Abt. Geschichtswissenschaft

"Dekoloniale Memory Culture in the City"

Dekoloniale Memory Culture in the City was a Berlin-based pilot project that explored new forms of critical engagement with colonialism and its legacies between 2020 and 2024. Developed by Berlin Postkolonial, Each One Teach One, the Initiative Black People in Germany, and the Stiftung Stadtmuseum Berlin, the project brought together civil society, cultural institutions, public administration, artists, activists, and international experts. A particularly important feature was the central role of Black, Afro-diasporic, and African actors whose long-standing activism had already shaped debates about colonial history and memory in Germany. Rather than treating colonial heritage as a matter for museums alone, Dekoloniale approached the entire city as a landscape of memory. Through exhibitions, festivals, workshops, artistic interventions, city tours, and digital mapping, the project traced the colonial and anti-colonial histories embedded in streets, institutions, objects, buildings, and biographies. Its interactive digital map is particularly valuable in making these histories visible spatially, connecting individual sites and stories in Berlin with wider transnational networks of colonialism and resistance. It also documents post- and decolonial initiatives across Germany, turning the map into both a research resource and a tool for public historical education.

From a heritage perspective, the project is especially significant because it challenged conventional ideas of what counts as heritage and who has the authority to interpret it. Colonial traces were not approached simply as remnants of the past to be preserved, but as contested inheritances whose meanings continue to shape contemporary urban life. Dekoloniale therefore combined historical research with activism, participation, and artistic practice, making visible histories of colonial violence as well as resistance, migration, and solidarity.

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