Seniors' Advisory Council
In a series in the official gazette in July and August 2025, all of Chemnitz's advisory boards were introduced.</p
<p>In issue 32/2025 from 7 August, Chairwoman Dr Heidi Becherer explains what the advisory board is committed to.
All of Chemnitz's advisory boards are presented in a series in the July 2025 issue of the official gazette.
In issue 29/2025 from 17 July, Chairman Tobias Möller and Deputy Chairwoman Heda Bayer present the work of the Cultural Advisory Board and talk about the problems they are currently facing in an interview.
What matters does the Seniors' Advisory Council deal with?
Dr Heidi Becherer: The Seniors' Advisory Council is a committee of the City Council. It is made up of six members from various political groups and seven expert residents. They were elected by the city council with the aim of representing senior citizens in the city vis-à-vis the city administration and the city council.
This means that we have tasks that relate to the city council, but also tasks that we take up from older citizens and then pass on to the city administration or the city council.
How do the topics come to you?
Once a month - every first Tuesday from 2 to 4.30 p.m. - a consultation takes place in the Stadt-Schau-Fenster, where citizens can come and tell us about their problems. This can concern the large political area, but it can also be the roof of the bus stop at Luthereiche, for example, or the lighting between the Ebersdorfer Straße terminus and Huttenstraße. Or the question: how quickly will people be informed if a bomb is found and they have to be evacuated? Do older people also hear this? How can they hear it and how can they be informed?
There are also many, many other barrier issues regarding the lowering of footpaths, mobility issues or where the nearest doctor is.
How do you bring these issues to the city council?
There is an agreement with the Citizens' Office: We bring questions to these city council employees that we cannot answer or cannot influence at first.
How does your cooperation with the city council members work?
Because there are also six city councillors on the Advisory Board, we naturally have the task of ensuring that issues from the Senior Citizens' Advisory Board meeting are taken up by the parliamentary groups.
At the moment, we have repeatedly had the problem with the Capital of Culture: How do I recognise certain events? Or don't we need a lot more toilets for the Capital of Culture events? These are issues that we try to bring to the administration via the city councillors. They take the topics of discussion with them and we then try to find solutions together.
What topics or projects are you currently working on?
There are two additional aspects to the Capital of Culture: Firstly, as an advisory board, we are very, very keen to organise a meeting with senior citizens from our partner cities. We already started this last year. There were guests, senior citizens and senior citizens' representatives from Düsseldorf with whom we spent three days looking round the city and making preparations for this year. We had virtual contact with the Polish twin city of Łódź and now we want to expand this with the representatives of these two twin cities, but also with one representative each from Ústí nad Labem, Mulhouse and possibly Tampere. The meeting is to take place in September.
We want to discuss how senior citizens' policy is implemented in our partner cities. We then want to collate the results so that, perhaps at the end of the legislative period, we have a collection of examples of how we and our partner cities deal with senior citizens.
How can people participate in or help with the work of the Senior Citizens' Advisory Council?
It's actually relatively easy: we have fixed days when we hold consultation hours and you can come to us with your reasons. It is also possible to attend any public meeting of the senior citizens' advisory council.
There is always a public part and a non-public part. According to the council's statutes, a guest can speak in the public part. If we have prepared this well in advance, I would also give every guest the right to speak when I chair the meeting. That goes without saying. So that we are always in contact with citizens, because that's what we want as a senior citizens' council.
And the simplest thing is actually to use the e-mail address of the Seniors' Advisory Council or to call the city council directly.
Cultural Advisory Board
What matters does the Cultural Advisory Board deal with?
Tobias Möller: First and foremost, of course, we are there to advise the administration and politicians on cultural issues. These topics are very often discussed in advance in our advisory board. We reflect on the administration's proposals for resolutions and amend them in order to give the city councillors in the culture committee or city council a wide range of decision-making options. At the same time, however, we also present what would result from the decisions made. That is our main formal task.
Heda Bayer: As we have a lot of people from the field, we on the Cultural Advisory Board have the insight to explain what decisions or possible decisions mean in practice.
What are the tasks of the advisory board?
Tobias Möller: Many, many. We see ourselves as a bridge between politics, administration, civil society and, of course, all cultural organisations. Every organisation has different needs. You can't say "culture needs this" as long as it only affects a single organisation. There are things where you can say "the landscape needs this" and that is also part of our expertise - balancing individual needs and actual social needs, but still ensuring that ideally everyone is heard.
Heda Bayer: And I would also say to sound the alarm where we see that something could go really wrong or get lost.
What topics are you currently working on?
Tobias Möller: It's a colourful potpourri. On the one hand, we have the Capital of Culture at the moment, which of course involves discussing one or two things during ongoing operations. But this is an issue that has kept us very busy over the last five years. The Cultural Advisory Board has made a significant contribution to us being awarded the title; it has been able to contribute many things that have supported the integration into the community.
Right now, of course, we're dealing with the massive cuts that have hit our area disproportionately hard. It is a completely different challenge to look together with the associations and - as my colleague has just said - to sound the alarm that we are currently facing a massive reduction in substance. We need to find the best possible ideas and solutions for the future.
Heda Bayer: And also look for creative solutions to maintain diversity. Otherwise we really will lose the youth. They have already been through a lot during the coronavirus pandemic and we can't allow any more cutbacks to happen.
Tobias Möller: We also see our role on the Cultural Advisory Board as a cross-sectional task. That we don't just look after the young, not just the old or just the middle-aged, but that we have all generations in mind.
Of course, we both live the broad concept of culture, which does not delimit itself with: "This is a stage and everything else that does not take place on the stage is not culture". That would be rubbish. And to see how we can bring the different types of performance together and, above all, how we can bring society together again, enable it to communicate and offer incentives.
Culture shows that things can be different, that you can see things differently, that many things on this earth are not as fixed as they sometimes seem to us, for better or for worse, but that there is a lot of potential for visions. And a vision is not there to be achieved, but to remain in motion. That's culture for us: keeping moving.
Heda Bayer: We currently have a unique opportunity to start taking stock of the Capital of Culture projects - from the smallest things that went well to the major projects, because we can already see what all this effort has achieved.
How can people get involved and support the work of the Cultural Advisory Board?
Tobias Möller: We are very often out and about in public life and you can simply talk to us or send us an email.
We are currently preparing a consultation hour for the Cultural Advisory Board. We had a different format for a long time, the Jour fixe Kultur, which we also want to revive. But there's not enough time at the moment, partly because of the Capital of Culture.
Heda Bayer: It also helps us a lot when people from the city turn up to the public meetings, ask questions or simply attend. That's a great support.
Tobias Möller: I would emphasise that once again. People are welcome to attend the Cultural Advisory Board meetings. Very often - especially when there is only a public part - we are happy to answer questions afterwards and engage in dialogue. That's one of the easiest ways to get involved.
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The Seniors' Advisory Council
The Senior Citizens' Advisory Council of the City of Chemnitz consists of 13 members and their deputies. It is made up of members of the various city council groups as well as expert residents.
The Seniors' Advisory Council can be contacted by e-mail at seniorenbeirat(at)stadt-chemnitz.de
Consultation hour
On the first Tuesday of every month, the Seniors' Advisory Council offers a consultation hour. It takes place in the "Stadt- Schau-Fenster" room on the ground floor of the New Technical Town Hall. City councillors and members of the Seniors' Advisory Council offer citizens the opportunity to talk to them.