Revolutionary Alliances: The African American Civil Rights Struggle in Divided Germany

This paper explores the reception of the African American Civil Rights and Black Power movement in East and West Germany during the Cold War. Starting with the largely forgotten visit of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to divided Berlin in 1964, it analyzes similarities and differences that emerged from transatlantic solidarity movements. In West Germany, the presence of African American GIs played a crucial role in transporting America’s conflict across the Atlantic. An emerging student movement in the Federal Republic began to adopt direct action techniques such as sit-ins into its protest repertoire in the mid-1960s. Support for Black Power seemed to epitomize the liberation from imperialism and capitalism within the First World and provide a crucial link to the struggles of the “Third World”. A discussion of the reception of Black Power in West Germany thus demonstrates how the construction of a transnational protest identity fostered a unique ideological dynamic. In East Germany, on the other hand, the fight against racism was ingrained in the regime’s ideology. America’s role in the Cold War meant that the institutionalized racism in the U.S. became a frequent reference in East Berlin’s domestic and foreign policy efforts to discredit the West. The climax of state-funded East German solidarity efforts was the movement for Angela Davis from 1971-73, which made her a folk heroine of the “other America”. The revolutionary alliances that emerged between civil rights and Black Power activists with East and West Germans in the 1960/70s differed: one was a government-sponsored solidarity campaign firmly rooted in the state’s ideology, whereas the other was driven by students and intellectuals identifying with Black Power in opposition to their government and its transatlantic partnership. Yet both campaigns are an integral part of the global reception of the African American journey for equality and freedom.