Diversity has no place in German politics of the past

Often, things are seen more clearly when viewed from the outside. Therefore, this story, which is actually about the Holocaust, the Third Reich, and the Federal Republic's coming to terms with its past, begins 12,000 kilometers south of Berlin – in Windhoek. For several years now, a national museum built by a North Korean company has stood there, full of pathetic depictions of freedom fighters breaking the shackles of evil and setting out for a glorious future.

My favorite image shows all groups united, symbolized by their archetypes. The indomitable SWAPO freedom fighter with the Kalashnikov naturally takes center stage. But next to him are two white people, settlers or farmers, one South African, the other German. Now that the chains of colonialism have been broken, they are all working for the good of a united Namibia, even though they were colonial rulers before 1990, when Namibia became independent. Namibia's President Hage Geingob, who died in 2024, once referred to the ethnic German Namibians in the country as "our German tribe" in an interview. What may have sounded condescending to European ears was actually meant to be very inclusive: Germans belong to Namibia just like everyone else. Every year, official Namibia celebrates its national holiday on a " Heroes' Acre " south of Windhoek, where the heroes of all tribes are united in symbolic graves.

All of this has nothing whatsoever to do with what we commonly call "historical truth." Some of the leaders symbolically lying side by side on the Heroes' Field were mortal enemies, waged wars against their neighbors, and even allied themselves with the Germans and later with the South Africans against other groups. The way Namibia is coming to terms with its past is ideally suited to riling up not only West German historians, but also post-colonial activists: Perpetrators and victims are lumped together, just like the colonialists and the colonized. And if anything is addressed, condemned, and condemned, it is an abstract colonialism, oppression per se, or an impersonal evil that has no concrete name. No one is called by name, no one is excluded: everyone belongs, everyone is important, everyone is respected. This kind of politics of the past is neither true nor false. Anyone who wants to can dismiss it as propaganda. In a country that needs to fill in the gaps of the past and that needs the skills and support of all its tribes (as Geingob would probably say) to catch up economically, such a policy is one thing above all: useful.