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This book designs a new approach to the history of the women’s movement in Germany in the years from 1980 to 2000. It collects 11 stories of migrant women and women of color – activists of migrant feminism in the German women’s movement. Through the method of “storytelling” and archival work, as well as the collection of historical documents such as photographs, newspaper articles and pamphlets, the historical facts that form the background of the biographical testimonies were reconstructed. The narratives and the documented archival material reflect the political work of migrant feminist groups in five selected locations in the Federal Republic: Berlin, Hamburg, Cologne/Bonn, Frankfurt and Stuttgart. Telling the stories of these activists of migrant feminism, the thesis that German feminism of the 1980s and 1990s rather took place in the institutions of academia and politics is refuted. The assumed “silent” period of the German women’s movement of the 1980s and 1990s is shown from a migrant feminist perspective to be rather an eventful and theoretically groundbreaking period. It was precisely during this period that migrant, Black, Sinti and Rom*ja, Jewish and queer/feminist activists, intellectuals, academics, and artists organized conferences, published books, founded political groups, and circulated statements addressing the question of racism, anti-Semitism, gender, class, and sexuality and their entanglement in the context of flight, migration, and diaspora. However, this “political movement” does not seem to be present in the narrative of the German women’s movement. Nor are these activists and intellectuals understood and represented as actors in the German women’s movement. To put it differently: The noise coming from these actors was not heard.

This book is a cultural and political account of migrant feminism in Germany between 1980 and 1990, and by claiming the “right-to-narrate,” it addresses the cultural politics of alternative histories. It asks what would the historiography of the German women’s movement look like if the period, so “silent,” were set in motion by these testimonies. How would such an intervention in the past redefine the present and future narrative of the women’s movement in Germany? What would this “redefinition” mean for Germany as a country of immigration? What does the omission of migrant feminist history mean for the politics of writing the history of the German women’s movement?

(Based on a research project “Migrant Feminism in the German Women’s Movement (1980-2000) – Intersectional Explorations,” funded by the Hessian Ministry of Science and Art).