In a recently published essay collection<\/link> (so far only in German), historians Horst Gr\u00fcnder and Hermann Hiery, seek to provide a response to these questions. German colonialism remains a tremendously under-researched field, and receives even less attention in German societal discourse or within the German education system. Given German history, the importance of grappling with a difficult past (in German \u201cAufarbeitung\u201d) is recognized, and there is considerable awareness about the dangers of nationalist conceptions of \u201cpast.\u201d Yet, the failure to face Germany\u2019s relatively short-lived, but yet brutal, colonial history, and the politics of its memorialization continue to haunt Germany in the present. Germany\u2019s colonial empire in Africa from roughly 1884-1919 is known to include German East Africa, including Tanganyika, Burundi, Rwanda, Witu (part of present-day Kenya), as well as parts of present-day Tanzania and Mozambique; German South West Africa (Namibia, and parts of present-day Botswana); and German West Africa (Cameroon and Togo). The legacy of \u201cGerman empire\u201d can, however, be traced back earlier to Prussia.nGr\u00fcnder and Hiery\u2019s work sheds light onto the long \u201cjourney\u201d to German colonialism. Historian Ulrich van der Hayen outlines Prussia\u2019s initial imperial ambitions, and how they were subsequently memorialized and strategically deployed. Prussia\u2019s then emperor Friedrich Wilhelm (1620-88) and a range of Dutch merchant interests, forcefully co-opted local leaders in what is now Ghana to establish the colony of \u2018Gro\u00df Friedrichsburg\u2019 (also known as \u2018Brandenburg Gold Coast\u2019). Subsequently, the \u2018Brandenburg-Afrikanische Kompanie\u2019, mirroring the Dutch East India Company, was set up in order to merge commercial, geopolitical, and imperial interests. Though \u2018Gro\u00dffriedrichsburg\u2019 was eventually \u201csold\u201d to the Dutch in 1721 (having only been \u201cacquired\u201d in 1683), both the interest groups behind the renewed colonial enthusiasm of the 1870s-1880s, and the Third Reich, which named Friedrich Wilhelm the \u201ccreator\u201d of the first German empire, deployed a romanticized narrative of Friedrich Wilhelm and \u2018Gro\u00dffriedrichsburg\u2019 in order to (re-) legitimize imperialism within German society. Winfrid Baumgart\u2019s contribution on the motivations of Germany\u2019s renewed colonial ambitions in the late 19th century focuses on Bismarck, who famously stated that his \u201cmap of Africa was in Europe.\u201d It argues that Bismarck\u2019s personal motivations for supporting German colonialism and the hosting of notorious \u201cBerlin conference\u201d (1884-85), were not so much motivated by commercial or civilizational interests, but rather, driven by his disdain for the British Gladstone administration, and domestic political rivalries in the context of Bismarck\u2019s uncertain political future in Germany after Wilhelm I.nDespite these contributions, the book falls short of critically examining the legacy of German colonialism. The six chapters dealing with \u201cevery-day colonial life\u201d normalize extraction and violence by framing it in purely functional terms, and one can clearly depict an overcompensating strand throughout the book, which seeks to underline themes beyond \u201cresistance and violence\u201d instead of situating the \u201cevery-day\u201d within the context of dominance and exploitation.nArticle Link: https:\/\/africasacountry.com\/2018\/03\/what-are-the-politics-of-colonial-memory-in-germany<\/link>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In a recently published essay collection (so far only in German), historians Horst Gr\u00fcnder and Hermann Hiery, seek to provide a response to these questions. German colonialism remains a tremendously under-researched field, and receives even less attention in German societal discourse or within the German education system. Given German history, the importance of grappling with a difficult past (in German…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[107],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-433","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-kolonialismus-und-dekolonisierung"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n