Bremen’s Elephant Statue

Witness History

BBC

History, Personal Journals, Society & Culture

4.4 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 11 August 2020

⏱️ 11 minutes

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Summary

Amid the ongoing debate about how to handle historical monuments which commemorate colonialism and slavery, Witness History hears the story of a giant statue of an elephant in the German city of Bremen.

The port city had played a significant role in Germany's colonial past, and after Germany lost its territories in Africa following the First World War the statue was built there in memory of the period.

But in the 1980s, a group of anti-apartheid activists campaigned to raise awareness of Germany's colonial history - and to rededicate the elephant statue.

Lucy Burns speaks to Professor Manfred Hinz, who was part of the campaign.

Photo: Shutterstock - the anti-colonial elephant monument in Bremen, 08/07/2020

Transcript

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0:00.0	Just before this BBC podcast gets underway, here's something you may not know.
0:04.7	My name's Linda Davies and I Commission Podcasts for BBC Sounds.
0:08.5	As you'd expect, at the BBC we make podcasts of the very highest quality featuring the most knowledgeable experts and genuinely engaging voices.
0:18.0	What you may not know is that the BBC makes podcasts about all kinds of things like pop stars,
0:24.6	poltergeist, cricket, and conspiracy theories and that's just a few examples.
0:29.7	If you'd like to discover something a little bit unexpected, find your next podcast over at BBC Sounds.
0:36.0	A bomb that killed hundreds of thousands of people.
0:39.0	A scientist who wanted it made but then didn't want it to be used. My own grandfather and a
0:45.7	picture of a mushroom cloud. The Baum, a brand new podcast from the BBC World Service,
0:51.5	available now.
0:53.0	Hi and thanks for downloading Witness History from the BBC World Service.
1:01.0	I'm Lucy Burns and today I'm talking about statues. All over the world
1:05.6	recently there's been a re-appraisal of historical monuments. What do we do with them
1:10.3	when they no longer represent the society they're in or when they commemorate things that we're no more? with them
1:13.2	when they no longer represent the society they're in or when they commemorate things that
1:14.7	we're no longer proud of.
1:16.6	One place that's been through this question already is the city of Bremen
1:20.2	in northwest Germany, which in 1990 decided that a 1930 statue in honor of German
1:26.4	colonialism should become an anti-colonial monument. It's in the shape of an elephant.
1:49.0	It's really a big thing. I don't know how high it is exactly, but it is a very big monument made out of red bricks. It's very close to the main station. So when you leave the main station and go to the city you will pass this. Manfred Hintz is a law professor at Bremen University.
1:53.0	These days he's mainly retired,
1:55.0	but he's been campaigning for decades against colonialism,
	...

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