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The Long Shadow of German Colonialism: Amnesia, Denialism and Revisionism
From 1884 to 1914, the world's fourth-largest overseas colonial empire was that of the German Kaiserreich. Yet this fact is little known in Germany and the subject remains virtually absent from most school textbooks.
While debates are now common in France and Britain over the impact of empire on former colonies and colonising societies, German imperialism has only more recently become a topic of wider public interest. In 2015, the German government belatedly and half-heartedly conceded that the extermination policies carried out over 1904-8 in the settler colony of German South West Africa (now Namibia) qualify as genocide. But the recent invigoration of debate on Germany's colonial past has been hindered by continued amnesia, denialism and a populist right endorsing colonial revisionism. A campaign against postcolonial studies has sought to denounce and ostracise any serious engagement with the crimes of the imperial age.
Henning Melber presents an overview of German colonial rule and analyses how its legacy has affected and been debated in German society, politics and the media. He also discusses the quotidian experiences of Afro-Germans, the restitution of colonial loot, and how the history of colonialism affects important institutions such as the Humboldt Forum.
- GenresHistoryNonfiction
416 pages, Paperback
Published November 1, 2024
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January 27, 2025
1 – Introduction – Which Past, Whose Past?
p.15 – “We cannot change the past, but we can change our blindness to the past.” (Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, in her keynote speech at the opening ceremony of the Ethnological Museum and the Asian Art Museum in the Humboldt Forum, Berlin, Sept. 22, 2022)
p.18 – Blind-Spot Colonialism – The coalition agreement of 12 March 2018 between the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), the Christian Social Union (CSU) and the Social Democratic Party (SPD) dubbed the “grand coalition” – opened a new chapter in German governance. For the first time the parties acknowledged the need to address the colonial past. Under the subtitle “Commemoration and Memory,” the agreement declared that without remembrance there can be no future and that dealing with Germany’s colonial history is part of the basic democratic consensus. But this remarkable statement was followed by an exclusive focus on the Nazi era and the East German (GDR) state. The words “colonial” and “colonialism” appear five times throughout the 173 pages. They feature only in reference to the declared intention of increasing cultural collaboration with Africa especially through a reappraisal of colonialism, the construction of museums and cultural institutions in Africa and a commitment to thorough archival research.
2 – Enlightenment, Racism, Colonialism and Genocide
p.61 – Towards Decolonisation – Revisiting European modernity and its notions of progress and development may be a particular challenge to those who, because of origin and tradition, were socialized within a culture of domination and imperialism on the part of former generations of perpetrators. They are confronted with the painful task of decolonising their minds by means of critical reflection on the nature of their socialisation.
p.62 – The basic question is to what extent current practices and mindsets, as reproduced in the still-dominant concepts of progress and development, represent a continuity with colonial thinking. The Age of Enlightenment was also the Age of Reason. In its uncritical belief in man-made progress (indeed, in the male reductionist version), the era saw – as Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno argued – the emergence of the first rays of a mythical sun of calculating rationality, under whose icy light the seeds of the new barbarism began to ripen. This rationality took shape as the European project of hegemonic expansion, claiming a universal omnipotence and omniscience to solve the problems of our world (at the cost of the extermination of millions of species – ultimately including us too).
3 – The German Colonial Brand
p.67 – Germany Goes Overseas – Germany only achieved official statehood as a unified country in 1871. While Germany can be considered a latecomer in the competition for colonial territories, German merchants and explorers nonetheless played an active role from early on. Germans participated in colonial enterprises right from the initial stages of European colonial expansion.
p.68 – After the traders, missionary societies were next in line in preparing the way for Germany to enter the era of colonial rule. As “civilising agents,” missionaries promoted and imposed their Christian-European value systems as a universal norm, thereby displaying the ethnocentric arrogance of a “paternalistic developmental dictatorship” involved in a project of cultural imperialism. This went hand in hand with the promotion of an early-capitalist work ethic.
p.70 – The first claims of ownership of overseas territories were made by merchants in charge of big companies, mainly operating from the Hanse towns of Hamburg and Bremen, who staked their claims to land through their individual enterprises and in this way opened the way for the later proclamation of official colonial rule by the imperial German state.
p.74 – In 1884 the first colonial annexations were officially declared by hoisting the German flag and thereby placing (or rather forcing) territories and their inhabitants under the official “protection” of the Kaiserreich.
German Colonies – By the turn of the 20th century, imperial Germany had become one of the biggest colonial empires in terms of foreign territory, euphemistically dubbed “acquisitions.”
• South West Africa (Angola, Namibia, Burundi, Rwanda, Tanzania)
• Cameroon
• Togo
• East Africa (Zanzibar)
• South Sea / Pacific Islands (Samoa, New Guinea, Solomon Islands,
• Qingdao / Tsingtao or Jiaozhou (Kiautschou) Bay, South China Sea
p.170 – Other efforts to address some of the injustices of colonialism and their consequences include the restitution of looted cultural artifacts and the return of human remains.
p.172 – Colonial Discourses at Home – August Bebel (1840-1913) was not only a prominent but also an exceptionally principled voice in expressing disagreement with colonial policy. An early example was his lengthy intervention of January 1889, when the official takeover of administration in East Africa by the German state was discussed in parliament, using the pretext of the abolition of slavery as a motive. His speech provides evidence that the spirit of the times was not as all-pervasive and predominant as some apologists for colonialism would maintain.
p.175 – As Bebel himself made clear in another speech in 1906 in the flowery language of the time: colonial policy in itself was no crime, it could even be a cultural act. If representatives of cultivated and civilized people came to foreign people as liberators, as friends and mentors, as helpers in need, to bring them the achievements of culture and civilization and educate them to become people of culture, colonisation could be an act noble in intention and correct in its approach. Then the Social Democrats would be the first, so he assured his speakers, willing to support such colonisation as a great cultural mission. […] Such statements were not unusual.
p.178 – Social Democrats shared with other social classes the outward perspectives of dominance and subordination in colonial power relations, defined as a civilizing mission. This (mis)understood colonialism as a form of development aid. Despite all their moral and ethical objections to crude forms of subjugation, the Social Democrats’ view in its cultural-imperialist variations was not far from the reasoning of the Kolonialreformer (colonial reformers).
p.251 – Reactionary Revisionism: The Case of the AfD – Postcolonial civil society and not least the increasing presence of proactive Afro-Germans in public life have made visible inroads into German provincialism and its isolationist views that can only contemplate a “culturally homogeneous” society. Such gains have been met with increasing pushback by White Supremacists. They work hand in hand with the populist right, dismissing anything not to their political liking as “woke culture” while themselves resorting to the practices of McCarthyism. This is most pronounced in attacks on postcolonial efforts to bring colonial history into the public realm and to provide adequate forms of memory and commemoration. These efforts are damned as antisemitic for downplaying the singularity of the Holocaust.
p.265 – Light at the End of the Tunnel? – German postcolonial initiatives and other civil society agencies demand that colonial atrocities committed by the German empire should enter public memory in forms like the Holocaust memorial in central Berlin, as well as through more local, community forms of remembrance. So far, these efforts have largely been ignored by the German government. But some headway has been made in a few municipalities and federal states. As explained in more detail elsewhere, the initiative to Decolonize Berlin for under way in 2020.
p.270 – Rehabilitation of Maga Bell and Ngoso Din – On the occasion of a visit to Cameroon for cultural events in early November 2022, Minister of State Katja Keul visited the site of Manga Bell’s and Ngoso Din’s execution. In a well-r=prepared speech, she declared among other things: “Colonialism was nothing but systematic exploitation. Resources were plundered and borders drawn indiscriminately.”
6 – Challenging Colonial Asymmetries and Blind Spots
p.404 – The Coloniality of Power – The singularity of the Holocaust provides an excuse in the German debate for the gatekeepers to leave the image of the colonial Kaiserreich undisturbed. This compartmentalises and thereby disrupts history for the sake of a selective present. A contrasting African perspective dismisses the exclusivism of the term “holocaust.” It is seen as evidence that the “tendency to diminish the pain of Africans is not accidental; it revels the devious workings of the phenomena of the coloniality of power in European scholarship that names Africans as less human or Other.”
p.15 – “We cannot change the past, but we can change our blindness to the past.” (Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, in her keynote speech at the opening ceremony of the Ethnological Museum and the Asian Art Museum in the Humboldt Forum, Berlin, Sept. 22, 2022)
p.18 – Blind-Spot Colonialism – The coalition agreement of 12 March 2018 between the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), the Christian Social Union (CSU) and the Social Democratic Party (SPD) dubbed the “grand coalition” – opened a new chapter in German governance. For the first time the parties acknowledged the need to address the colonial past. Under the subtitle “Commemoration and Memory,” the agreement declared that without remembrance there can be no future and that dealing with Germany’s colonial history is part of the basic democratic consensus. But this remarkable statement was followed by an exclusive focus on the Nazi era and the East German (GDR) state. The words “colonial” and “colonialism” appear five times throughout the 173 pages. They feature only in reference to the declared intention of increasing cultural collaboration with Africa especially through a reappraisal of colonialism, the construction of museums and cultural institutions in Africa and a commitment to thorough archival research.
2 – Enlightenment, Racism, Colonialism and Genocide
p.61 – Towards Decolonisation – Revisiting European modernity and its notions of progress and development may be a particular challenge to those who, because of origin and tradition, were socialized within a culture of domination and imperialism on the part of former generations of perpetrators. They are confronted with the painful task of decolonising their minds by means of critical reflection on the nature of their socialisation.
p.62 – The basic question is to what extent current practices and mindsets, as reproduced in the still-dominant concepts of progress and development, represent a continuity with colonial thinking. The Age of Enlightenment was also the Age of Reason. In its uncritical belief in man-made progress (indeed, in the male reductionist version), the era saw – as Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno argued – the emergence of the first rays of a mythical sun of calculating rationality, under whose icy light the seeds of the new barbarism began to ripen. This rationality took shape as the European project of hegemonic expansion, claiming a universal omnipotence and omniscience to solve the problems of our world (at the cost of the extermination of millions of species – ultimately including us too).
3 – The German Colonial Brand
p.67 – Germany Goes Overseas – Germany only achieved official statehood as a unified country in 1871. While Germany can be considered a latecomer in the competition for colonial territories, German merchants and explorers nonetheless played an active role from early on. Germans participated in colonial enterprises right from the initial stages of European colonial expansion.
p.68 – After the traders, missionary societies were next in line in preparing the way for Germany to enter the era of colonial rule. As “civilising agents,” missionaries promoted and imposed their Christian-European value systems as a universal norm, thereby displaying the ethnocentric arrogance of a “paternalistic developmental dictatorship” involved in a project of cultural imperialism. This went hand in hand with the promotion of an early-capitalist work ethic.
p.70 – The first claims of ownership of overseas territories were made by merchants in charge of big companies, mainly operating from the Hanse towns of Hamburg and Bremen, who staked their claims to land through their individual enterprises and in this way opened the way for the later proclamation of official colonial rule by the imperial German state.
p.74 – In 1884 the first colonial annexations were officially declared by hoisting the German flag and thereby placing (or rather forcing) territories and their inhabitants under the official “protection” of the Kaiserreich.
German Colonies – By the turn of the 20th century, imperial Germany had become one of the biggest colonial empires in terms of foreign territory, euphemistically dubbed “acquisitions.”
• South West Africa (Angola, Namibia, Burundi, Rwanda, Tanzania)
• Cameroon
• Togo
• East Africa (Zanzibar)
• South Sea / Pacific Islands (Samoa, New Guinea, Solomon Islands,
• Qingdao / Tsingtao or Jiaozhou (Kiautschou) Bay, South China Sea
p.170 – Other efforts to address some of the injustices of colonialism and their consequences include the restitution of looted cultural artifacts and the return of human remains.
p.172 – Colonial Discourses at Home – August Bebel (1840-1913) was not only a prominent but also an exceptionally principled voice in expressing disagreement with colonial policy. An early example was his lengthy intervention of January 1889, when the official takeover of administration in East Africa by the German state was discussed in parliament, using the pretext of the abolition of slavery as a motive. His speech provides evidence that the spirit of the times was not as all-pervasive and predominant as some apologists for colonialism would maintain.
p.175 – As Bebel himself made clear in another speech in 1906 in the flowery language of the time: colonial policy in itself was no crime, it could even be a cultural act. If representatives of cultivated and civilized people came to foreign people as liberators, as friends and mentors, as helpers in need, to bring them the achievements of culture and civilization and educate them to become people of culture, colonisation could be an act noble in intention and correct in its approach. Then the Social Democrats would be the first, so he assured his speakers, willing to support such colonisation as a great cultural mission. […] Such statements were not unusual.
p.178 – Social Democrats shared with other social classes the outward perspectives of dominance and subordination in colonial power relations, defined as a civilizing mission. This (mis)understood colonialism as a form of development aid. Despite all their moral and ethical objections to crude forms of subjugation, the Social Democrats’ view in its cultural-imperialist variations was not far from the reasoning of the Kolonialreformer (colonial reformers).
p.251 – Reactionary Revisionism: The Case of the AfD – Postcolonial civil society and not least the increasing presence of proactive Afro-Germans in public life have made visible inroads into German provincialism and its isolationist views that can only contemplate a “culturally homogeneous” society. Such gains have been met with increasing pushback by White Supremacists. They work hand in hand with the populist right, dismissing anything not to their political liking as “woke culture” while themselves resorting to the practices of McCarthyism. This is most pronounced in attacks on postcolonial efforts to bring colonial history into the public realm and to provide adequate forms of memory and commemoration. These efforts are damned as antisemitic for downplaying the singularity of the Holocaust.
p.265 – Light at the End of the Tunnel? – German postcolonial initiatives and other civil society agencies demand that colonial atrocities committed by the German empire should enter public memory in forms like the Holocaust memorial in central Berlin, as well as through more local, community forms of remembrance. So far, these efforts have largely been ignored by the German government. But some headway has been made in a few municipalities and federal states. As explained in more detail elsewhere, the initiative to Decolonize Berlin for under way in 2020.
p.270 – Rehabilitation of Maga Bell and Ngoso Din – On the occasion of a visit to Cameroon for cultural events in early November 2022, Minister of State Katja Keul visited the site of Manga Bell’s and Ngoso Din’s execution. In a well-r=prepared speech, she declared among other things: “Colonialism was nothing but systematic exploitation. Resources were plundered and borders drawn indiscriminately.”
6 – Challenging Colonial Asymmetries and Blind Spots
p.404 – The Coloniality of Power – The singularity of the Holocaust provides an excuse in the German debate for the gatekeepers to leave the image of the colonial Kaiserreich undisturbed. This compartmentalises and thereby disrupts history for the sake of a selective present. A contrasting African perspective dismisses the exclusivism of the term “holocaust.” It is seen as evidence that the “tendency to diminish the pain of Africans is not accidental; it revels the devious workings of the phenomena of the coloniality of power in European scholarship that names Africans as less human or Other.”
January 22, 2025
A solid history of how Germany remembers and memorialized its history. The focus is more on how little Germany has done to heal and recognize old wounds rather than on the history in each colony. An interesting and worthwhile read.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews