GDR children from Namibia

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GDR children at a performance at the School of Friendship in Staßfurt (1989)

The term GDR children from Namibia describes a group of around 400 Namibian children, many of them orphans or half- orphans , who were brought from the refugee camps to the GDR for their own safety in the course of the SWAPO's independence struggle against South West Africa from 1979 and grew up there until they were suddenly brought back in 1990 when Namibia gained independence .

Many of these "GDR children" are organized in the "Freundeskreis ex-GDR". The official language of the association is Oshi-German , a mixture of German , English and Oshivambo .

prehistory

Bellin Hunting Lodge

In the 1960s and 1970s, resistance to the South African occupation grew among many blacks, particularly members of the Ovambo population. The population of South West Africa was severely disadvantaged by the white South Africans under apartheid . In the course of their liberation struggle, SWAPO supported the Namibians seeking refuge and set up refugee camps , which soon assumed the size and structure of villages or small towns. The Namibians found exile in Tanzania , Botswana , Zambia and Angola . In addition to the refugees , “Solidarity Workers”, mainly from European countries, but also from Cuba and other socialist countries, tried to set up health and school centers. Two of the camps were officially designated as the “Namibian Health and Education Center”: Nyango in Zambia and Kwanza Sul in Angola. Mostly Cubans, Germans from the GDR, Swedes and Finns were represented here, who helped to improve the conditions in exile.

In the struggle for Namibia's independence, SWAPO sought help and support in many countries, which it received in the form of teachers and medical specialists, weapons, money, ammunition and finally civilian goods. The USSR provided considerable technical and military assistance. Hundreds of Namibians came to the GDR between 1960 and 1980 and were given the opportunity to receive vocational training, a degree or various courses. In 1978, Kassinga survivors and seriously wounded PLAN fighters received medical treatment in the GDR. In this way, the GDR delivered “solidarity programs” to south-west Africa. After the Kassinga massacre, Sam Nujoma again turned to the GDR and other socialist and communist countries and asked to take in children from the SWAPO refugee camps in order to protect them from further attacks and to ensure them good food and care until you get yourself back able to meet these obligations.

On September 12, 1979, Nujoma's application was approved by the Secretariat of the Central Committee of the SED and planning of the project began. The property known today as Bellin Hunting Lodge in the village of Bellin ten kilometers south of Güstrow ( Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania ) was chosen to house the children.

Arrivals

On December 18, 1979, 80 Namibian children arrived in snow-covered Bellin, of whom the oldest were between six and seven and the youngest between three and four years old. In addition to medical and everyday care, teaching the first German language skills was a key task in preparing the children for their school attendance. Between 1979 and 1988 a total of 430 children came to the GDR. Due to a lack of capacity, from 1985 the older classes were brought to the School of Friendship in Staßfurt , where the Namibian youths had accommodation alongside their lessons. Namibian children also went to school in nearby Löderburg .

The group of the first arrivals, later known as the "79", spent eleven and a half years in the GDR. They went to school, learned German like their mother tongue and practically grew up German. Both German and Namibian educators tried to bring the children closer to their Namibian culture as much as possible through traditional dances and songs in Oshivambo and traditional cooking events. The comparatively minor role that Namibian tradition played in view of the ubiquity of the German language and culture was also supported by the lack of experience of the teachers. According to the “ex-GDR children”, their Namibian teachers knew relatively little about their culture, as they had spent a large part of their lives in refugee camps outside of Namibia. As in the whole of the GDR, great importance was attached to socialist upbringing and values. The training of the SWAPO pioneers aimed to use these Namibian children as the country's new leadership elite after independence. This role, which was intended for them from the start, largely determined their upbringing.

return

A few months after the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989, Namibia gained independence. Nine months later, the precipitous events in the GDR meant that the Namibian children and young people and their teachers had to leave the GDR at short notice.

Opinions on the causes of regression differ. While former employees and teachers cite the lack of approval to continue the very expensive project as the reason, it is mainly the "ex-GDR children" who insist on responsibility from SWAPO. A parents commission formed at the time demanded the return of the children, be it as a symbol of the new and independent government of Namibia or as evidence against rumors circulating about the allegedly kidnapped SWAPO children. The children were returned between August 26 and 31, 1990. As returnees they ended up in a strange and unfamiliar country. The result was a bilateral culture shock: While these young people were strangers - “Germans” - to the blacks, often to their own families, those of ethnic origin in Namibia regarded them as “surprisingly German”, but still as black.

For the "GDR children from Namibia" this meant a conflict between two home countries, between two cultures and a struggle between two identities.

Review

In the course of their return to Namibia, the young Namibians were quickly given the term "ex-GDR children" or "GDR kids". One also spoke of the "Ossis of Namibia", as they occasionally referred to themselves as "Ossi". The Windhoek Ossi Club , which existed until 2007 and where they met regularly, also supported their naming. To this day, the young German-Namibians are known as "GDR children", a term that they have long outgrown. Their biographies vary greatly: While for some the good school education and knowledge of the German language promise great career opportunities in the strongly German-influenced Namibia, others suffer from their shattered biographies, which resembled a relentless search for their own homeland, culture and identity.

Today the young ex-GDR children refer to each other as "Omulaule", which is Oshivambo and means "black" or "black man". Your association still bears the name Freundeskreis ex-GDR .

Especially since the mid-2000s, some of the ex-GDR children have been accused of fraudulent intent against tourists in the center of Windhoek.

Cinematic reception

  • GDR child from Namibia: I had to bite through , documentary, Bayerischer Rundfunk , November 30, 2019 ( available on YouTube )
  • Honecker's Forgotten Children , documentary by Jule and Udo Kilimann, 2010, first broadcast on RBB March 27, 2010
  • Namibia - what does German mean here? , Documentary by Wolf von Lojewski , ZDF 2008
  • The Ossis of Namibia , documentary by K.-D. Gralow, R. Pitann and H. Thull., 2004–2007, production: Pitann Film + Grafik, first broadcast on NDR 2007
  • When two mountains separate us , 2007, 48 minutes, R + B: Martin Reinbold, Marion Nagel Website for the film Watch the film
  • Omulaule is called black , documentary film made at the Bauhaus University Weimar (Faculty of Media). The film was awarded the Prize of the State Agency for Civic Education Thuringia in 2003. Website for the film
  • Die Ossis von Windhoek , 1997 Documentation, 52 minutes, ARTE & Mdr
  • The Forgotten Children , 1991 Documentation by Jürgen Podzkiewitz, 26 minutes, Deutsche Welle
  • Documentary film trilogy by Lilly Grote & Julia Kunert:
    • Inside - Outside , 1990
    • Staßfurt - Windhoek , 1991
    • Oshilongo Shange - My Land , 1992

literature

  • Ingrid Brase Schloe, Kay Brase: Onesmus. White children with black skin in Namibia . Betzel Verlag, Nienburg 1996, ISBN 3-929017-74-1 .
  • Lucia Engombe, Peter Hilliges: Child No. 95. My German-African Odyssey . Ullstein, Berlin 2004, ISBN 3-548-25892-1 , ( Ullstein-Taschenbuch 25892).
  • Constance Kenna (Ed.): The "GDR Children" of Namibia. Returnees to a foreign country . Klaus Hess Verlag, Göttingen / Windhoek 1999, ISBN 3-933117-11-9 .
  • Jürgen Krause: The GDR-Namibia solidarity project School of Friendship - Possibilities and Limits of Intercultural Education . BIS-Verlag, University of Oldenburg 2009, ISBN 978-3-8142-2176-2 , see PDF
  • Jürgen Krause, Besse Kaplan: Children in Exile: A Pictorial Record. - Children in Exile: A pictorial documentation. Windhoek 2017.
  • Stefanie-Lahya Aukongo: Kalunga's child. How the GDR saved my life. Rowohlt Taschenbuch Verlag, Reinbek 2009, ISBN 3-499-62500-8 , ( Rororo 62500 non-fiction book ).
  • Uta Rüchel: "We had never seen a black man". The coexistence of Germans and Namibians around the SWAPO children's home Bellin 1979–1990 . Published by the State Commissioner for Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania for the records of the State Security Service of the former GDR, Schwerin 2001, ISBN 3-933255-11-2 .
  • Caroline Schmitt, Matthias Witte: "You are special": othering in biographies of "GDR children from Namibia". In: Ethnic and Racial Studies 41, No. 7. 2018, pp. 1352-1369.
  • Caroline Schmitt, Matthias Witte: “Refugees across the generations. Generational relations between the 'GDR children of Namibia' and their children ", Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies , 2019.
  • Susanne Timm: Partial educational cooperation: The Bellin children's home for Namibian refugee children in the GDR . Waxmann, 2007, ISBN 978-3830919179 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ On the edge. Swapo children who grew up in the GDR returned to their homeland - to German host families. DER SPIEGEL January 7, 1991
  2. ^ Oshi-Deutsch, an association and many stories . In: Allgemeine Zeitung , June 21, 2006
  3. ^ Catherine Sasman: Namibian / Cuban relations forge ahead . In: New Era , August 24, 2010. 
  4. ↑ Nils Ole Oermann : The Ossis of Windhoek. In: Nils Ole Oermann: For Westkaffee at Margot Honecker's. Last encounters with an unwavering woman. Hoffmann and Campe, Hamburg 2016, p. 115 ff.
  5. ↑ Ossi Club and Carnival Society . In: Berliner Zeitung , October 10, 2006
  6. ↑ What happened to the GDR children? Allgemeine Zeitung, January 11, 2013 ( Memento from February 1, 2013 in the Internet Archive )
  7. ↑ Theft instead of enrichment. Allgemeine Zeitung, September 23, 2009 ( Memento from March 5, 2016 in the Internet Archive )
  8. ↑ After a break, another rip-off by "ex-GDR children". Allgemeine Zeitung, April 5, 2011