Overview

• Since early August, Culture Minister Wolfram Weimer has banned the use of gender-inclusive symbols such as the asterisk, colon, underscore and Binnen-I in his ministry’s correspondence.
• He has urged all publicly funded cultural institutions, including museums, foundations and broadcasting organizations, to follow suit and eliminate these markers.
• A Tagesspiegel inquiry found that none of the other 15 federal ministries intend to impose similar bans, opting instead to adhere to the government’s joint orthography guidelines.
• Most Union-led ministries and the majority of SPD departments continue to enable gender-neutral language through double forms or neutral replacements, citing clarity and accessibility.
• By contrast, the labor and development ministries under SPD leadership declare the gender asterisk their standard for both internal and external communications.