The Visual strongArchivestrong of Colonialism Germany and Namibia.pdfVIP

Photo-essay The Visual Archive of Colonialism: Germany and Namibia George Steinmetz and Julia Hell Colonial memories and images occupy a paradoxi- cal place in Germany. This is due in part to the peculiarities of German colo- nial history, but it also reflects another aspect of German exceptionalism — the legacy of Nazism and the Holocaust. In recent years German colonialism in Southwest Africa (Namibia) has been widely discussed, especially with respect to the attempted extermination of the Ovaherero people in 1904. For reasons explored in this article, these discussions of Germany’s involvement in Southwest Africa have created new and unexpected discursive connections that are reshap- ing colonial memories in both Germany and Namibia. One possible outcome could be a belated decolonization of the landscape of colonial memory in both countries. Postwar Germany was long preoccupied with its National Socialist prehistory; 1 the German colonial past has only started to come into focus more recently. The years 2004 – 5 saw numerous commemorative events around the centenary of the 1904 German genocide of the Namibian Ovaherero people and the completion of the controversial Berlin Holocaust Memorial. On one level this is mere coinci- dence. At the same time, there is an increasing entanglement of these two central political topics. But little research has been done on the visual archive of German colonialism, in contrast to the extensive studies made of the public circulation of Thanks to Johannes von Moltke for helping us with the research into the November 2004 von Trotha – Maherero meeting. 1. For a discussion of