Mozambican painter Mankeu V. Mahumana and the GDR: artists' friendships and cultural politics (part 2)

Text and video by Lea Marie Nienhoff
Research collaboration and translation: Ambre Elsa Alfredo

Further interview partners: Gabriele Baumgarten-Heinke, Dr. Ulrich Weishaupt

The practice of a global, socialist "friendship between peoples" and "international solidarity" was to be exemplified by artists in particular. At the same time, however, the cultural exchange agreed upon between the countries constituted a tightly controlled instrument of GDR foreign policy. My research explored the question of how the protagonists of the cultural exchange between the People's Republic of Mozambique and the GDR defined it for themselves, and what personal goals they associated with it. In the subjective perception of the individual protagonists, the unplanned events and private encounters, a kind of lived political friendship becomes visible that was not predefined by cultural work plans.

Part 2: After the merge of the two Berlin Academies of Arts, the painter Mankeu V. Mahumana was removed from the list of corresponding members. Mankeu described himself as a "friend of the GDR". In an interview, his son Albino Mahumana tells how the artist experienced the fall of the Berlin Wall and the severance of artistic exchange relations. After 1989, friends and acquaintances of the Mozambican painter engaged themselves on a private level for a continuation of the cultural exchange and material support. The film documents the friendly relations of Mankeu V. Mahumana with various artists and cultural workers from the GDR, such as the sculptor Wolfgang Eckhardt, the author Landolf Scherzer, and Harald Heinke, the former representative of the League for Friendship between Peoples in Maputo.

zambique, she joined the video project to bring a part of Mozambique's history to the public that is largely silenced.

With archival documents from the private archive of Harald Heinke, the Federal Archive, and the archive of the Academy of Arts.

The research for this film was made possible by the SNF research project "Decolonizing Socialism: Entangled Internationalism. An Intersectional Study of Cold War Projects from East Germany in Cinema and Cybernetics with Relevance for the 21st Century" (HEAD Genève). www.entangledinternationalism.org.

A short bio of Lea Marie Nienhoff can be found via the page "contributors".

Ambre Elsa Alfredo is a PhD student in Urban Studies at the University of Basel and part of the project Precarious Urbanisms in Coastal Africa (PRECURBICA). Previously, Ambre worked in the development sector as well as in the field of architecture and urban planning. Having spent most of her life in Mo