Marcel Odenbach's Angels of History: Cross‐Racial Empathy, Racial Violence, and German Appropriation of Black History

Since the 1960s, identifying with African American struggles against oppression has been an important tool for white Germans to show that they are on the right side of history. This cross‐racial empathy is central to Marcel Odenbach's 1999 video installation, “Ach wie gut daß niemand weiß,” in which he juxtaposes two iconic scenes from the protest movements of the late 1960s: West German student Benno Ohnesorg being shot at the demonstration against the Shah of Iran and Martin Luther King Jr. marching in Selma, Alabama. When read through the lens of Walter Benjamin's “Theses on the Philosophy of History,” “Ach wie gut” has the potential to create a constellation of cultural moments that both promote a multidirectional approach to memory and comment on our present political moment by invoking Benjamin's warning about the violence of making history and the danger of taking a solely historicist perspective. Nevertheless, this potential is in danger of being undermined by Odenbach's failure to recognize his own white privilege and his role as implicated subject vis‐à‐vis these histories of struggle.