Afro-German Reading and Film Screening Draws Large, Diverse Audience

German writer Ika Hügel-Marshall from Berlin came to SSU recently to read from her autobiography “Invisible Woman: Growing Up Black in Germany.” She presented selections from a book that can be read as a testimony of a survivor of racism in post-war Germany and as a story of personal development and search for identity. Ika Hügel-Marshall read the original passages in German, and Dr. Dagmar Schultz, co-founder of the feminist publishing house Orlanda Verlag,read from the English translation. More than 100 people, including many students of color, attended the reading, and most stayed for the discussion on Hügel-Marshall’s life and contemporary Germany in the second hour. Many students were visibly touched by the writer’s sharing of her experiences, and personally thanked her afterward. 

The big turn-out of students revealed the interest on campus in ethnic issues within a comparative multicultural context, says German professor Michaela Grobbel. As one student remarked, "we can learn much about ourselves by listening to the experiences of people from different cultures." Grobbel, who invited the speakers, is interested in bringing more events like this to SSU to highlight the multifaceted aspects of the different German-speaking countries and call attention to the multiculturalism that is already at the heart of ‘German’ identity.

Hügel-Marshall’s book contributes to the ongoing discussion about multicultural issues in Germany and about what it means to be German. This has become particularly important after reunification of West and East Germany and Germany’s search for a new national identity.  Ika Hügel-Marshall is a so-called “war baby,” born just after World War II in a small Bavarian town. Her mother was a white German, her father an African American soldier stationed in Germany. At the age of seven, Ika (Erika at the time) was removed from her mother and placed in a Protestant boarding school hundreds of kilometers away, which proved to be a very traumatic experience. The book describes her journey to accept herself as a black German who went through different stages to ‘unlearn’ her own internalized self-hatred. In her late 30s, Ika Hügel-Marshall meets other Afro-Germans. It takes another ten years until she gets to know her father in the United States - a life-changing experience for her.

Ika Hügel-Marshall has lectured extensively in Europe and the United States and recently spoke at UC and CSU San Diego, UC Santa Barbara, UC Santa Cruz and other places on the West Coast. But she said her visit to SSU was the highlight of her reading tour since it was the biggest audience she had ever seen at a reading. Later that day, Dr. Schultz showed a documentary that she co-produced on the life and work of the extraordinarily gifted Afro-German poet who started the Black German Movement - May Ayim. The film “Hope in my Heart: Oral Poetry” showed the powerful and playful performance of Ayim’s poetry in dealing with her personal experiences in post-reunification Germany.