#14 Black People in Nazi Germany – The Stories of Charlotte Rettig and Benedikt Gambé

Germany is home to nearly a million Black people today, yet their
history has often been erased from public memory. In this
episode, we uncover the lives of Benedikt
Gambé and Charlotte Rettig,
two Black artists who lived in Berlin under Nazi rule. He
detained and dead by 1940, she fleeing to Copenhagen and
surviving. Their stories reveal how race shaped everyday life in
Nazi Germany, how Black people were marginalized, and why their
persecution has remained largely invisible.


With Robbie Aitken and Tiffany
Florvil, we explore Black presence in Germany from
colonial times to the Nazi era, the cycles of forgetting that
followed, and the echoes of racism and erasure in Germany today.
Shownotes

„The Nazi Persecution of Black People in Germany“
(https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/afro-germans-during-the-holocaust)


„Stolpersteinverlegung für Schwarze Menschen in Schöneberg“
(https://www.berlin.de/ba-tempelhof-schoeneberg/aktuelles/pressemitteilungen/2023/pressemitteilung.1355526.php)


Black German: An Afro-German Life in the Twentieth Century by
Theodor Wonja Michael


„Schwarz und deutsch - Die Geschichte der Afrodeutschen“,
Hessischer Rundfunk (https://youtu.be/WKDJZV10fSc)


“Making Visible the Invisible: Germany’s Black diaspora,
1880s–1945” by Robbie Aitken
(https://www.shu.ac.uk/research/in-action/projects/being-black-in-nazi-germany)


“Embracing Germany: Interwar German Society and Black Germans
through the Eyes of African American Reporters” by R. Aitken
(https://shura.shu.ac.uk/14021/)


“Denied a Certificate of Fitness to Marry: The Nuremberg Race
Laws as a Threat to Black German Futures” by Robbie Aitken
(https://academic.oup.com/hgs/article-abstract/39/1/40/8002545)


„Mobilizing Black Germany: Afro-German Women and the Making of a
Transnational Movement“ by Tiffany Florvil
(https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/?id=p085413)


“Black Germans and New Forms of Resistance” by Tiffany Florvil
(https://www.aaihs.org/black-germans-and-wake-work/)


Writing Across Differences: Afro-Germans, Gender, and Diaspora,
1970s–1990s by Tiffany Florvil
(https://scholarcommons.sc.edu/etd/1457/) 


Deutsche Afrika-Schau context
(https://blackcentraleurope.com/quellen/1914-1945-deutsch/die-deutsche-afrika-schau-1934-1940/)


„Black and German - The Afrodeutsch Story“, DW
(https://www.dw.com/en/black-and-german-the-afrodeutsch-story/a-64272967)


„Schwarze Menschen sind immer noch unsichtbar“, TAZ
(https://taz.de/Schwarze-Menschen-sind-immer-noch-unsichtbar/!5373455/)


Antidiskriminierungsstelle des Bundes, Jahresbericht 2024
(https://www.antidiskriminierungsstelle.de/SharedDocs/downloads/DE/publikationen/Jahresberichte/2024.pdf)


„Being Black in the EU“
(https://fra.europa.eu/sites/default/files/fra_uploads/fra-2023-being-black_in_the_eu_en.pdf)


„Racist Realities - How does Germany deal with racism?“
(https://www.rassismusmonitor.de/en/publications/racist-realities-how-does-germany-deal-with-racism/)


CERD, Concluding observations on the combined twenty-third to
twenty-sixth reports of Germany
(https://www.ohchr.org/en/documents/concluding-observations/cerdcdeuco23-26-concluding-observations-combined-twenty-third)


Remapping Black Germany: New Perspectives on Afro-German History,
Politics, and Culture by Sara Lennox


Schwarze Deutsche: Der Diskurs um" Rasse" und nationale Identität
1890-1933 by Fatima El-Tayeb
(https://www.academia.edu/16385211/Schwarze_Deutsche_Der_Diskurs_um_Rasse_und_nationale_Identität_1890_1933)


Other Germans: Black Germans and the Politics of Race, Gender and
Momory in the Third Reich by Tina Campt
(https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.3998/mpub.17684)


„Blacks under the Swastika: A research note“ by Robert W.
Kestling
(https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.2307/2668561)