/
RSS Feed
On a warm summer night in 2020, as Germany’s first lockdown from the COVID-19 pandemic was lifted, Omar Diallo and two friends set out to celebrate Eid al-Adha, the Muslim festival of sacrifice. Diallo, a 22-year-old migrant from Guinea in West Africa, recounted the night to the Associated Press in Erfurt, the capital of Thuringia, an eastern German state. “We were enjoying life, playing music, walking through the city at night,” Diallo said. But what began as a joyful evening took a tragic turn.
As they walked through a park near a dilapidated storage building, three men dressed in black confronted them. “They were shouting, ‘What do you want here, f–king foreigners, get out!’” Diallo recalled, his eyes filled with the horror of that night. The situation quickly escalated as more men appeared, surrounding them. “Suddenly it was no longer just three, but five, seven. All over the place. There was no escape.”
Diallo doesn’t remember how long they were pursued, but he eventually managed to call the police. When officers arrived, the attackers fled. One of his friends, also from Guinea, was beaten so badly that he required hospitalization.
Being Black in Germany has long meant facing racism, from daily humiliations to deadly assaults. However, experts note that the risk of becoming a victim of racism is even higher in eastern Germany. While West Germany evolved into a democratic and diverse society after World War II, East Germany, under a Communist dictatorship until 1989, had little contact with people of other ethnicities and restricted foreign travel.
In Thuringia, radical far-right forces have fostered a particularly hostile environment toward minorities, including Black people. In 2023, the NGO Ezra, which assists victims of far-right, racist, and antisemitic violence, documented 85 racist attacks in Thuringia—only slightly fewer than the 88 attacks in 2022, which was a record year for right-wing violence in the state.
“In recent years, an extreme right-wing movement has formed in Thuringia, which has contributed to a noticeable ideological radicalization of its followers. Politically, the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party is the main beneficiary,” Ezra and other organizations noted in their annual report on the predominantly rural state with a population of around 2.1 million.
This trend is reflected in polling for the upcoming local elections on September 1, where up to 30% of Thuringia voters intend to support the far-right AfD, putting the party ahead of mainstream competitors. The AfD’s Thuringia branch is particularly radical and has been under official surveillance by the domestic intelligence service for four years as a “proven right-wing extremist” group.
The party’s anti-immigrant rhetoric has raised concerns not only among those working to combat discrimination but also among minorities such as Black Germans and African migrants, who are often the first targets of discrimination.
“I think that both right-wing, conservative right-wing forces and authoritarian populist forces, which are becoming very strong here in Thuringia, harbor a great danger,” said Doreen Denstaedt, Thuringia’s minister for migration, justice, and consumer protection. Denstaedt, the daughter of a Black Tanzanian father and a white German mother, was born and raised in Thuringia. The 46-year-old Green party member recalled growing up as “the only Black child” in her community. As a teenager, she was never allowed to go home alone due to the risk of racist attacks, and she often faced racial slurs at school.
Denstaedt expressed concern that racist narratives, repeatedly propagated in the current political climate, could become normalized in society. Although Black people are a small minority in Germany, they have lived in the country for centuries. Estimates suggest that around 1.27 million people of African heritage live in Germany, a nation of approximately 83 million. More than 70% of them were born in Germany, according to Mediendienst Integration, an organization that monitors migration issues.
Germany’s colonial history in Africa, spanning from 1884 until the end of World War I, left a legacy that the country has only recently begun to confront. In 2023, Germany’s president issued an apology for colonial-era killings in Tanzania over a century ago.
Daniel Egbe, a Cameroonian chemist who moved to Thuringia in 1994 to study, was shocked by how little Germans knew about the country’s colonial past regarding Black people. Egbe, who became a German citizen in 2003, founded AMAH, an organization based in Jena that supports university students and migrants from Africa in dealing with discrimination.
Despite the traumatic experience of the attack in Erfurt, Diallo has vowed to fight for justice for Black people in Germany. Although the attack deeply affected him, it also motivated him to pursue a law degree at a university in Munich. He frequently returns to Erfurt to protest for migrants’ rights and against racism.
While Egbe is concerned about the AfD’s potential rise in the upcoming elections, he remains committed to staying in Thuringia despite the increasing racism. “Even if the worst happens, we will stay here. We will not leave, and we have to do our part to change this society,” Egbe said.
