RUM, SWEAT, AND TEARS EXIHIBITON

The exhibition aims to irritate and challenge visitors. Those seeking information must bend down and adopt an uncomfortable or unusual posture, as all the exhibits are presented in themed boxes on the floor. But on their way there, they walk over people. Crowded together, like in the slave ships, their outlines are painted on the floor. In white lines – like at a crime scene.

The outline of a historic slave ship covers the entire floor plan of the museum building, corresponding to the direction of travel from Ghana to the Virgin Islands. The shape extends far beyond the building into the urban space, thus reaching even uninvolved passersby and inviting participation.

The exhibition's themes are comprehensive: strategies and practices of violence, racism, and stereotyping that legitimized colonial rule for centuries. Forms of African resistance, self-assertion, and survival.

Flensburg and its surroundings are rich in colonial history. Flensburg grew rich in the 18th and 19th centuries through trade with the Danish colonies in the West Indies. The brickworks along the fjord produced massive amounts of building materials for the islands. The costly voyages to the Caribbean became the economic engine of the entire region, profiting from sailors, captains, merchants, shipbuilders, craftsmen, and farmers everywhere. The economic and social effects of this economic boom are widely known and continue to shape Flensburg's self-image as a "rum town." However, these memories often ignore the experience of violence, suffering, and exploitation suffered by millions of enslaved Africans—men, women, and children—over 500 years in the transatlantic triangular trade.

To mark the 100th anniversary of the sale of the Danish Caribbean colonies, along with the people living there, to the USA, the Maritime Museum is presenting the exhibition "Rum, Sweat & Tears." The exhibition attempts to disrupt our usual view of our own history and, through an African-Caribbean perspective, understand the Flensburg sugar and rum trade as part of European colonialism. The exhibition describes how strategies and practices of violence, racism, and stereotyping have legitimized colonial rule for centuries and subsequently led to a kind of "colonial amnesia," which is reflected today in the forgetting and repression of parts of history on both the European and African-Caribbean-American sides. The exhibition also examines forms of African resistance, self-assertion, and survival, and, last but not least, demonstrates how, despite the supposedly clearly defined power relations between colonial rulers and enslaved people, a cultural exchange has developed that is typical of today's globalized world. Overall, the exhibition asks how we deal with the colonial legacy that, in our shared history, connects Flensburg to the present day in the transatlantic triangle with Africa and the Caribbean.