved, the whistleblower must be informed, even in the highly unlikely case that the tip concerned a random harvest.

It is not clear that the same specialist officials who initially recommended implementing the jury's vote without exception later had doubts. If the decisive information emerged “at the BKM specialist level”, it may also have been in a department other than the one responsible. The request of the F.A.Z. The BKM press office left no answer for clarification on this point until the editorial deadline for Monday's edition.

Weimer expects the public to blindly trust his commitment to the cultural protection of the constitution. The refusal to provide evidence and reasons suggests that it is obvious what the state should not support with money. Such a constitutional policy of evidence-based suggestions is no longer appropriate to the situation. In the debate with the AfD, but also with the Left Party in Berlin, arguments must be made as to what should be considered unconstitutional. Weimer increases the speechlessness of the middle to a tick.

The Federal Ministry of the Interior, which is responsible for the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, showed him a different path. In a new article on T-Online, Julius Mueller-Töwe quotes from an email exchange between Weimer's authority and a working group for international terrorism and extremism in the BMI. At the end of January, BKM officials were scheduled to meet with the bookstore prize jury. How could one explain to the jurors that Weimer did not want to follow their vote in three cases? The BMI advised “in a first step to justify your decision to the jury only with reference to the generally known and openly accessible findings (…). Weimer should finally take this step of naming the suspicions that arose from the activities of the three bookstores and not from secret service information to the public.