As only became known on Monday afternoon, the journalist is Bettina Gaus died on October 27th, and many obituaries appeared that evening. You honor Bettina Gaus as an independent voice, as a brilliant analyst, as courageous, opinionated and argumentative. Your daughter Nora Mbagathi has Bettina Gaus up on Tuesday Twitter something else was called out, a sentence that only she could formulate on her own: “A lot of beautiful things are said about her as a journalist, but she was a really great mother.”
Nora Mbagathi’s father is Kenyan, she grew up in Nairobi, and Bettina Gaus was working as an Africa correspondent at the time. She came back to Germany when she was eight. Today she is a lawyer, she deals with the topic of human rights. Bettina Gaus was definitely proud of her.
She wasn’t one of those journalist mothers who columned her motherhood. And yet she once wrote about her daughter. Nora Mbagathi has linked this text published in the taz in a tweet. She writes: “For my protection she called me Anna; for my fun she gave me all royalties for reprints. ”The text is entitled“ A German Childhood ”.
“Anna has fluffy curls and a brown skin color,” wrote Bettina Gaus. And then tells how the twelve-year-old is threatened in a Berlin bus by a man who first wants to know where she comes from, then threatens to beat her and finally tears away the can of Sprite.
Instead of “brown”, Bettina Gaus would perhaps write “black” today, with a capital S to underline that it is not about skin color, but about the experience of racism. Apart from that, the 21-year-old text is shockingly up-to-date. “It is not particularly dangerous for people with brown skin to live in Germany. Provided that you choose the right place of residence, have a good income, check the respective environment for its risk factor and, if necessary, forego any fun. Many of those who do not have to make such considerations consider this to be entirely reasonable. After all, happiness in life does not depend on visiting a fairground. No, not happiness in life. But it’s not always about happiness in life. “
Bettina Gaus has gained social relevance from the outrage she felt as a mother. Otherwise she would not have written this text.
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