“Sonnenaufgang im Morgenland”

In December 1930, a remarkable revue show opened in Kliems Festsäle, a ballroom in Berlin-Kreuzberg, close to Neukölln. Inspired by Black theatrical productions in the US and in Paris, the revue “Sonnenaufgang im Morgenland” (Sunrise in the Orient) was staged by members of Berlin’s small but diverse Black population. This lecture by Robbie Aitken, Professor of Imperial History at Sheffield Hallam University, will suggest that “Sonnenaufgang” was both an expression of a diasporic identity in the making as well as one of resistance – resistance against hegemonic stereotypes of Africans and Africa as well as a right-wing backlash against Black performers and Black cultural forms in late Weimar Germany. And it will situate the show within a longer tradition of Black organisation and performance which continued into the post-1945 period.