A group of activists, artists and educators is working to draw attention to Germany's dark history of colonialism through mapping, exhibitions, walking tours and more
, the new exhibition at Treptow and an accompanying program of events including a city-wide tour of sites with overlooked imperial history recently marked the first physical events Dekoloniale has hosted. “It’s really about implementing a new form of remembrance culture, and also showing people in a very physical way how present that past is, and how much it still shapes the present,” says journalist and curator Nadja Ofuatey-Alazard, one of Dekoloniale’s directors.
She’s speaking not just about the new exhibition, which opened on Oct. 15, but the overall work of Dekoloniale—which launched last year and will continue through 2024, constituting perhaps the most ambitious such initiative to date to promote understanding of a European capital city’s colonial history.
With a €2 million investment from the Senate Department for Culture and Europe, and €1 million from Germany’s Federal Cultural Foundation, the group has ambitious plans to interrogate the city’s painful history and legacy of imperialism and racism, and forge a way forward for its future. “These calls are there because [the past] has been ignored for so long,” says Anna Yeboah, Dekoloniale’s project coordinator.
Among some, including Dekoloniale’s organizers, there’s a sense that Germany has made excuses for its relatively short overseas colonial empire project compared to other European nations. Germany’s 19th century empire-building ramped up after the 1884 Berlin Conference, spanning parts of East, West and central Africa including present-day Burundi, Rwanda, Namibia and Tanzania. But all its overseas colonies, including those in the Pacific and in China, were confiscated at the end of World War I.
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