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Abstract

Black German cultural production of the last decades reveals that Black Germans are drawing on their Black and African ancestry as a response to their silenced histories. However, the existing Western-oriented concepts in humanities scholarship often account for Black Germans’ experiences from the perspective of whiteness. This dissertation examines Sankofa practices in the pursuit of Black self-actualization in Black German’s creative works. It explores how Sankofa enables autobiographical cultural productions to become radically distinct and more authentic in expressing intersectional realities of Black lives in Germany in their process of (re)discovering Black and African identities. The project aims to theorize Black German studies from within this Sankofa-refracted lived experience of Black Germans. It seeks to activate Sankofa as an analytical category through close analyses of Ika Hügel-Marshall’s Daheim Unterwegs, ein deutsches Leben (Invisible Woman: Growing up Black in Germany) and Ines Johnson-Spain’s documentary film Becoming Black. The study is grounded in Black studies, postcolonial theory, and cultural memory studies. Close reading and scene analysis methods are employed to trace thematic patterns and intertextual links across media. The analyses reveal that Black German cultural producers resist their historical erasure by invoking ancestral memory and counter-narratives of German nationhood. These interventions reclaim space within the German cultural archive and redefine what it means to be German in a global context. The dissertation furthermore argues that African-centric epistemologies can refine ongoing critique in the broader domain of German studies. It suggests that Sankofa can be a theoretical and methodological pillar. By centering Black German voices using a Sankofa lens, this research expands the scope of German Studies and contributes to a broader understanding of European racial politics. It also affirms the significance of diasporic memory in shaping collective futures beyond the confines of the nation-state.