Forms and Obstacles of Reparation in Bernhard Jaumann’s Der lange Schatten

Abstract

A revival of debates on colonialism and its legacies has been observed for decades, both in the former colonies and in the former metropolises, which are increasingly dealing with their own colonial heritage. Beyond political and academic discourse, fiction as a social discourse also responds to and sometimes influences these public debates, as it is the case for the novel Der lange Schatten [The Long Shadow] (2015) by Bernard Jaumann. The material of this crime novel embodies memories of the restitution ceremony held at Berlin Charité in 2011 and of the shared colonial history between Namibia and Germany. This chapter therefore analyses questions of reparation dealt with in Jaumann’s book and the mechanisms of legitimisation or instrumentalisation of historical narratives. Accordingly, the thesis put forward here is that this novel addresses the lack of cohesion between the Namibian government and the Herero and Nama people in contemporary Namibia as an obstacle to the recognition of genocide and thus to reparations.