Abstract
The chapter takes up the genocide perpetrated in 1904–1908 in what was then German Southwest Africa, today’s Namibia, as an unresolved issue and an exemplary challenge to quests for cosmopolitanism. The issues of global inequality are related to the postcolonial situation and, in the concrete case, to the need for reconciliation. This leads to setting out some central aspects of the ongoing process of coming to terms with the consequences of the genocide. Various perspectives in Namibia as well as in Germany are outlined. One important conclusion relates to the persistent imbalance in terms of concern and awareness between the two countries, which again is referred back to the concept of cosmopolitanism.
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Notes
- 1.
I follow Tilman Schiel’s adaption of a terminology coined originally by Ernst Forsthoff, see Kössler and Schiel 1996: 47–49. The German originals are beherrschter Lebensraum and effektiver Lebensraum.
- 2.
- 3.
I will merely give a summary of the relevant facts from recent literature, without going into great detail, nor attending to the issue of revisionism regarding the genocide (on which see Kössler 2008). For more detail, see Erichsen (2005), Gewald (1999), Steinmetz (2007): Chap. 3, Zimmerer (2001), Zimmerer (2005).
- 4.
On revisionist/denialist argument in this respect, see Kössler 2008.
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Kössler, R. (2018). Cosmopolitanism and Reconciliation in a Postcolonial World. In: Giri, A. (eds) Beyond Cosmopolitanism. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-5376-4_12
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