维斯曼纪念碑的存废与20世纪德国的殖民历史认知和反思

The Existence and Abolishment of the Wissmann Monuments and the Perception and Reflection of the Colonial History in 20^(th) Century Germany

20世纪的德国历史与殖民问题紧密交织在一起。作为德国东非殖民地的缔造者之一,赫尔曼·冯·维斯曼是德国著名的“殖民英雄”,他的纪念碑见证了德国殖民历史认知的百年变迁。两座维斯曼纪念碑建于德意志帝国扩张时期,彰显了德国沙文主义的民族认同。一战战败后,德国被剥夺殖民地。维斯曼的历史形象先后被魏玛共和国和纳粹政权包装粉饰,分别用于驳斥战胜国的殖民道德指责和宣传扩张战争与极端种族主义意识形态。二战后,德国的殖民历史被淹没在非纳粹化改造及随后的冷战之下。以纳粹历史反思为主导的记忆文化与以西方为中心的历史观导致殖民历史长期被忽视。直至20世纪60年代中后期,对本民族历史传统的自省与亚非拉国家的反殖民主义和反种族主义运动才推动德国社会大规模批判性反思殖民历史。20世纪90年代以来,前殖民地国家对德国殖民历史的谴责促使德国社会跳出民族国家范式与西方语境,从殖民地与殖民帝国关系的视角重新审视殖民主义。

The German history is intertwined with the colonialism in the 20thcentury.Hermann von Wissmann,one of the co-founders of the German East African colonies,stands out as a prominent'colonial hero',with his monuments bearing witness to the evolving German colonial perception over the past century.Two Wissmann monuments which were erected during the German Empire highlighted the national identity of the German chauvinism.Following Germany's defeat in the First World War,its colonies were officially confiscated.Wissmann's historical image was subsequently repackaged by both the Weimar Republic and the Nazi regime,serving respectively to refute the colonial criticisms from the Allies and to promote expansionism and extreme racism.After the Second World War,Germany's colonial history was submerged under the processes of denazification and the ensuing Cold War.The remembrance culture dominated by the reflections on the Nazi history and a Western-centric historiography led to the long-term neglect of the colonial history.It was not until the mid-to-late 196Os,driven by self-reflection on the national history and the anti-colonial and anti-racist movements in Asia,Africa,and Latin America,that the German society began a large-scale critical reflection on its colonial history.Since the 1990s,condemnation of former colonies on the German colonial history prompted the German society to move beyond the nation-state paradigm and the Western context,reexamining the colonialism from the perspective of entanglements between colonies and colonial powers.