Public Disability History

By Maria Berghs I am not a historian but I got curious about neglected histories linked to African theory and models of disability when I was working with my colleagues from Zimbabwe - Dr. Tsitsi Chataika and the disabled disability rights activists Kudzai Shava and Abraham Mateta. We were collaborating on a book chapter for an edited collection entitled Advocacy in Conflict: Critical Perspectives on Transnational Advocacy . 1 As a group, we were trying to elucidate some of the transnational and national struggles we had seen in our own work in Sierra Leone and Zimbabwe around advocacy for disability rights. While we were writing together, my colleagues stated that they had an understanding of disability rights linked to South African understandings of Ubuntu. Ubuntu embodies a Southern African humanist and collective ethical philosophy. It states that our way of being human is connected to the humanness of other people. My colleagues also located this philosophy within their own ...

by Sebastian Weinert As Daniel Blackie pointed out recently on this blog, doing public disability history is an important, but sometimes challenging project. 1 In the last couple of months we had the great opportunity to test different ways to communicate the history of a foundation for people with disability to the public. By doing so we gathered some inspiring experiences we are happy to share with other disability historians. Guido von Donnersmarck sourrounded by war invalids in Berlin-Frohnau 8th May 2016 has been an important date for the Fürst Donnersmarck-Stiftung zu Berlin (FDST): Exactly 100 years ago – in the midst of World War I – Guido Graf Henckel Fürst von Donnersmarck established the foundation as a scientific research institute in Berlin. He was an Upper Silesian magnate and one of the richest persons in Prussia. 2 In August 1914 – shortly after the outbreak of the “Great War“ – he erected a military hospital at the heart of Berlin-Frohnau – an area near the ...