Berlin Commemorates African Resistance to German Colonialism
Reminding African Diaspora’s fight for freedom
July 24th, 2019
On July 22th, a two-meter-high memorial plaque has been erected in front of the former seat of the Imperial Ministry of the Colonies, at the Wilhelmstraße 62, in order to honour the “Dibobe-Petition”.
The ceremony saw the presence of Berlin’s Senator for Culture, Klaus Lederer, who highlighted the importance of the “Dibobe Petition” for German history; the document “was directed against colonial living conditions and thus against the system of colonialism, parallel to the armed resistance against the German conquest in many parts of the African continent,” pointed out Senator Lederer during the commemoration.
Th event honours the memory of Martin Dibobe, a Cameroonian young man who migrated to Berlin, founding himself fighting for the independence and equal rights of people in the German colonies in Africa. In 1919, he submitted a petition to the Imperial Ministry of the Colonies aiming that it could be forwarded to Weimar National Assembly.
