The colonial past

One verb turns up in almost every German argument about the colonial past, and it comes out of the Bible. Die Verklärung Christi is the scene English calls the Transfiguration: on the mountain the face of Jesus shines and his clothes turn white. The root is klar, which came from Latin clarus and once meant bright and shining before it meant clear. So verklären first meant to make radiant, and a face that is verklärt is still a rapt, beatific one. Applied to history, the verb keeps the light and loses the holiness. Whoever die Kolonialzeit verklärt bathes it in a glow it never had: the railway and the mission school stay in the picture, and die Zwangsarbeit drops out of it. The charge is not quite lying. It is choosing the lighting, which is why the word stings.