Postcolonial Potsdam is an interest group, member of Weltweiterdenken e.V. who deals with parts of the colonial history of Prussia and the postcolonial silence in contemporary Potsdam.
Sculptures, paintings and botanical species in the Potsdam landscape of palaces and gardens are connected to Prussian and German colonial history. These sites are home to traditions and practices that are often unknown to locals. The secrets that they retain and the histories attached to them are often ignored because they do not fit into conceptions of Prussian heritage. But with this history come responsibilities to acknowledge the colonial past and to understand its meaning in the present.
We try to contextualize these places and objects to make invisible parts of history visible in our blog posts, city tours, web projects and events. This should serve to open up discussions of how to deal responsibly with the legacies of traumatic histories of colonial injustices.
- Grinding the colonial house with a jackhammer: a review of the exhibition “Berge versetzen” at Grassi Museum Leipzig
- A cosmetic change: failures and hopes in the renaming of the rotary with four Black busts
- “Soot on their faces… I call it blackface-light“ – Interview with Jessica de Abreu
- “Unpleasant”, “distasteful and painful”: Comments from the Black Diaspora University Group on the representation of Blacks in the Sanssouci Park
- Fung Asseng & Fung Ahok: two Chinese men in Potsdam in the 19th century
- The Sans-Souci Palace in Milot, Haiti
- The New Palace and the peak of Kilimanjaro
- Oduor Obura: “We need to find names for the busts”