Oct 15, 2026

Racism and Antiracism in Divided Germany

Michelle Lynn Kahn and Lauren Stokes

Hosted by Jenna Pittman

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Summary

Racism and Antiracism in Divided Germany (Cornell UP, 2026) addresses how racism expresses itself and what it means to be antiracist by tracing the history of racism and antiracist activism in East, West, and unified Germany. As far-right extremism surges in Germany today, Germans from across the political spectrum are increasingly grappling with the presence of racism in a country that is still coming to terms with its Nazi past. However, these public discussions are not always historically informed, and racism in Germany is often dismissed as a fringe phenomenon rather than part of mainstream society

The contributions in this volume juxtapose the experiences of multiple racialized groups to collectively show how racism, rightwing extremism, and antiforeigner violence have long been embedded in the center of both East and West German society. Germany's unification in the 1990s produced a deadly collision of two distinct yet overlapping cultures of racism that persists today. The volume also highlights Germany's long overlooked history of antiracist activism, providing historical lessons on how to combat racism today.

Contributors: Rita Chin, Christopher Ewing, Sheer Ganor, Daniela Gress, Christopher A. Molnar, Paige Newhouse, Jannis Panagiotidis, Hans-Christian Petersen, Patrice G. Poutrus, Thomas Prennig, Bill Sharman, Brian Van Wyck, Johanna M. Wetzel

Host: Jenna Pittman (she/her) is a Ph.D. student in the Department of History at Duke University. She studies modern European history, political economy, and Germany from 1945-1990.

Guests: Michelle Lynn Kahn (she/her) is an Associate Professor of History at the University of Richmond and author of Foreign in Two Homelands: Racism, Return Migration, and Turkish-German History (Cambridge University Press, 2024). Lauren Stokes (she/her) is an Associate Professor of History at Northwestern University and author of Fear of the Family: Guest Workers and Family Migration in the Federal Republic of Germany (Oxford University Press, 2022)