Afro German dancer/actor, Hilarius Gilges, fought the rise of Nazism and gave his life for Telling the Truth

HILARIUS GILGES (A.K.A. LARI GILGES, 1909-1933) Hilarius Gilges is the most well-known Afro-German activist who fought against the rise of the National Socialist German Workers’ (Nazi) Party in the early interwar period.

When I think about why I chose to become an actor/writer/teacher, it’s because I wanted to tell stories about what’s possible for human beings when we rise to become our best selves. 

StoryTelling changes the world and to do it bravely with integrity and truth requires a clear understanding of why you are here, your greatest purpose and how to apply them to ReWrite the world’s most broken stories.

At no point in time, did I set out to get on TV and tell silly stories or demeaning stereotypes or get attention/be seen to assure myself I’m worthy (which is exactly why most actors become actors: to get the the love and attention and self worth in the imaginary world that we feel unworthy of in our own lives. 

When you your worth comes from external sources instead of your deepest purpose and truths; your tank is always going to be empty.  The next job will never be enuf, you’ll forever need more reassurance, to please the CD, to please your teachers, to please everyone but you.

But you weren’t born to please others.  Each of us has our own unique journey: why we’re here, the life lessons we’ve mastered, our unique way of seeing the world.

The world needs to learn from your story.  When you on in alignment with your purpose, what other people think is none of your damn business.
 Why do you act, write, sing, tell story?

What kind of stories do you want to tell?

The answers to those questions allows you to operate from a place of power & fullness.

It allows you to set your own agenda as an artist .

The rollercoaster of figiring out what the industry wants and resenting the industry bec u don’t fit their idea of what you should be (thin, white, angry, insecure, defeated, subservient, etc) is a very clever way to run away from the things you fear, the places you’re broken, the lessons you’ve mastered and the magical human being you could become.

Why do you want to be an artist?  Is it in line with your purpose and your greatest gifts?

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​Hilarius Gilges is the most well-known Afro-German activist who fought against the rise of the National Socialist German Workers’ (Nazi) Party in the early interwar period.

The son of a textile worker named Maria Stüttgen and an African boatman working on the Rhine, Gilges was born in Düsseldorf on March 4, 1909, and took his stepfather’s name after his mother’s marriage to a German man in 1915.
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Growing up mixed-race and working-class in early twentieth-century Germany was difficult. Gilges suffered insults and discrimination because of his color. Perhaps because of this, he joined the Young Communist League of Germany (Kommunistischer Jugendverband Deutschland (KJVD), the youth wing of the Communist Party), founded in 1920 and had a membership of 70,000 by 1923, two years before Gilges joined.
Gilges was a talented tap dancer and theater actor, and in 1930 joined a theatrical troupe called the Nordwest Ran, directed by the esteemed actor Wolfgang Langhoff. Performing on a mobile stage mostly at union events, “Lari,” as he was fondly known, and fellow Communists conveyed to audiences the advantages of revolutionary, scientific socialism in opposition to the bigotry and inhumanity of the Nazi agenda led by Adolf Hitler. The real threat that Hitler posed encouraged them to engage in more street demonstrations and protests. Following the election of the Nazi Party to power in 1933, the Communist Party, like other political rivals, was banned.
Prior to the Nazi victory, the KJVD was highly active in Düsseldorf. In 1931 at a massive demonstration at Marz-Gedenfeier, Gilges was lured into a fight with right-wing agitators and was arrested by police sympathetic to his attackers. The local court sentenced him to a year in prison. Upon his release in 1932, which happened to be the election year, Gilges threw himself back into political work. He crisscrossed the lower Rhine region warning people in numerous towns about the dangers of Nazism.
His skin color and politics made Gilges an easy target for his enemies. Following the Nazi political triumph in 1933, communists were rounded up and imprisoned. By now, a married man with two children, Gilges was keenly aware of his vulnerability. His color precluded hiding in plain sight, and going underground was not a realistic option. On the night of June 20, 1933, Gilges was confronted and dragged away by Gestapo and Schutzstaffel (SS) officers while he was at home with his family. His dead body was dumped into the Rhine River and washed up under the Oberkassel bridge the following day. Gilges’ arms were dislocated, and he had been stabbed 37 times before being shot in the head. No one was prosecuted for his murder.
After the war, his widow received 12,000 Deutschmarks compensation from the state for his murder. Over the following decades, Gilges would receive recognition as a German patriot, with memorials to the young martyr erected around the city. In 1988, a portrait of him in semi-relief by the artist Hannelore Köhler was placed on a plaque near the site of his murder. The portrait is now primarily hidden because of condition issues; however, the Düsseldorf city council erected another commemoration to Gilges on the banks of the Rhine in 2015. In 2003 a plaza near the Academy of Arts was named in his honor.

Hilarius-Gilges-Platz (Wikipedia)