ADEFRA and Afro-German Lesbian and Feminist Connections

After participating in a feminist conference in Amsterdam, a group of Afro-Germans returned to Germany energized and subsequently formed ADEFRA in 1986. ADEFRA, an Afro-German feminist organization, initiated a new stage within the Afro-German women’s movement of the 1980s and 1990s. The organization, driven in large part by Afro-German lesbian activists, sought to challenge heteronormative and racist practices in an ideologically-divided, post-Holocaust Germany. Influenced by Caribbean-American lesbian writer Audre Lorde, Afro-German women privileged Lorde’s concept of “connected differences,” forming ties with their compatriots and other women globally. 

In this paper, I argue that Afro-German women’s involvement with ADEFRA reflected their efforts to gain visibility and confront instances of sexism, racism, and homophobia in reunified Germany. Creating solidarities at international events, Afro-German lesbians and feminists became concerned with transnational issues. Their commitment to feminist and black diasporic internationalism resulted in ADEFRA’s 1990 international conference entitled “Wage dein Leben, verlasse dein Haus” (“Risk your life, and leave your house”). This conference made Afro-German identity and feminism visible and was representative of how the local and global intersected in these women’s lives and activism. It also enabled them to engage in an intersectional approach that incorporated both transnational feminist and black diasporic activism. Stressing empowerment, the event served as a form of resistance in a country that still inaccurately imagined itself as homogenously white. The lasting impact of the conference was the new alliances that allowed Afro-Germans to further overturn traditional norms and reshape notions of belonging and feminism within Germany.