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With Karamba to the Bundestag
My Journey from Senegal to the German Parliament

Reading and Discussion with Karamba Diaby as Part of the New German Stories series (audio recording available, in German)

“No, not you!” a canteen employee called to Karamba Diaby on his first day at the Bundestag. She had concluded from his appearance that he must be in the wrong place. And people still seem surprised when Karamba Diaby, member of parliament, responds in German and not Mandingo.

recording available

Map with all buildings that belong to the Jewish Museum Berlin. The W. M. Blumenthal Academy is marked in green

Where

W. M. Blumenthal Academy,
Klaus Mangold Auditorium
Fromet-und-Moses-Mendelssohn-Platz 1, 10969 Berlin
(Opposite the Museum)

Where, when, what?

Through his humor, Karamba Diaby topples prejudices and reveals several forms of everyday racism in Germany that was “not meant like that.” In his book Mit Karamba in den Bundestag. Mein Weg vom Senegal ins deutsche Parlament (With Karamba to the Bundestag. My Journey from Senegal to the German Parliament), he tells of his birth country Senegal, of life in the GDR and his work in the Bundestag. And not least of his vision of an open and future-oriented society.

Karamba Diaby is sitting on a staircase, wearing a blue suit with a red check tie.

Audio recording of the reading with Karamba Diaby on 1 June 2017, with an introduction by Yasemin Shooman, in German; Jewish Museum Berlin 2017
Photo: Karamba Diaby; Michael Bader

Interview Series: New German Stories (12)

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  • New German Stories

    From 2014 to 2017, our colleagues from the Academy program on migration and diversity held regular events at the Jewish Museum in a series called New German Stories. The guests' lives speak to Germany, past and present, as a society of migration, and the events take these life stories as a springboard for exploring these themes. Beforehand, the guests were almost always interviewed. We have compiled these interviews for you here.

  • Karamba Diaby is sitting on a staircase, wearing a blue suit with a red check tie.

    Karamba Diaby

    “We should close this representation gap”

    Interview
    26 May 2017

  • Portrait of an elderly lady with a bun

    Anita Awosusi

    On her book Our Father – A Sinti Family Recounts

    Interview
    6 Feb 2017

  • Black and white portrait of a young man with glasses in half profile

    Ármin Langer

    “The boredom of peaceful coexistence”

    Interview
    18 Oct 2016

  • Portrait of a woman with glasses who smiles and looks directly into the camera.

    Marion Kraft

    “The part Black soldiers played in the liberation of Germany from Nazism has been largely neglected”

    Livestream
    6 Jul 2016

  • Portrait of a young woman smiling

    Çiçek Bacık

    “We’ve always been spoken and written about”

    Interview
    13 Oct 2015

  • Portrait of a woman with a blue headscarf, lipstick and eye shadow, looking upwards to the left.

    Fereshta Ludin

    “I wish more people would look in my eyes instead of at my scarf”

    Interview
    16 Sep 2015

  • Black and white portrait of a man.

    David Ranan

    “Other but not foreign”

    Interview
    6 Jul 2015

  • Detail from a book cover: it shows a fish wrapped in newspaper, with its head and tail fin visible.

    Ahmad Milad Karimi

    On his book Osama bin Laden is Sleeping with Fishes

    Interview
    9 Mar 2015

  • Portrait of a woman with glasses who smiles and looks directly into the camera

    Alina Gromova

    Generation “kosher light”. Young Jews of Russian descent in Berlin

    Interview
    8 Sep 2014

  • An older woman with glasses and headscarf (left in the picture) is talking to a younger woman who also wears glasses and is standing at the right edge of the picture.

    Canan Turan

    Kıymet or: A cinematic tribute to my grandmother

    Interview
    4 Jul 2014

  • On the cover you can see a photo of three playing children

    Urmila Goel and Nisa Punnamparambil-Wolf

    InderKinder
    Dealing creatively with ethnic classifications

    Interview
    19 Mar 2014

  • Three women in profile at a table, smilingly signing books

    Alice Bota, Khuê Pham, and Özlem Topçu

    “New German stories”

    Interview
    29 Jan 2014

Where, when, what?

  • When1 Jun 2017
  • Where W. M. Blumenthal Academy,
    Klaus Mangold Auditorium
    Fromet-und-Moses-Mendelssohn-Platz 1, 10969 Berlin
    (Opposite the Museum)
    See location on map

Event Series: New German Stories (4)

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Academy Programs: Past Events for You to Listen To and Watch 2011–2019 (40)

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