Germany is home to nearly a million Black people today, yet their history has often been erased from public memory. In this episode, we uncover the lives ofBenedikt GambéandCharlotte Rettig, two Black artists who lived in Berlin under Nazi rule. He detained and dead by 1940, she fleeing to Copenhagen and surviving. Their stories reveal how race shaped everyday life in Nazi Germany, how Black people were marginalized, and why their persecution has remained largely invisible.
With Robbie Aitkenand Tiffany Florvil, we explore Black presence in Germany from colonial times to the Nazi era, the cycles of forgetting that followed, and the echoes of racism and erasure in Germany today.
Shownotes
„The Nazi Persecution of Black People in Germany“ (https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/afro-germans-during-the-holocaust)
„Stolpersteinverlegung für Schwarze Menschen in Schöneberg“ (https://www.berlin.de/ba-tempelhof-schoeneberg/aktuelles/pressemitteilungen/2023/pressemitteilung.1355526.php)
Black German: An Afro-German Life in the Twentieth Century by Theodor Wonja Michael
„Schwarz und deutsch – Die Geschichte der Afrodeutschen“, Hessischer Rundfunk (https://youtu.be/WKDJZV10fSc)
“Making Visible the Invisible: Germany’s Black diaspora, 1880s–1945” by Robbie Aitken (https://www.shu.ac.uk/research/in-action/projects/being-black-in-nazi-germany)
“Embracing Germany: Interwar German Society and Black Germans through the Eyes of African American Reporters” by R. Aitken (https://shura.shu.ac.uk/14021/)
“Denied a Certificate of Fitness to Marry: The Nuremberg Race Laws as a Threat to Black German Futures” by Robbie Aitken (https://academic.oup.com/hgs/article-abstract/39/1/40/8002545)
„Mobilizing Black Germany: Afro-German Women and the Making of a Transnational Movement“ by Tiffany Florvil (https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/?id=p085413)
“Black Germans and New Forms of Resistance” by Tiffany Florvil (https://www.aaihs.org/black-germans-and-wake-work/)
Writing Across Differences: Afro-Germans, Gender, and Diaspora, 1970s–1990s by Tiffany Florvil (https://scholarcommons.sc.edu/etd/1457/)
Deutsche Afrika-Schau context (https://blackcentraleurope.com/quellen/1914-1945-deutsch/die-deutsche-afrika-schau-1934-1940/)
„Black and German – The Afrodeutsch Story“, DW (https://www.dw.com/en/black-and-german-the-afrodeutsch-story/a-64272967)
„Schwarze Menschen sind immer noch unsichtbar“, TAZ (https://taz.de/Schwarze-Menschen-sind-immer-noch-unsichtbar/!5373455/)
Antidiskriminierungsstelle des Bundes, Jahresbericht 2024 (https://www.antidiskriminierungsstelle.de/SharedDocs/downloads/DE/publikationen/Jahresberichte/2024.pdf)
„Being Black in the EU“ (https://fra.europa.eu/sites/default/files/fra_uploads/fra-2023-being-black_in_the_eu_en.pdf)
„Racist Realities – How does Germany deal with racism?“ (https://www.rassismusmonitor.de/en/publications/racist-realities-how-does-germany-deal-with-racism/)
CERD, Concluding observations on the combined twenty-third to twenty-sixth reports of Germany (https://www.ohchr.org/en/documents/concluding-observations/cerdcdeuco23-26-concluding-observations-combined-twenty-third)
Remapping Black Germany: New Perspectives on Afro-German History, Politics, and Culture by Sara Lennox
Schwarze Deutsche: Der Diskurs um“ Rasse“ und nationale Identität 1890-1933 by Fatima El-Tayeb (https://www.academia.edu/16385211/Schwarze_Deutsche_Der_Diskurs_um_Rasse_und_nationale_Identität_1890_1933)
Other Germans: Black Germans and the Politics of Race, Gender and Momory in the Third Reich by Tina Campt (https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.3998/mpub.17684)
„Blacks under the Swastika: A research note“ by Robert W. Kestling (https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.2307/2668561)