May Ayim (1960-1996) was a German poet, educator and activist in the Afro-German movement.

May Ayim, Part 3, Minute 0:40 – 1:05.

In the documentary Hoffnung im Herz – Mündliche Poesie by Maria Binders, May Ayim describes how, with the self-empowering designation “Afro-German” or “Schwarze Deutsche”, she refused negative racial epithets, which were still quite common in everyday language in the late 1980s. But she noted that even with these more positive developments, little had changed for Afro-Germans. Even today, the prevailing idea is that being German means being white. As a result, the fact of having lived in Germany for several generations still does not mean that people of colour, Black people or people with a migration history can (discursively) be considered German. Last but not least, the media and discourses about the “other” also make it clear who is German and who has yet to be integrated. Within this framework, people of colour or people with a migration background cannot by definition be German. This is despite the fact that the law on nationality was changed in 2000 in such a way that one no longer needs to have “German blood” in order to be German but can, under certain conditions, be German by virtue of having been born in Germany.

*May Ayim (2003): Blues in Black and White. A Collection of Essays, Poetry, and Conversations. Cape Town etc: Africa World Press.

Heinrich Lummer (1932-2019) was a CDU politician and was Senator for the Interior of Berlin state from 1981-1986.

David Clay Large (2002): Berlin. Biographie einer Stadt. STADT_VERLAG, p. 441.

The former Senator for the Interior of Berlin state, Heinrich Lummer, became notorious for the corruption scandals he was involved in and his support for the Federal Intelligence Service, as well as his inclusion of right-wing extremists in the CDU. Lummer also attracted attention with racist and anti-Semitic statements in which he campaigned against the “foreign infiltration” of the country, as this quote makes clear. These discourses also contributed to the image that persisted for many years amongst white Germans, of Kreuzberg neighbourhood as a dangerous criminal ghetto. The area was in fact a relatively safe environment for its residents, in that within it, they faced less persecution by the right-wing. Terms like “Türkenkinder”, “social impoverishment” and “Turkish colony” were used in a routine manner by the magazine Der Spiegel. This quote refers to Kreuzberg before its sweeping gentrification, and describes the area during the 1980s, when an estimated 30,000 people from Turkey lived there, for which reason it was called “Little Istanbul”. Kreuzburg has often been compared with the New York boroughs of the Bronx, Harlem and Brooklyn, which have been similarly stigmatised and criminalised.

*Iman Attia (2007): Orient- und IslamBilder. Interdisziplinäre Beiträge zu Orientalismus und antimuslimischem Rassismus, Münster: Unrast.
*Çagrı Kahveci (2017): Migrantische Selbstorganisierung im Kampf gegen Rassismus. Die politische Praxis ausgewählter antirassistischer Gruppen türkeistämmiger Migrant*innen, Münster: Unrast.

Gusta Dawidsohn-Draenger (1917-1943) was born in Kraków to an orthodox Jewish family. After the outbreak of World War II, she played a key role in coordinating Jewish resistance to the Nazis. Together with others – including her husband Shimshon Draenger – she smuggled weapons, organised hiding places and fought with partisans in the surrounding forests. In November 1943, the Germans murdered her and her husband. Between January and March 1943, she had written down her extensive memories on a roll of toilet paper in prison.

Jochen Kast, Bernd Siegler & Peter Zinke (1999): Das Tagebuch der Partisanin Justyna. Jüdischer Widerstand in Krakau. Berlin: Elefanten Press. The year (1943) is an approximation.

This quote, in which Gusta Draenger-Dawidson cites her husband Shimshon Draenger, is a testament to Draenger-Dawidson’s memory of armed resistance to the Nazis in Poland. Jewish resistance to the Nazis, often carried out by individuals and small groups, is rarely mentioned in history books. There were also uprisings and revolts in the Warsaw Ghetto, Auschwitz, Treblinka, Bialystok and Sobibor. The largest resistance group with around 1,200 members was the Jewish partisan Tuvia Bielski in Belarus. The forms of resistance were numerous: they ranged from leaflets and newspapers, the running of theatres and schools, to food smuggling and the forging of documents. An estimated 6 million Jews died during the Second World War from 1939-1945 as a result of the Shoah, the Nazi genocide.

*United States Holocaust Memorial Museum: Armed Jewish Resistance: Partisans.

Theo Sommer (born 1930) is a German journalist who has been editor in chief and publisher of the weekly newspaper Die ZEIT.

Die ZEIT, 09.05.2017.

The term ‘Leitkultur’ was first used in 1998 by Bassam Tibi, a professor of International Relations. In 2000, Theo Sommer, publisher of Die ZEIT newspaper, took it up, calling on people with a migration background, people of colour, Black people and Jews to assimilate and follow dominant German culture, which was left vaguely defined. Leitkultur has been used over and again during election campaigns to stir up a certain climate, most recently in 2000 by Friedrich Merz, the current chairman of the CDU. Above all, these kinds of statement reinforce a feeling of superiority among some white Germans, portraying people marked Muslim as backward, violent and misogynist. The term Leitkultur jumbles together various racist ideologies. These include the AfD’s formulation of a counter-concept to the idea of multiculturalism in its party programme.

*Ayse Tecmen (2020): Debates on German Leitkultur and Multiculturalism.

Brothers Keepers is an association of predominantly Black musicians who have joined forces due to increasing racism in Germany, in order to draw attention to the difficult, sometimes life-threatening situation for people with a migration background, Blacks and people of colour. The lyrics are from the song Adriano (Last Warning), the part from which the quote is taken is rapped by Samy Deluxe and D-Flame.

Brothers Keepers (2001): Adriano (Letzte Warnung).

Brothers Keepers, an association of mainly Black musicians from Germany, sang about the murder of Alberto Adriano on June 5, 2000 in their song Adriano. Adriano Alberto, father of three, was brutally beaten by three Nazis, dying of his injuries a few days later. With this song, Brothers Keepers also wanted to draw attention to the intensification of racism, which increased significantly after the fall of the Wall. They also directed their critique at the political sphere, and at the lack of interest in racism and people affected by racism. This song can also be understood as a form of resistance and an announcement by self-organised Black musicians that they refuse to accept racism in Germany any longer.

*Advanced Chemistry (1992): Fremd im eigenen Land.
*Samy Deluxe (2001): Weck mich auf.
*SXTN (2016): Ich bin schwarz.
*Ah Nice (2016): Ich bin Schwarz.

Hendrik Witbooi, actually ǃNanseb ǀGabemab (ca. 1830-1905) was, from the end of 1888, the captain of the Orlam people, the Witbooi, who were related to the Nama.

Der Spiegel 13/1985.

Theodor Gotthilf Leutwein was commander of the Kaiserliche Schutztruppe and governor of German South West Africa. Hornkranz (in today’s Namibia) is known for a colonial massacre which took place in 1893 in which 80 Witbooi fighters were killed and 40 women and children abducted under Leutwein’s command. Kaptein Hendrik Witbooi is viewed and celebrated as the first African leader to mount armed resistance against the German colonialists. What is interesting in this exchange of letters is that in Leutwein’s replies, those affected by colonisation are held equally responsible for the brutality that was part and parcel of colonial conquest. Leutwein describes Witbooi’s “stubbornness” as irrational behaviour that endangered peace in the German protectorate. In this way, Witbooi is also held responsible for the war and murder of the Witboois. Then as now, the strategy pursued was one that sought to preserve prosperity and peace in Germany at the expense of the Global South. Even today, resistance to colonial rule is hardly discussed in local history books and is therefore not given the value it deserves. Instead, the fairy tale of equal trade relations and voyages of discovery is still being told. Witbooi died in 1904, in fighting against German colonial power.

*Reinhard Koesseler (2007): Genocide, Apology and Reparation – the linkage between images of the past in Namibia and Germany.

Benjamin Raule (1634-1707) was a Dutch shipowner and General Director of the Brandenburg Navy.

Adam Jones (1985): Brandenburg Sources for West African History, Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, p. 75.

This quote comes from the electoral instructions given by Benjamin Raule, a general marine director of the Electorate of Brandenburg, to Joost Van Colster, the first director of Fort Groß-Friedrichsburg, today’s Pokesu. Both Fort Gross-Friedrichsburg and Elmina Castle (both located in modern-day Ghana), where Colster was previously involved in the slave trade, were slave forts. Built in 1482, Elmina Castle was the first European slave trading post in all of sub-Saharan Africa. This quote illustrates the dehumanisation of Black people and their treatment as commodities, as animals whose human needs and dignity were utterly discarded through exploitation. People from West Africa were brutally deported to the Caribbean and Brazil. This quote also makes it clear that murder, enslavement and forced labour had taken place under Brandenburg rule long before the genocide of the Herero and Nama from 1904 to 1908.

*Peter Linebaugh & Marcus Rediker (2000): The Many-Headed Hydra. The Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic. London: Verso.
*Olaudah Equiano (1789): The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African.

From a text by the Princely Reuss-Plauenscher Criminal Counselor and head of the Princely Criminal Court in Lobenstein in Thuringia in the 19th century.

Klaus Michael Bogdal (2011): Europa erfindet die Zigeuner. Bonn: bpb, p. 279.

The first documented mentions of Sint*ezza and Romn*ja in today’s Germany are from the beginning of the 15th century. The ancestors of the Sint*ezza and Romn*ja who live in Europe today migrated from what are now India and Pakistan. Very soon after their arrival, the initial tolerance gave way to discriminatory practices and racist language. From early on, white Germans were given license to equate all Sint*ezza and Romn*ja as criminals, so that, for example, no evidence was required when Sint*ezza and Romn*ja were accused of a crime; they were treated as criminals by definition. Although they continue to be marginalised to this day, the Sint*ezza and Romn*ja have always been an integral part of social life, notwithstanding Nazi propaganda and until Chancellor Adolf Hitler came to power. Despite widespread resistance to their deportation, and within the death camps themselves, an estimated 500,000 Sint*ezza and Romn*ja fell victim to the Germans in the Porajmos, the genocide.

*Ian Hancock (1987): The Pariah Syndrome. An Account of Gypsy Slavery and Persecution.
*Romani Phen: Romnja Archiv.

Kaiser Wilhelm I (1797-1888) was King of Prussia from 1861 and the first German Emperor from 1971.

Christian Kopp/Berlin Postkolonial (2009): “Im Geiste guten gegenseitigen Einvernehmens” – Bismarcks Berliner Afrika-Konferenz.

The Berlin Conference was convened on November 15, 1884, at the invitation of the German Empire and the French Republic. This conference is uniquely scandalous as a historical event, in that through it, an entire continent was divided up amongst mostly Western countries, without the participation and even knowledge of its African inhabitants.
Those who participated in it were twelve European countries, the USA and the Ottoman Empire. However, the colonisation, dispossession, enslavement, murder and forced labour of people in Africa had begun much earlier. This colonial policy led to significant economic enrichment for those who participated, especially within Europe. Thus today’s prosperity and wealth in Europe cannot be discussed without addressing the imperialist (post)colonial politics that persist into the present.

*Walter Rodney (1975/2012): How Europe underdeveloped Afrika. Cape Town: Pambazuka Press.

Semiya Şimşek (b. 1986) is a pedagogist and the daughter of Enver Şimşek, who was the first person to be murdered by the NSU. Semiya Şimşek has become an important voice for victims’ relatives. In her book Painful Homeland: Germany and the Murder of My Father, she works through her experiences around the murder of her father. Semiya Şimşek left Germany and now lives in Turkey.

Süddeutsche Magazin, 10/2013.

Between 2000 and 2007, the neo-Nazi terrorist organisation National Socialist Underground (NSU) murdered nine migrants and one policewoman: Enver Şimşek, Abdurrahim Özüdoğru, Süleyman Taşköprü, Habil Kılıç, Mehmet Turgut, İsmail Yaşar, Theodoros Boulgarides, Mehmet Kubaşık, Halit Yozgat Michele Kiesewetter.
Both the NSU and investigators kept these crimes undercover for more than ten years until the NSU exposed itself with a video in 2011. After it became public, some members of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution destroyed relevant files, and high-ranking officers for the Protection of the Constitution resigned. Instead of pursuing actual clues, for years, investigators targeted the victims’ relatives and accused them of criminal activities. The unprecedented right-wing terrorist crimes of the NSU, the investigations and the subsequent trial illustrate only too well the deeply rooted institutional racism of the police, the secret service and courtrooms. The victims’ relatives, co-plaintiffs, activists and critical journalists denounced the fact that during the entire process, right-wing extremist groups were never investigated.

*NSU Watch.
*wsws.org (Dietmar Henning, 15.07.2015): Documentary examines unanswered questions about the National Socialist Underground.

Helmut Schmidt (1918-2015) was an SPD politician and Federal Chancellor of Germany from 1974 to 1982.

Die ZEIT, 05.02.1982.

In the early 1980s, despite the end of the Fordist labour regime, debates about repatriation intensified. One of the common lines of argument came from within politics, whether the governing Conservatives or the opposition Social Democrats: the number of migrants should be reduced and a second cycle of repatriation campaigns organised. What was not taken into account was the increasing number of right-wing groups and of de facto hate crimes against migrants, which took place in the shadow of governing parties’ racist discourses on foreign infiltration and their population ideologies. The victims were thereby made into perpetrators because “Germany” risked being overburdened. Today, this ideological turn legitimises what has become morally and socially acceptable neo-racism in the highly industrialised and “enlightened” Global North.

*DOMID (2021): 60 years Almanya – Migration from Turkey.

Karl Stojka (1931 – 2003) was an Austrian survivor of the Porajmos (genocide of Romn:ja during National Socialism). After surviving the concentration camps, Karl Stojka became an artist and author.

Projekt Kulturelles Erbe. Tradition mit Zukunft (2007): Roma und Sinti. Vergangenheit und Gegenwart. HAK International Klagenfurt.

Despite their long history in Germany, attempts have been made to exclude, suppress and deport Sint:ezza and Romn:ja from social life here over the centuries. This is still the case today if one considers the deportation of Sint:ezza and Romn:ja to so-called safe European countries of origin. Despite the discrimination and persecution they have experienced,Sint:ezza and Romn:ja organise and resist. In Germany, there are numerous clubs and associations organised by Sint:ezza and Romn:ja that work on empowerment, raising awareness of racism, documentation and political participation. Stojka’s ancestors lived in what is now Austria for an estimated 300 years before many of his family members, including his father and brother, were murdered in the concentration camps. Stojka himself survived the Porajmos and later began to paint. In his paintings he expressed the persecution of Sint:ezza and Romn:ja.

*Council of Europe: History. Remembrance. Identity. Remembrance of the persecution and genocide of Roma by the Nazi adn their allies remains a sensitive and painful issue for the Roma.