Colonial rule and resistance

German colonial rule over the territory called German Southwest Africa lasted from 1884 to 1915. Colonial power involved settlers, soldiers, officials, missionaries and commercial interests, but African communities pursued their own political goals and resisted dispossession. The history is more than a record of German actions: it is also a history of African sovereignty, resistance and survival. [1] [2]

Between 1904 and 1908, German forces committed genocide against the Ovaherero and Nama peoples. Killing, forced displacement, starvation, imprisonment, forced labor and the seizure of land and livestock devastated families and communities. The Federal Archives preserves documentation of the war and identifies records whose originals are held in Namibia. Such records must be read alongside descendants’ knowledge and accounts of survival. [3] [4]

The end of German rule did not bring independence. South African rule followed the defeat of German forces in 1915. Namibian petitioners, liberation movements and international supporters contested continued domination. UN-supervised elections took place in 1989, and Namibia became independent on 21 March 1990. These intervening decades matter: colonial rule, apartheid and liberation cannot be collapsed into one unchanged political system. [5]

Rehoboth and the authority of racial classification

In 1908 Eugen Fischer conducted research among the Rehoboth community, publishing his study in 1913. Historian Yara-Colette Lemke Muniz de Faria explains how measurements and family genealogies were combined with unsupported claims of racial hierarchy. The Rehoboth community has its own history and must not be conflated with the Ovaherero and Nama peoples targeted in the genocide. [6]

Yara follows the influence of Fischer and Wolfgang Abel into the racial anthropology applied to Black German children after 1945. Researchers treated white children as the norm, interpreted differences as inherited racial characteristics and projected social prejudice onto the children themselves. Claims to improve welfare could therefore reproduce the very exclusion the children faced. Publicly supported research and educational debate lent these classifications institutional authority. [6, pp. 250–259]

This offers a specific connection to Black German postwar history: racial knowledge could outlive the political order that first authorized it. It supports investigation of how institutions defined belonging and shaped children’s options. It does not establish one uninterrupted policy from colonial Namibia to adoption abroad, or determine the motives and legality of every individual placement. See Adoption History and Recognition and Redress.

Acknowledgment and the unfinished work of repair

In May 2021 Germany announced its acknowledgment of the genocide and a proposed €1.1 billion reconstruction and development programme. Its statement expressly separated that programme from legal compensation claims. The Foreign Office’s March 2026 account says the Joint Declaration was initialled in 2021 and negotiations continue. It should not be presented as a completed settlement of all claims. [7] [8]

On 13 October 2026, the UN Special Rapporteur on the rights of Indigenous Peoples raised concerns about meaningful participation, the declaration’s settlement language and whether development funding provides effective reparation. This is a mandate holder’s communication requesting the government’s response, not a court judgment. The government describes community involvement; the Rapporteur challenges its adequacy. [4]

For BGHRA, the lesson concerns participation and responsibility: people affected must help determine the questions, interpret the evidence and shape remedies. The Indigenous collective rights, land claims and genocide-related harms at issue in Namibia remain specific to those peoples. Comparing approaches to acknowledgment does not make genocide and adoption equivalent or create identical legal entitlements.

Namibian children raised in the GDR

A later and separate history concerns Namibian children brought to East Germany from 1979 during the liberation struggle and returned to Namibia in 1990. This was an educational and refuge programme, not an adoption scheme. In her Goethe-Institut testimony, Nangula Costa describes a cherished childhood and caring educators, but also years without parental contact and the shock of being sent to an unfamiliar country and mother without psychological support. Her account must not be treated as the experience of every participant. [9]

The Namibia–Germany theater project Oshi-Deutsch developed a multilingual production from interviews with former GDR children and educators. Such work makes room for participants to interpret home, identity and return themselves. Read more in Black Life in the GDR. [10]

Nuhmibeeuhn and returning to ancestral ground

Kavena Hambira’s Nuhmibeeuhn (2024) follows a filmmaker’s return to his country of origin to examine the genocide’s continuing consequences and the struggle for meaningful recognition. Hambira is a descendant of Herero survivors. His work brings a descendant’s relationship to place and memory into the discussion of repair. [11] [12]

BGHRA’s 2026 conference program lists the pre-circulated film and Hambira’s presentation, Returning to Ancestral Ground: Restitution and the Archive of the Body, in Panel 8 on 28 February, moderated by Sonya Donaldson. The panel also included Cecilia Schaaf’s MAPUTO///OSTBERLIN: Reframing Repetition and Daphne Brunet’s performance discussion. [13]

Official extended trailer

Watch the public trailer on YouTube · Filmmaker’s official page · Watch the recorded BGHRA 2026 Panel 8

The trailer and conference discussion are separate resources. The panel recording is not presented as a public copy of the complete film.

Children and descendants as makers of history

These histories invite related questions without erasing their differences. Who preserved family names and relationships? Who decided where children belonged? Which records can families access? What assistance makes return or renewed contact possible? BGHRA’s approach places testimony, family archives and community scholarship alongside institutional records. Descendants are interpreters of the past and participants in deciding what repair should mean.

Sources and further reading

1. Federal Archives, geographical guide to colonial holdings.
2. German Historical Museum, German Colonialism.
3. Federal Archives, Der Krieg gegen die Herero 1904.
4. UN Special Rapporteur on the rights of Indigenous Peoples, OL DEU 4/2026, 13 October 2026.
5. United Nations, UNTAG history; The UN’s role in Namibian independence.
6. Yara-Colette Lemke Muniz de Faria, “Black German ‘Occupation’ Children: Objects of Study in the Continuity of German Race Anthropology,” in Ericsson and Simonsen, eds., Children of World War II (Berg, 2005), pp. 249–265. BGHRA book guide.
7. Foreign Minister Maas, statement of 28 May 2021.
8. Federal Foreign Office, bilateral relations, 30 March 2026.
9. Nangula Costa, Protokoll: Ein DDR-Kind von Namibia.
10. German Federal Cultural Foundation, Oshi-Deutsch.
11. Kavena Hambira, official film page and trailer.
12. Hambira’s interview with Wolfgang Kaleck, Völkerrechtsblog, 15 February 2019 (biographical identification).
13. BGHRA 2026 conference program; BGHRA Digital Archive, Panel 8, 28 February 2026.

German-language sources are summarized in English. Historical scholarship, personal testimony, official positions and BGHRA’s interpretive questions are identified separately.