https://insidestory.org.au/cancelling-bismarck-neumann/
"Demands to engage critically with Hamburg’s colonial past go back a
long way. In 1967, and again in 1968, student protesters toppled a
bronze statue of Hermann von Wissmann, a former commander of German
colonial troops and governor of German East Africa, resulting in that
memorial’s permanent removal. But it was only in 2014, after sustained
pressure from civil society groups, that the state government agreed to
tackle the city’s colonial legacy.
Compared with efforts to draw attention to the Nazi past and remove
references to Nazi perpetrators and their accomplices from public view,
official moves to expose Hamburg’s colonial links have been slow. (This
was partly because, as Thomas Laqueur noted when recently comparing
German Vergangenheitsbewältigung and American attempts to come to terms
with slavery, the Nazi past was “brief and circumscribed.”) In fact,
when the state archives looked into the naming of Emily Ruete Square
last year in the course of its routine vetting procedure, the proposal
didn’t raise any concerns. Yes, a memorial for prominent merchant — and
notorious slave trader — Heinrich Carl von Schimmelmann (1724–82) was
removed in 2008, but demands to rename three Hamburg streets that carry
his name — Schimmelmannstraße, Schimmelmannallee and Schimmelmannstieg —
have so far been unsuccessful.
Besides, the government’s decision in 2014 focused on how the city’s
colonial past was being represented publicly, and how Hamburg could
distance itself symbolically from that past. The decision made no
reference to demands for reparations to tackle historic injustices. In
the past twenty years, such demands have focused on Germany’s genocidal
1904–08 war against the Herero and Nama in what was then German South
West Africa (today’s Namibia); most recently, Namibia rejected Germany’s
offer of a one-off €10 million compensation payment and an unreserved
apology as inadequate. But the issue of symbolic and material
reparations is not limited to Namibia, and given the extent to which
Hamburg has been a beneficiary of colonialism, this issue should not
only be a matter for the federal government."
History, and our engagement with it, is complicated.
Via my father, Frank Pam.
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
