History and Geography

Critical Heritage and Colonial Continuities

AICGS Social Divisions

At the heart of critical heritage and memory work is the plea and reminder ‘lest we forget.’ Researching the genealogies and uncovering the exclusionary discourses, justifications, interrelationships, and mechanisms of violent histories of exclusion and extermination helps us to recognize the recurrence of old patterns of violence in the here and now and find ways towards a more just and inclusive future for all.

During the program, we aimed at being sensitive to and tracing colonial pasts and their continuities in the present on the local level in Memmingen and Glendale. Colonial continuities play a major role in questions of belonging, identity-building,  institutionalized racism , and further social power dynamics and are therefore relevant to our overarching topic on social cohesion and identity.

In this regard, we are aware that it is important to take the different contexts of the United States as a settlers colony and Germany with its past as a colonial power into consideration.

In the following, we offer personal reflections, historical contextualization, and perceptions on colonial continuities in Memmingen and Glendale without claiming to deliver a complete account.

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Speaking to educators in Arizona, drawing attention to colonial continuities is made impossible due to books being banned and curricula being curtailed to exclude critical race theory and postcolonial topics.

Indigenous communities that we engaged with play a major role in keeping the remembrance of colonial history and awareness of colonial continuities alive.

A shared story that touched many of us deeply was the recent discovery of unmarked graves around boarding schools for indigenous children taken from their families throughout the United States and Canada.

This creates a re-traumatization within affected communities and demands massive resources and healing practices to find ways of dealing with this colonial continuity.

Racist and colonial practices continue to exist by attempting to change the U.S. constitution to bring down the  Indian Child Welfare Act 

A part of Memmingen’s historical wealth can be attributed to the trading families  Welser and Vöhlin  who were engaged in the  international trade of enslaved people .

Street names and  buildings  continue to publicly display racist and derogatory terms and figures in the city of Memmingen.

Unlike  many other German cities  and despite requests by local communities, Memmingen has not yet addressed its colonial past.

From our perspective, engaging in critical, postcolonial debates and including marginalized, ex-colonized perspectives in the process would increase the social cohesion and feeling of social inclusion locally.

On day four of the program, we spoke to members of the  Memmingen Stolpersteine  (stumbling-stone) group. Stolpersteine are 10 cm concrete cubes displaying the names, date of deportation, and place of extermination of the predominantly Jewish persons, but also Sinti and Romani, black people, homosexuals, and the disabled and mentally ill, among others, that fell victim to National Socialism ( for further information click here ). It is a project initiated by German artist Gunter Demning to commemorate and honor these victims of the National Socialist regime.

The Stolpersteine project is the largest decentralised public memorial of its kind in Europe commemorating the victims of National Socialism. One is forced into an embodied proximity with the stones by almost tripping over them, forcing passers-by to pause, remember, and reflect.  For further information click here. 

The stones are placed outside the houses in which the victims were living when they were taken from their homes and deported to concentration camps during the Third Reich.

The group that spoke to us in Memmingen consisted of members of the Jewish community, descendants of Nazi perpetrators, together with a teacher and students from a local high school working on a project archiving Jewish life in Memmingen during the Third Reich.

Part of the student project was to clean and maintain the Stolpersteine in Memmingen as an embodied form of memory work.

One of the older members of the Stolpersteine group told us that his participation in the group was to keep the memory of the atrocity alive and make amends for his Nazi father who was involved in the destruction of the “Große Synagoge” in Memmingen built and inaugurated in 1909 by Jewish architect Max Seckbach (1866-1922). The Synagogue was demolished, rather than burnt, on November 10 during the Kristallnacht November pogroms.

During our guided city tour in Memmingen, we came across a small house and tower from the Middle Ages called the “Hexenturm” (Witch Tower) presumably used as a prison for witches in the past. This initiated a discussion about the continuity of patriarchy and gender-based violence within our group. We reflected upon the societal expectations towards different genders and the consequences if those expectations are not met.

In 1775, Anna Maria Schwegelin, a maidservant working at local farms and taverns around Memmingen, was the last woman convicted to death in the territory now known as Germany due to being suspected to be a witch. For further information click  here. 

A fountain outside the south side of the former Benedictine Abbey was named in her honor and inaugurated by Mayor Thomas Kiechle on December 18, 2018. The site contains an information panel depicting her life and death. The inauguration of the fountain more than 200 years after Anna Maria Schwegelin died raises questions around the remembrance culture and its political and societal implications.