German Postcolonialism in Four Dimensions: A Historical Perspective

In 1919, the German overseas empire came to an end, a direct consequence of defeat in the First World War. Germany has thus been post-colonial, in the sense of being without colonies, longer than most other European nations. This article argues that German postcolonialism can best be understood as a complex, multi-dimensional phenomenon, one that envelops memories of colonialism in white German and diasporic communities, as well as developments in the nation's more recent past. Its most salient aspects include the cultural memory of the colonial period itself, the resonances between colonialism, National Socialism and the Holocaust, the recovery of histories of Afro-Germans, and discussions of race, migration and integration which draw a very broad arc from the colonial past into the multicultural present. The multidimensional nature of German postcolonialism can be both an advantage as well as a disadvantage when it comes to meaningful engagement with Germany's colonial past. This article ultimately seeks a way of re-inserting the ‘colonial’ into German postcolonialism, without flattening the concept.