‘No one talks about this’: Remembering Germany’s role in colonising Africa | History News

Berlin, Germany – The plaque that marks 77 William Street, the building in the German capital where a meeting that forever shaped Africa’s fate took place, is different.

Unlike those beside it – official square plaques that tell of Germany’s Nazi history in sombre colours – this one made of steel is curved awkwardly in front of a tree and bears an old map of Africa in vibrant hues of red and blue. That’s because it’s fairly new – put up just three years ago by the nonprofit Afrika Forum instead of the city of Berlin.

In a country long hailed for its detailed and prolific remembrance of Nazi crimes during the 20th century, the Africa plaque’s obscure loneliness highlights how Germany remembers – or forgets – its colonial past.

On a winter afternoon, a few tourists troop past without as much as a glance, heading towards the remnants of the Berlin Wall, about 200 metres (650 feet) away, and a memorial for Jews murdered in the Holocaust. No longer a palace, the old 77 building now houses an apartment block and a couple of restaurants and cafes on the bottom level. Even the people working nearby do not know how important this location is in African history – “Keine Ahnung [No idea],” one waitress, replied, when asked.

Exactly 140 years ago today, European leaders gathered at this spot finalised the carving up of Africa and the rules of the colonisation game. They’d been haggling on and off for about three months, from November 15, 1884, until February 26, 1885, arguing about who owned which territories on the continent. Known as the Berlin or the Congo Conference, the meeting would go on to accelerate the occupation of African nations, affecting the fate of that continent in ways that still reverberate today.

Here in Germany though, that history is largely a black hole.

“I don’t remember that we talked about colonialism a lot,” Berlin resident Sanga Lenz, 34, told Al Jazeera. Growing up, her school’s history curriculum centred around the Holocaust, the second world war, and the Cold War. A history teacher once took the class to a slavery exhibition and introduced Lenz to German imperialism. But it wasn’t until 2020 when she stumbled on a photo of an old male relative who was deployed to the colonies that she realised just how deeply connected she was to that past.

“He was stationed in German East Africa and he was building these train tracks there. I was like, wait a minute. Of course, this happened, but nobody ever talked about it. Growing up in Germany people talk about how some relatives were Nazis, but no one talks about this history,” Lenz said incredulously.

Johnny Whitlam, a tour guide in the city, said he is one of few who tries to bring his clients through William Street to point out the Africa plaque. “People are usually happy to find out about this, even if that’s not what they came to see,” he said.

Still, he admits, interest in the monument is minimal, something he believes largely reflects that authorities have not prioritised the issue.

“I’d say there’s definitely not enough being done in terms of the awareness of this history,” Whitlam said.

For Nadja Ofuatey-Alazard, an activist and co-director of Each One Teach One (EOTO) which advocates for the interests of Africans and Afro-Germans, Germany has chosen to focus on its most recent dark history but has failed to examine its brutal precursor.

“Germany is slow to come to the realisation that it was a colonial power,” Ofuatey-Alazard said. “Its main historical focus is on National Socialist history but there was a predecessor to that, and so Germany has to this day, not yet acted upon its historic responsibility. It needs to come into the mainstream. It has to wind up in schools and universities.”

The European conference that shaped Africa

In the late 1800s, European powers became embroiled in a mad “scramble for Africa”, as that period is now known. Their aim was to take control of resources they’d been buying on the continent – from rubber to palm oil.

Germany, the Ubited Kingdom, Portugal and France each tried to outdo the other, forcing local African leaders to sign exclusive “protection treaties” that meant they’d lose their sovereignty. At times, colonial officers bought vast expanses of African territory, or in other instances, scouts simply staked a country’s flag in an African nation to claim it.

At the time, 77 William Street was the palace of the then-German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, the leader who took on the task of summoning his rival European counterparts to the Berlin Conference to avoid a war in Europe as countries began butting heads over the colonies.

Initially, historians note, Bismarck was only vaguely interested in the race for Africa due to the cost of building and supporting colonial governments, as well as the complicated diplomatic overtures required. However, he was pressured by a growing movement of German pro-colonial writers and lobbyists who took to the media to highlight the opportunities to expand the German Empire’s sphere of influence. Germany was rapidly industrialising, and free labour and resources from the colonies was an opportunity Bismarck later came to appreciate. But there had to be some order, Bismarck and officials of the French government agreed, according to documents detailing their correspondence in the months before the meeting was called.

Fourteen countries took part in the Berlin Conference, with 19 delegates in total, including from the United States. There were no African representatives, not even from the Europe-recognised nations of Ethiopia, Liberia or Zanzibar.

By the end of the conference, a General Act spelling out the rules of “effective occupation” had emerged: Countries were to no longer merely stake flags and declare territories as their own, for example, but had to actually enforce their authority on the existing African nations. There was also to be free navigation in the Congo and Niger Basins, and Belgium’s King Leopold’s claim on the area that would later be called the Congo Free State was recognised.

Germany claimed four major areas: German East Africa, Kamerun, Togoland, and German Southwest Africa.

‘Greed and hubris’

Some researchers do not fully agree that the Berlin Conference singularly sealed Africa’s fate, as is widely believed. Jack Paine, a researcher with Emory University, told Al Jazeera that African states were already forming before the conference and that the boundaries of many countries would not be official until many years after. However, the conference likely went on to prompt a more frenzied rush to occupy colonies, he added.

“The Berlin Conference was a clear symbol of European greed and hubris,” Paine said. “In many ways, it served to legitimise [among Europeans] the ongoing process of claiming African territory, although even this interpretation warrants caution. Perhaps having a large number of leading statesmen convene together in person did more to boost efforts to dominate the entire area relative to an alternative world in which the conference did not convene.”

Indeed, within five years of the conference, the percentage of colonised parts of Africa went from 20 to 90 percent. The German Schutztruppe, or colonial guard, was particularly brutal in the colonies. In present-day Namibia, German troops massacred thousands from the revolting Herero and Nama people for their resistance, and then put them in concentration camps.

“They rented out the women to German companies and German settlers,” activist Sima Luipert, whose great-grandmother was “rented” and who is now part of a group of Herero and Nama leaders pressing Germany for reparations, told Al Jazeera.

Because Germany lost World War I, and thus all its African possessions by 1919, there’s a lingering sense in the country that it didn’t have much stake in the game, and that other European powers, such as Belgium, did much worse. But that thinking is flawed, activists point out.

“European leaders love to point to each other and say, ‘No, they did worse than us,’” Ofuatey-Alazard of EOTO said. “The truth is that they all did terrible things. Germany needs to acknowledge that history more.”

Hoping to push for better acknowledgement of that history, Ofuatey-Alazard has led the organisation of a series of “Decolonisation” Conferences since 2020, a project partly sponsored by the state. At the first conference, she invited delegates from African countries who gathered to discuss the impacts of colonisation on Africa today.

“I decided to come up with a format that was a counter-conference,” she said. “Since there had been 19 delegates at the historic [Berlin] Conference representing 14 nations back then, I mirrored that and invited 19 women of African descent, because obviously, historically it had been 19 men.”

In the most recent conference in November, another set of 19 delegates, this time all people of African descent, came up with a 10-point list of demands for European countries: Pay reparations, abolish tenuous visa regimes, and protect human rights at a time when Europe is veering dangerously to the right, the document read. However, the European Union has not yet responded to those requests, the activist said.

Traces of the past in the present

Growing up in Germany, Justice Lufuma Mvemba said she struggled to reconcile what she was being taught in school and her conversations with peers, with her family’s reality.

Her family fled from the Democratic Republic of the Congo amid a period of political unrest in the 1990s. The country was badly fractured due to intervention in its local politics by colonial powers, and is still at war today.  At home, her father’s fear of violence was so enormous that he wouldn’t let them play with toy guns.

But in Germany, people would refer to colonial history as being “not that relevant”, and history classes were devoid of any critical thinking on imperialism. “I was confused,” said Mvemba, 33, who found it hard not to notice how Africa’s resources were being dominated by foreign powers.

Now, looking to offer a more realistic view of the situation, Mvemba founded the Decolonial City Tour, specifically showing residents and tourists alike the parts of Berlin that still carry colonial and controversial histories. It’s a unique concept in the city.

A typical tour takes visitors down to the African Quarters, in the city’s Mitte district. The quiet residential area, filled with pastel-coloured modernist apartment blocks, was initially developed by animal lover Carl Hagenbeck to house a human zoo where “exotic” people from German colonies would be exhibited. It is why some of the streets here are named after former colonies: Togo Street, or Windhoek Street for example. Hagenbeck’s death from a snakebite and the outbreak of World War I, however, scuttled those plans.

At Manga-Bell Square, tourists learn that the public space only got its name in 2022. Initially, it was named after Gustav Nachtigal, the German commissioner for Africa who was instrumental in taking control of Cameroon, Togo and Namibia. After years of controversy, the Berlin city council finally renamed it after Rudolf Manga-Bell, the Cameroonian prince who was executed by colonial Germany in 1914 on charges of treason because he dared to question the arbitrary displacement of his people, the Duala.

As the group walks around, guides often throw in fun facts. One that leaves many stunned is that the popular German grocery store, Edeka, was originally an acronym for (E)inkaufsgenossenschaft (de)r (K)olonialwarenhaendler or the Cooperative of Colonial Grocers.

Mvemba said she often gets positive reactions from her mostly German clientele. “It’s always interesting to see people’s reactions to that,” she said. “People are always like, ‘Wow, I had no idea’, and they do appreciate that history.”

On the other hand, some struggle to see the less pleasant side of Germany, pushing back on the tours by questioning Mvemba, or very quietly slipping away as the group rounds a corner, she said. “It’s a very small percentage, but it’s there. And sometimes we get nasty comments on social media, too.”

This is part of why activists say Germany needs to invest more in memorialising its history, alongside paying appropriate reparations to its former colonies. While Ofuatey-Alazard credits the outgoing government of Olaf Scholz under the Social Democratic Party for putting its African past on the agenda, she also says the future of remembrance in the country is shaky.

In last week’s general elections, the conservative Christian Democrats Union (CDU) party won, but the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party recorded strong gains too, becoming the strongest opposition in parliament. That’s a threat, the activist said.

“Even though [the far-right] might not wind up in government as the conservatives have promised, the problem is that they are sort of driving the others, and pushing the others, and so that is of concern,” Ofuatey-Alazard said. “And definitely, the AfD is completely against any decolonial or memory culture. They consider addressing the past shameful and so they are completely in denial. So we don’t know how that will affect our work. We are obviously very worried.”