Cancelled »We just had to take a stance« Queer of Color activism and white LGBTIQ++ movements in Germany - Tarek Shukrallah

05. May

Researcher, author, curator and educator Tarek Shukrallah (University of Giessen) on the history of queer of colour social movements in Germany.

Unfortunately, this event had to be canceled. A new date will be announced shortly.

  • Tuesday 5 May, 2026. 6:15pm.
  • Room C 40.704
  • Hosted by the Gender and Diversity Research Network and the Center for Critical Studies.
  • The event will take place in English.

The canon of LGBTIQ++ history in Germany is white. In consequence, queer of Color movements in Germany cannot be understood as mere additions to such white-coded historiography. Rather, activism emerged from experiences of racism and exclusion within white gay, lesbian, and eventually LGBTIQ++ structures—and at the same time as responses to social polarization, particularly during the years following the fall of the Berlin Wall. Examples such as the Black lesbian organization ADEFRA, the TürkGay groups, the Gayhane parties at Berlin’s SO36, GLADT, or the abolitionist group SUSPECT! illustrate how migrant, Black, and of Color queers have created their own networks, cultural spaces, and political platforms. These spaces were places of protection, self-organization, and empowerment—but also sites of resistance against white, elitist and homonormative movement politics.

The absence of these stories in established archives is neither a coincidence nor a “gap.” It points to the mechanisms through which white movements have systematically excluded queers of Color. In response to this erasure, distinct forms of memory, narrative, and archiving have emerged—counter-archives that not only document but are themselves part of the struggles. The lecture invites us to reconsider queer history in Germany: not as a linear success story, but as a contentious. Queer BIPoC activists have made the intersectional contradictions of queer politics visible and left lasting marks. What can we learn from such experiences for today’s struggles against exploitation, racism and queerphobia?

Tarek Shukrallah (they/them) is a researcher, author, curator and educator with a background in political science. They are affiliated with the University of Giessen, where they work as a pre-doc researcher and teaching staff at the chair for political science and gender studies. In 2024, they published the edited volume Nicht die Ersten. Bewegungsgeschichten von Queers of Color in Deutschland (Not the First Ones. Queer of Color movement histories in Germany), which will soon be published in its third edition.