A On Tuesday, the Patriotic Society invited people to a debate about how to deal with Hamburg’s colonial history. This is welcome in the historic capital of German colonialism.
However, the cast was irritating: the Intercultural Life Working Group contrasted the proven expert Dietmar Pieper with the political polemicist Mathias Brodkorb. But why? For what reason? These questions remained unanswered after the evening.
Analogous to his book “Sugar, Schnapps and Hippowhip,” Pieper traced the colonial entanglements of Hamburg merchants. In it he classifies German colonialism primarily as an economic project. Brodkorb, on the other hand, former SPD finance and culture minister in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, used the evening for a personal campaign against post-colonial perspectives.
He conjured up alleged “renaming orgies” and discussed museum restitution debates – selectively, simplisticly and with no apparent desire to engage with the current state of research. His theses also published as a book became often refuted. Its purpose is obviously not knowledge but delegitimization.
Mathias Brodkorb’s theses mobilize a diffuse civil unease: he presents decolonization debates as a threat.
They mobilize a diffuse civil unease. Instead of perceiving decolonization debates as a confrontation with historical violence, he presents them as a threat to a supposedly rational, enlightened order. The former state minister and – according to the party register – a social democrat seeks and finds applause with this rhetoric in those right-wing milieus that do not deal with colonialism but instead turn it into a cipher of a culture war.
Pieper could do little to counter this. His appearance primarily served to legitimize a format that was not particularly balanced in terms of the setting, in which two white men chatted about colonialism – intercultural life as one could only wish for.
According to the announcement, the event should “counter the widespread accusation that there are bans on thinking and speaking in our country”. But instead of counteracting social division, the Patriotic Society paved the way for Brodkorb’s resentments.
This must be seen as a conscious decision for polemics and against productive debate. This became clear at the latest in the moderation.
Arnold Alscher forgets the genocide
This became clear at the latest in the moderation: working group spokesman Arnold Alscher referred to resistance from parts of the local population against the Renaming of the region around the Namibian port city of Lüderitz to!NamiǂNûs. According to him, these would be a sign that Colonialism probably isn’t that bad after all could have been. He apparently committed the first genocide of the 20th century, which the imperial troops set out from Hamburg not taken into account.
Hamburg is much further along in the debates. The memorial concept “Decolonize Hamburg!” is now a Senate decision thanks to civil society commitment. The Dissolution of the Postcolonial Heritage Research Centerthe Dealing with the so-called “Tanzania Park” or the failed redesign of the Bismarck monument is what many people are doing in a city that still sees itself as a gateway to the world – and is therefore a place of reproduction of global colonial conditions.
The Patriotic Society could also have taken up these virulent debates, for example by dealing with the colonial entanglements of its own clientele. By instead inviting a celebrity author who has little more to offer than inflating the decolonization movement into an enemy, she is merely harkening back to her own origins. It was founded by merchant elites over 260 years ago. And the European colonial activities, Whether that of the British in Harburg or that of the Danes in Altona, it was entirely in their interests.