Locations

Hamburg as a “Gateway to the World” was heavily involved in colonial trade and profited from exploitative conditions during the colonial era. The colonial past is particularly present at Baakenhafen – and yet it is invisible there in a very special way. Baakenhafen in Hamburg still is not considered as an important postcolonial memorial site despite the fact that it was the ‘logistical hub for the first genocide of the 20th century’, the genocide of the Herero and Nama peoples in what is now Namibia (formerly “German South West Africa”).

After the Herero people's uprising against colonial soldiers on 11 January 1904 , Hamburg entrepreneurs and shipowners asked the German Empire for ‘protection’ and triggering the genocide. Under the command of Lothar von Trotha, German troops killed around 65,000 Herero and 10,000 Nama people, in the war, which lasted until 1908.

Baakenhafen in Hamburg played a central role in this genocide as a logistics hub. Companies operating shipping lines around the African continent were concentrated on Petersenkai, on the southern shore of Baakenhafen. By 1906, the Woermann Line shipping company had transported 14,000 soldiers and 11,000 horses  from Hamburg to the war zone — the troops landed at the ‘Landungsbrücken’ in Swakopmund, Namibia.

During the troop send-offs, Baakenhafen served as a stage for the Empire to showcase itself as a colonial power. The celebrations were marked by music, speeches, gastronomy and the distribution of so-called ‘gifts of love’ at the expense of the Senate. Thousands of cheering spectators gathered on the banks of Baakenhafen. The Senate and the military used this festive culture to demonstrate their role in colonial policy.

Although the Senate committed itself to addressing it ten years ago, there is still no acknowledgement of the site's history at Baakenhafen. Despite the efforts of victims’ associations, the genocide has not become part of the city’s collective memory. One cannot help but suspect that neither the public, nor HafenCity GmbH, nor the Senate is interested in making it visible. Kim Todzi aptly describes the planned opera house project at Baakenhafen as an example of “colonial amnesia.”


This is an short version of the article by Liz Rech, Baakenhafen / The Monument That Isn't There Yet, published in Monuments, Documents, Moments – How Common is Public Art?, edited by Prof. Dr. Nora Sternfeld, Art Education, HFBK, in cooperation with Joanna Warsza, Hamburg 2025, pp. 30–32.
The abridged text is reproduced with the kind permission of the author.