First dreadlocks, now Winnetou? At the latest after the Ravensburger publishing house decided to take two controversial books out of the program, a debate raged in Germany. Again and again there is talk of cultural appropriation. But what is it really?
“The young chief Winnetou” is causing quite a stir and heated tempers these days – especially on social media. The reason: The Ravensburger company had decided to withdraw several children’s books from sale due to allegations of racism. Hundreds of Instagram users then expressed their incomprehension and accused the company of censorship or buckling. However, there was also support for the decision.
The Ravensburg-based company, known primarily for its games and puzzles, announced in mid-August that it would be delivering the two books “The Young Chief Winnetou” and take it out of the program. In an Instagram post, the company justified this with user feedback that showed “that we hurt the feelings of others with the Winnetou titles”.
A Ravensburger spokesman said on Monday that the decision had been carefully considered. In the case of the Winnetou titles mentioned, after weighing various arguments, one came to the conclusion that, in view of the historical reality, the oppression of the indigenous population, a “romanticizing picture with many clichés” was being drawn here. Criticism was initially sparked primarily by the film adaptation of the same name, because the film served racist prejudices and used a colonial narrative style. The film hit theaters on August 11th.
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Ravensburger pays attention to cultural appropriation
In the current debate, cultural appropriation is mentioned again and again. Ravensburger himself also speaks of this in his Instagram post: “Our editors deal intensively with topics such as diversity or cultural appropriation,” it says there. But what is it really?
Cultural appropriation means that people use a culture that is not their own, for example through music or clothing. Above all, it is criticized when members of the majority society usurp individual elements of the culture of a minority, commercialize them and take them out of context.
Watch the video: For more diversity – do we have to rewrite our children’s books and fairy tales?
The most recent example: A concert by the band Lauwarm in Bern was canceled because some visitors were bothered that they played Jamaican music and that some of the band’s white members wore African clothes and dreadlocks. The Fridays for Future movement had previously uninvited the white musician Ronja Maltzahn, who was supposed to perform at a demonstration in Hanover, because of her dreadlocks.
While the debate is relatively new in German-speaking countries, it has been raging in the US for years. The US lawyer Susan Scafidi writes in her book “Who Owns Culture?” from 2005: “Cultural appropriation, that is: Using someone else’s intellectual property, traditional knowledge, cultural expressions or artifacts to suit one’s taste, to express one’s individuality or simply: to to make a profit from it.”Ravensburger winnetou 11.55
In Mexico there is now even a law to prevent this. Anyone who reproduces, copies or imitates cultural heritage without consent can in future be punished with heavy fines or even up to ten years in prison. This is intended to protect the collective intellectual property of the indigenous peoples, which is not easy to enforce internationally. Luxury fashion brands such as Carolina Herrera and Louis Vuitton, as well as global fast fashion chains, had previously copied the patterns of indigenous textiles for their products several times – without consulting the communities and without payment.
Cultural appropriation for science rather something positive
The German ethnologist Susanne Schröter finds the current discussion about cultural appropriation problematic. “The scandalization of cultural appropriations reveals a number of absurdities. One concerns the consequences of thinking through the required restrictions on use. Then, for every object, every style, every form of cultural expression, the authors would have to be identified and you be limited to these authors,” says the professor at Frankfurt’s Johann Wolfgang Goethe University.
Cultural appropriation is basically something positive for the scientist. “People have always adopted things from others when they thought they made sense. To put it succinctly, the entire history of mankind is a history of cultural appropriations, without which there would have been no development,” says Schröter. “Moreover, appropriation always involves a certain appreciation. If you deeply reject a group of people, you will not adopt anything from them. In a world that is becoming more and more diverse simply because of accelerating globalization, cultural appropriation is arguably the most important cultural technique , which makes a peaceful growing together possible.”