Children of the Liberation
Transatlantic Experiences and Perspectives of Black Germans of the Post-War Generation
Series:
Edited By Marion Kraft
Germany: A Springtime Tale (Eleonore Wiedenroth-Coulibaly)
Extract
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ELEONORE WIEDENROTH-COULIBALY
Germany: A Springtime Tale
41. Eleonore Wiedenroth-Coulibaly. Private property.
Forward Ever, Backward Never
Why was I born? Why in those times (spring in the 1950s)? Why in this place (post-World War II Germany, Hesse)? Why to these parents? Father: a young Black U.S. American soldier, who was supposed to help secure the ← 197 | 198 → first feeble beginnings of democracy in post-Nazi Germany, although he himself was deprived of basic human rights in his U.S. homeland. Mother: a young white German, born into a fascist society, that, among other things, led to the break-up of her family, and who had somehow survived all this with many injuries to her inner child. For both, their encounter was an opportunity to broaden their horizons and to discover a different world. This is what they did, at least to a certain extent. In the end, both were bound by social restrictions. And why did I come to these parents, who couldn’t offer me a cozy home, since they had never known one themselves?
Perhaps my soul was on a mission. Perhaps it sought clarity, perhaps it wanted to bring clarity into the world, initiate changes, discover itself, celebrate new qualities in life, before, at the end of the journey, it would return to the light it had always been. This is how I came into this world, into the darkness of the 1950s, in a post-war...
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