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Wie umgehen mit dem kolonialen Erbe? Interview with Valerie Viban

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2019 Berlin Fellow Valerie Viban was interviewed for the Agiamondo News Letter. The interview, titled “How to deal with colonial legacy?” (“Wie umgehen mit dem kolonialen Erbe?” in German), discussed the work that Valerie does with Dr. Jörg Lüer at the German Justice and Peace Commission. Together, they are working to develop a concept for “dealing with the violent past and coming to terms with the colonial legacy.” Valerie was born in Cameroon, one of the former German colonies, and moved to Berlin five years ago. In the interview, he talked about the importance of dealing with colonial legacy both from Cameroonian church perspective as well as German Catholic church perspective so that they can work together to derive an acceptable concept. Particular to Valerie’s job is building networks between the German Catholic church and its church partners in some former German colonies to acknowledge the role of the church in colonialism as well as to find a pathway to dealing with it. Some areas of his work also include joining the campaign for the restitution of power artifacts and other cultural goods looted from African colonies by German colonial administration and church missionaries. Valerie is also interested in engaging in troubling history of slavery and slave trade, because it is linked to colonialism and raises the question of slavery as human inheritance.

You can read the full text of the interview here (in German).