It is important to call things by their names.
And if you want to learn from history, you can't just stick to the terms of the past epochs.
From today's perspective, numerous campaigns and conquests or measures mentioned in history books were basically nothing more than mass and genocide.
It is also right to still address historical injustice politically today. Because it has consequences in every way. Of course, requests for forgiveness and payments, as they are in the course of time and as they are now also set up by Germany with Namibia after years of negotiations, remain a balancing act.
If the guilt of the forefathers, however great it was, is invoked all too ardently today, it has something of moral self-exaggeration; one washes away from distant sins and feels better. Even if things have to be relentlessly called by name, the historical context must not be ignored. The descendants of perpetrators and victims are not both perpetrators and victims. But as a state, Germany must take responsibility for its historical injustice. The Federal Government would do well to provide extensive assistance, preferably to those who really need it, but who at the same time do not recognize any legal entitlement to (further) payments. Because it's about reconciliation.