It is not often that keynote speakers use their appearance to criticize the principle of the event to be celebrated. But Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier and the Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie did at the opening of the Berliner Humboldt Forum on wednesday exactly that.
Steinmeier, reportedly from the Federal President’s office, had been preparing for the speech for months and had spoken to those responsible, but also to many critics. When Klaus-Dieter Lehmann, then President of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, had the idea for this new world museum more than 20 years ago, he was convinced. Today, Steinmeier indicated, he was more skeptical. “So, now it is here. And now?” He asked.
So much has changed during this time: In Berlin “today the world is not just a guest. The world is at home here (…) People from all parts of the world live in Germany today (…) They belong to what ‘German’ means today. ” And further: “You are not people with a migration background – we are a country with a migration background!”
He couldn’t think of a better namesake for this house than the Humboldt brothers. But if you take its claim seriously, “then this forum must not only celebrate the idea of the Enlightenment, it must also enlighten. And that means critically questioning the historical reality of the Enlightenment, the political history of western modernity: on whose shoulders Was western modernism built? At what cost, with what contradictions, what injustices? With what consequences up to our present world? “
According to Steinmeier, these questions are being asked around the world today, in “Black Lives Matter” demos, in debates about discrimination – they must, he demanded, also become the central theme of the Humboldt Forum. It is “as historically wrong as politically dangerous to dismiss these debates as ‘Identity Politics'”. And: “No, these questions are, in the spirit of the Enlightenment, universal questions.”
This also includes the question of how the museums deal with the objects behind which “there is a story of submission, looting, robbery and murder”. In the foyer of the recently completed, very traditionally designed museum, Steinmeier said: “Museums that not only present artefacts that seriously confront the history of colonialism will have to look different from traditional museums.”
Steinmeier’s speech was a riot of memory politics
Colonialism and its crimes, “conquest, oppression, exploitation, robbery, murder of tens of thousands of people”, have been “long forgotten” in Germany, are still “blind spots” and “empty spaces”. As long as awareness does not grow, everyday racism will not end. Only when “this forum actually becomes a forum, a place where these debates are held (…), then the question of its meaning would have been answered,” said Steinmeier.
At the end of his memory-political crackdown, the Federal President went into the debate about the supposed “competition” between colonialism and the Holocaust in Germany’s culture of remembrance. “The memory of the Holocaust does not oppose the empathic and conscious memory of other injustices, other suffering! On the contrary: The brokenness that the Shoah has left us opens our eyes and widens our heart to take responsibility for history.”
The Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie pleaded for an honest view of history
The well-known Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, who spoke after the Federal President, was even clearer. She told the audience, a large part of whom had financed the reconstruction of the historical facade with her donation, that the castle stood “for Germany’s longing for imperial times” https://www.sueddeutsche.de/kultur/. “When Wilhelm II. lived here, German soldiers killed children, women and men in South West Africa. ” Even more clearly than Steinmeier, she pleaded for a more honest view of history: “If Germany was shaped by the Renaissance before 600 and the Enlightenment 300 years ago, then we cannot say that what happened 100 years ago no longer plays a role.” And she asked: “Do German schoolchildren know that the 100,000 Herero were murdered by the Germans, do they know about the poisoned wells and the women who had to serve as sex slaves? (…) to tell you only part of the story , ultimately means to lie. “
She also responded to the question of restitutions: a country like Germany, which acknowledges its rights and statutes, cannot discuss whether stolen things belonged to it or not. “Just give it back!” She shouted.
Hartmut Dorgerloh, General Director of the Humboldt Forum, and Hermann Parzinger, as President of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation and responsible for the museums, covered the criticism with empty phrases. In fact, they stood in front of the audience like schoolchildren being reprimanded by the teacher. “I hope that many people will be of help, support, and correction to us,” asked Parzinger.