An Education Agenda project at Marburg University explores the continuities and entanglements of anti-Black racism. It focuses on the biographies of Black individuals who were persecuted during the Nazi era. We spoke to project staff members Jasmin Blunt and Clara Wahl about colonial-racist continuities and gaps in Germany’s culture of remembrance. They talked about how their project confronts anti-Black racism and fosters empowerment through collaboration with BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) influencers.
The roots of anti-Black racism lie in the colonial period. How do you perceive the (lack of) memory culture regarding German colonial crimes?
Wahl: There’s still a kind of collective amnesia. The crimes of German colonial rule are often suppressed and rarely discussed. A recent study on how colonialism is taught in schools shows that students have very little awareness of Germany’s colonial history.
Blunt: I worked for 13 years as a secondary school teacher and saw first-hand how colonial history is often oversimplified, downplayed, or distorted. The study IMage of AFRica in EDUcation also found that the dominant portrayal of Africa in textbooks – and the language that is sometimes still very racist – directly contributes to racist incidents in the classroom.
Wahl: We need to fill these gaps in remembrance in order to push back against anti-Black racism. Racism remains deeply rooted in the ways people in our society think and a lot of people are affected by it.
How does your project help make the history of Black people before, during, and after National Socialism more visible?
Blunt: Two of the key recommendations from the UN Decade for People of African Descent to the German government are to recognize anti-Black racism as a specific form of racism, to confront Germany’s colonial crimes, and to embed them in its memory culture. To do that, it’s important to us to contribute to that effort and be able to highlight these colonial-racist continuities in educational settings through our project. Our main goal is to create space in memory culture for diverse lived realities.
Wahl: We challenge anti-Black racism by presenting Black biographies in our educational materials – stories that speak not only of oppression, but also of active resistance, which is empowering.
Did you encounter any difficulties while researching the biographies of Black people who were persecuted during the Nazi era?
Wahl: In some cases, we reached out to institutions that took more of a perpetrator-oriented perspective and were not very cooperative. Also, many of the sources contained extremely racist language. Using racist terms in database search functions was very challenging for us as researchers working from an anti-racist perspective. In addition, there was no official Nazi-era categorization for Black victims, which made systematic research difficult. But there were a lot of institutions that supported us and are now even considering how to make their databases more language-sensitive.
Your project takes a participatory approach to remembrance. How are you going about that?
Blunt: Our participatory remembrance intervention takes place in schools and on social media through digital
storytelling. We collaborate with BIPOC influencers who present Black biographies. By taking up the influencers’ personal perspectives, we make it clear that the roots of anti-Black racism lie in colonial racism, yet these constantly evolving forms of discrimination continue to crop up in the present day.
Wahl: We’re planning three workshops for teachers using multipliers in order to explain our research findings and the teaching materials we’ve developed in an accessible way. Anyone who is interested is welcome to follow us on social media or take part in the workshops and to participate in the final conference on November 25 and 26, 2025 in Berlin. We’d like to talk to as many people as possible.
What kind of effect do you think the project will have in the classroom?
Blunt: The goal is for all teachers to reflect on their own anti-racist perspectives and incorporate them into their teaching. We want them to ask themselves whether their materials need to be revised and what kind of anti- racist and sensitive language should be used in the classroom.
The materials we work with are designed to ensure they do not re-traumatize students. That doesn’t mean we leave things out, but we’re very mindful of the wording and always highlight the underlying racist or discriminatory structures. Teachers can watch the videos we create together to understand what racism feels like for the people who are affected by it and to reflect on what that means for themselves, possibly as white people. This kind of reflection is important for everyone, of course. As a Black teacher myself, I don’t always get everything right either.
What stands out about the BIPOC influencers you work with?
Wahl: What we share is the goal of fostering democracy through education and telling the story of Black German history. We reached out to BIPOC influencers who are active in this space – unfortunately, there weren’t that many to choose from.
Blunt: Sadly, BIPOC influencers still don’t find the same success in a white-dominated society as content creators who are perceived as white. Our BIPOC collaborators also embody the lived realities of a post-migrant society and for that reason, they will hopefully inspire a lot of young people to share their own stories and see themselves as part of German society and its memory culture.
Explore the project’s Instagram channel.
Interview by Sarah Keller, EVZ Foundation
