German Institutions Are Spending More Than $3 Million on Programming That Addresses Berlin’s Sordid (and Long Glossed-Over) Colonial Past

Museums, nonprofits, and the culture ministry of Berlin are
collaborating on a multi-year project to address the city’s long
colonial legacy.

Between now and 2024, organizers of the program will map
colonial sites around the city and mount exhibitions and events
looking at how Berlin benefited from Germany’s brutal presence
in part of present-day Cameroon, Nigeria, Chad, Ghana,
and Namibia, where Germany oversaw the genocide of the Herero and
Namaqua peoples.

“Our program will be a model of how colonialism and racism—but
also resistance to them—continue to shape urban societies here and
in the former colonies to the present day,” says Tahir Della, a
spokesperson for the Initiative for Black People in Germany, one of
the nonprofit organizations working with the government.

The first event will likely take place on August 23, the
International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade and Its
Abolition, though details have yet to be announced.

The purpose of the inaugural events, a spokesperson of the city
senate tells Artnet News, is to remind Berlin—and the world—that
the city participated in crimes against humanity since the late
17th century.

“On this day, the project will not only celebrate the outbreak
of the Black Revolution in Haiti,” she says, referring to the
Haitian Revolution, which began on August 22, 1791. “It will
also remember those enslaved Africans who had to serve
the [German royal dynastic] Hohenzollern family and became the
first members of Berlin’s Black community more than 300 years
ago.”

Other programming details are yet to be announced, but city
officials also plan to rename parts of Berlin that currently honor
imperial figures. The new names will instead recognized liberation
fighters.

Klaus Lederer, Berlin’s senator for culture and Europe, says the
project will be of central importance in the coming years.

“I am glad to have won over [my] comrades-in-arms who are now
supporting the project,” he says. The Berlin State Museums,
including the Märkisches Museum, the Nikolaikirche, the
Ephraim Palace, and the historic Knoblauch house, are also on
board. The senate also expects other museums to participate.

“Colonialism and its legacies, [which are] still effective
today, are among the blind spots of history,” says Hortensia
Völckers, the artistic director and a board member of the Federal
Cultural Foundation, one of the main state backers of the project.
“I hope that the Berlin example will be followed by many more
cities in Germany.”

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Glossed-Over) Colonial Past appeared first on artnet
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