About Nazis and Aryans

 "Did you know that the real Aryans come from Persia? That is where people are certainly not blond and blue-eyed?", with this question Felix, a 16-year-old boy from Kulmbach, comes out of the cinema. There, the Cluster of Excellence Africa Multiple and the Centre for Global Learning at the University of Bayreuth showed the documentary "The Aryans". Mo Asumang, the director of the film, was there. She made a lasting impression on the students: "She is really brave! As a black woman, she goes to interview the Ku Klux Klan or Nazis. You have to imagine that: to people who would actually like to kill black people!" 

Mo Asumang has a father from Ghana, a mother from Germany and has already experienced racism first hand. She has already been attacked and threatened herself. That's why she wants to find out where racism comes from and help disarm it.

Mo Asumang first became known as the first Afro-German TV presenter, today she is primarily active as a producer, director, actress and lecturer. She has dedicated herself to the topic of racism and integration since she herself experienced how far racists go: When the neo-Nazi band "White Aryan Rebels" sang in a song, "The bullet is for you, Mo Asumang", she turned the shock into a "cinematic search for traces of her identity as a black German". For her it is "important not to freeze in fear. I want to look for solutions and enter into dialogue," she says. That's why Mo Asumang first shot "ROOTS GERMANIA", which was nominated for the Grimme Award in 2008. It was followed in 2014 by "The Aryans": "(...) on a personal journey, the Afro-German Mo Asumang tries to find out what lies behind the idea of the 'master race'. She goes to see pseudo Aryans at Nazi demonstrations, travels to see the real Aryans in Iran, meets notorious racists worldwide in the USA and encounters the Ku Klux Klan", as it says on the film website.

As an ambassador for the Federal Anti-Discrimination Agency, Mo Asumang is also a travelling activist. She visits universities and schools all over Germany to talk about the issue of racism. For example, she already talked about "The Aryans" in a seminar with African students at the University of Bayreuth a few years ago. She finally also presented this film at the end of November in the Iwalewahaus of the University of Bayreuth and the day after in the Kulmbach cinema. 

There are plenty of questions from the audience when Mo Asumang shows "The Aryans". Again and again the words come through: "How dare she!". Mo Asumang not only researches in archives, she goes directly where it hurts: to demonstrations of the German nationalists, she talks to East German neo-Nazis, to conspiracy theorists, to people from the "White Aryan Resistance" and also to members of the Ku Klux Klan. Her insight: You have to deconstruct the construction of racism and start with young people. This can also be difficult with teenagers, as in the Kulmbach cinema: "When I came in, I thought the kids were in a completely different world and I was very curious to see whether they could dive into my stories and the film in a concentrated, emphatic and critical way," Mo Asumang reports, and then states: "And YES, they could, it was so nice, a lot happened with them, I felt that a lot on stage. Her summary: "The combination of university and school is great!"

The two events were organised by Kirstin Wolf from the Centre for Global Learning in Bavaria (ZGL) at the Department of Geography at the University of Bayreuth and Dr Doris Löhr, Academic Coordinator / Internationalisation & Public Engagement of the Cluster of Excellence Africa Multiple at the University of Bayreuth.