March 26, 2025 Story by: Editor
BERLIN (AP) — Nearly five decades ago, Mnyaka Sururu Mboro left Tanzania for Germany, carrying a promise he made to his grandmother: to recover the head of a local chieftain who was executed by German colonists in 1900 for resisting their rule.
Now 73, Mboro hails from a region near Mount Kilimanjaro once ruled by Mangi Meli, king of the Wachaga people. Between 1885 and 1919, this area was part of German East Africa, a vast colony nearly three times larger than present-day Germany.
Growing up, Mboro heard stories of Mangi Meli, who, along with 18 other leaders, was hanged by German forces in March 1900. His head was reportedly severed and transported to Germany by the colonial administration, though authorities have been unable to confirm this. It was never found.
“Up to today, still, I am searching for it,” Mboro, now residing in Berlin, told The Associated Press.
Confronting Colonial Legacies
In 1978, Mboro moved to Heidelberg to study civil engineering. While in Germany, he learned of Berlin’s so-called African Quarter, where streets bore names linked to the country’s colonial history.
One particular discovery shook him—Petersallee, a street named after Carl Peters, the first imperial commissioner for German East Africa, notorious for his brutal rule.
“That night, I couldn’t sleep. I was waking up, sweating,” Mboro recalled. “I was seeing my grandmother. I said if my grandmother could be here, these people would know, that cannot be tolerated.”
Despite efforts beginning in 1984 to rename the street, it retained its original name until last August, although some other streets were renamed earlier.
Mboro co-founded Berlin Postkolonial, an organization advocating for Germany to reassess its colonial history and dismantle lingering colonial structures and racism. He led a memorial procession when Petersallee was split into two new streets: one named Maji-Maji-Allee, honoring the Maji Maji Rebellion against German colonial rule, and the other named after Anna Mungunda, a Namibian activist who resisted apartheid.
Germany’s Colonial Past
Compared to other European powers, Germany was a late entrant into colonialism, establishing control over vast African territories starting in 1884. The colonies included German South West Africa (now Namibia), Cameroon, Togoland, and German East Africa, which comprised present-day Rwanda, Burundi, and Tanzania.
Additionally, Germany controlled German New Guinea, German Samoa, various Pacific island protectorates, and leased land in China’s Jiaozhou Bay. However, following its defeat in World War I, Germany lost all its colonies by 1918.
“Germany’s colonial policy was marked by injustice and violence,” German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock stated in a speech last May. “It was an inhuman and racist policy.”
While acknowledging past atrocities, Baerbock stressed that, “We cannot undo the mistakes of the past but we can learn from them and shoulder responsibility for today and the future.”
In 2021, Germany officially recognized as genocide the mass killing of tens of thousands of Herero and Nama people in present-day Namibia between 1904 and 1908, though it stopped short of offering formal reparations.
Tracing Stolen Remains
Mangi Meli’s head may be among thousands of human remains taken from Africa and sent to Germany, where they were often used in pseudo-scientific racial studies long before the Nazi era.
In 2011, the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, which oversees Berlin’s state museums, inherited a collection of approximately 7,700 human remains from the city’s Charité medical history museum. Efforts have since been underway to identify their origins and facilitate their return.
Hermann Parzinger, the foundation’s president, told the AP that it currently holds between 5,500 and 6,000 remains from the colonial era.
“Everything has to be given back,” he asserted.
By 2023, researchers had traced 1,135 skulls to modern-day Rwanda, Tanzania, and Kenya. However, the foundation is still awaiting these countries’ acceptance of the remains.
Germany has previously returned human remains to Namibia and repatriated stolen artifacts elsewhere. In 2022, it agreed to return hundreds of Benin Bronzes—historic sculptures looted from Benin City by British troops—to Nigeria.
Educating on Germany’s Colonial History
As part of the 2022 agreement, Germany secured a long-term loan of 168 Benin Bronzes, some of which are now displayed at Berlin’s Humboldt Forum museum. The exhibit provides historical context, detailing how these artifacts were plundered and highlighting the legacy of the Edo Kingdom of Benin.
Despite these efforts, knowledge of Germany’s colonial history remains limited.
“It’s not mandatory to learn about colonialism in the school system,” said Justice Mvemba, who founded Decolonial Tours in 2022. The organization offers guided tours of Berlin’s African Quarter and museums, including the Humboldt Forum.
Mvemba, who immigrated to Germany from Congo as a child, noted that while some teachers choose to cover the colonial era, it is often portrayed in a romanticized manner. Her tours aim to provide “a more critical lens on the colonial era and to also break those glorified narratives.”
Beyond colonial history, Mvemba also sheds light on the persistence of racism in modern Germany.
“Growing up in Germany, I experienced a lot of racism,” she said. “We have to talk about history.”
Source: Yahoo News
