Just in: Londoner is Berlin’s new secretary for culture

The city’s incoming senator for culture Joe Chiallo has a rock music background. He needs guidance on high culture, not least on the change of regimes at the post-Barenboim state opera and the ongoing confusions about Russian artists in the midst of the Ukraine war.

Chialo has chosen well.

His Kultur-Staatssekretärin is to be Sarah Wedl-Wilson, head of the Hanns Eisler Academy.

London born and Cambridge educated, Wedl-Wilson, 54, has risen through several German and Austrian classical institutions, lastly at the Salzburg Mozarteum, which she calmed down after years of turbulence. She will now call the shots in Europe’s perpetual capital of culture.

Her deputy has taken over temporarily at Hanns Eisler.