Josephine Apraku [ENG]

What word comes to your mind when you think of the Humboldtforum / Berliner Schloss? Please explain.

One word?! Actually, I think I have difficulties with finding one word per se. I think there are indeed several words which come to my mind, but of course the typical difficulty with the handling of so called quasi-museum pieces which are to be exhibited there. Namely the difficult bridging of, on the one hand, colonial plunder which is intended to be exhibited one more time and which is generally not embedded in its colonial context, so the withholding of this on the one hand, and on the other hand the fact that currently we live in racist power structures which are aggravating the simultaneous presence of Black people and People of Color extremely- in a way the bridge in between these two things. Maybe “bridge”!

Do you think that Germany should pay reparations to the Herero and Nama communities that were affected by and dispossessed during the genocide from 1904-08? Please elaborate.

Well, from my point of view, I think the preceding step would be definitely a recognition of the genocide, specifically a clear positioning, and in connection with this an assumption of responsibility. Assuming responsibility can certainly lead to reparation payments. With regard to the question of reparation payments, I think it is utterly important to support those who have a clear position on this matter, who suffered first-hand from the consequences of the (so to speak) German participation in colonialism. Nevertheless I find it also important to consider what my real position in this context can be. I am a Black woman who was socialized in Germany, with a German citizenship, and my reality of life and the consequences of the colonial era from which I suffer/which I experience are in part different from for example those who are on site, in the regions which were indeed affected by the German colonial era. That means the consequences which I face here -for instance, the presence of a racist term imposed by others, to live in a white German majority society which is dominated by racist structures – these [consequences] are simply different than for example in Namibia, and so the addressing of these different consequences is different accordingly. That means I consider it my job to support those who suffer, in part, completely different consequences than me and if there is a demand for reparation payments, and I know there is, then I consider it my job to support this demand.

Do you think that a memorial and information center concerning the topic slavery, colonialism and racism should be built in Berlin? Please elaborate.

I wouldn’t necessarily say it needs to be a central one. I think it is important to mark these different points of time. Simply because chronologically, enslavement indeed had taken place before German colonialism officially took place. For example, regarding the Nazi era there are (indeed) stelae which are designed similarly and I think it would be nice if there was a similar concept which attends to this point of time and which addresses it critically. Although these topics are increasingly being addressed, especially with regard to colonialism, I am thinking of the example of the exhibition in the German Historical Museum, the way in which they are addressed is in general not particularly critical. [Instead], it often resorts to stereotyping, it often resorts to romanticizing of the notion that colonialism was not just a “bad time” but that it led to advantages of the formerly colonized. And this argument, by the way, I find interesting because, in particular the discourses around it can be compared to the Nazi era. In the way that there are people [who say that] “Hitler didn’t do only bad; he also built highways”. These [arguments] go in a similar direction, and I would find it important for there to be concepts for practices of remembering that deal with enslavement and also in particular German and formerly Prussian participation in it, but also thinking of a concept in which colonialism can be addressed along with it.

I find it significant that this lack of critical discussion about the topic of colonialism is naturally and necessarily reflected in school education. Here I always think of an example which is from a currently used history textbook for 14 to 16 year olds where the question is actually asked: what kind of advantages and disadvantages did colonialism bring to the formerly colonised? The interesting part of this question is that it implies that there have been advantages for those who have been besieged and exploited. And I find that this shows pretty clearly how uncritical the discussion is so far and how strongly, so to speak, colonial patterns of legitimation have an impact on education to the present day. And in this context I find it very important that the discussion about those topics on the one hand questions history, so to speak, which is to say: how is history made, that it is not neutral or objective, but we very much have perspective and those are typically not the perspectives of Black people and People of Color, and moreover the perspective of those who really actually received the violence in the specific places – that’s on the one hand. On the other hand also: which possibilities do we have to include alternative knowledge bases, namely those that I just mentioned, more into school education. And not just, so to speak, representatively to support one’s [the dominant German colonial etc.] point, because this is actually happening, but to really leave room to speak for oneself [as colonised]. And also to break with contemporary narratives on the topic of colonialism, which are very much romanticised.

According to you, how important is the equal and conceptional contribution of descendants of colonized people to handle the colonial past (i.e. negotiations regarding reparations, museums, exhibitions, representation in schoolbooks, street renaming etc.)?

I don’t only find it important, I think it is indispensable. We have to, when we deal with the topic of colonialism, we have to deal with the real implications, both with respect to the past and the present and ultimately also the future, which the German participation in colonialism has, in Namibia for example but also Tanzania or Togo or Cameroon. And in the ways that we address it and in order to deal with these implications we need the ones who live the implications daily, so to speak, in their own bodies, whose reality of life is shaped also by the consequences and continuities of the German participation in colonialism.