Black German Diaspora

This paper looks at the fate of the Africans in Germany during the Weimar Republic in terms of their search for belonging and struggle to find work. In doing so it allows for a discussion of the day to day experiences and survival strategies of Germany’s black Diaspora, their struggle for political recognition and self definition as well as economic survival. Their presence was tolerated by German officials only as long as it served the purpose of a German colonial propaganda which sought to regain the lost colonies. In the wider context of economic hardship in Germany and rising racial prejudice, particularly in the late 1920s, many of these migrants faced a continual struggle for economic survival.  Increasingly the one the means of carving out an existence remaining for members of the African Diaspora was to turn to the stage and to perform. Here they were asked to ‘perform’ their blackness – to take on roles of a constrictive nature, reflecting and reinforcing stereotypes of the Black as primitive or exotic.

In 1877, the African American musical ensemble known as the Fisk Jubilee Singers traveled to Germany to raise money for their university.  The choir’s ten-month tour provided German listeners with one of their first significant and sustained encounters with African Americans and African American culture in the nineteenth century. As listeners throughout Germany heard the ensemble perform, they began to debate the Fisk Jubilee Singers’ musical, cultural, and ethnic origins. At the heart of their growing ethnomusicological and anthropological interest in the Jubilee Singers’ music lied the question of whether or not African Americans were fulfilling the powerful promise of the civilizing mission: were they proof that people of the black diaspora were capable of accepting “Western” art music and cultural values? This article illustrates how African American music contributed to global conversations on the civilizing mission in the nineteenth century.

The Jazz Republic examines jazz music and the jazz artists who shaped
Germany's exposure to this African American art form from 1919 through
1933. Jonathan O. Wipplinger explores the history of jazz in Germany as
well as the roles that music, race (especially Blackness), and America
played in German culture and follows the debate over jazz through the
fourteen years of Germany's first democracy. He explores visiting jazz
musicians including the African American Sam Wooding and the white
American Paul Whiteman and how their performances were received
by German critics and artists. The Jazz Republic also engages with the
meaning of jazz in debates over changing gender norms and jazz's
status between paradigms of high and low culture. By looking at German
translations of Langston Hughes's poetry, as well as Theodor W. Adorno's
controversial rejection of jazz in light of racial persecution, Wipplinger
examines how jazz came to be part of German cultural production more
broadly in both the US and Germany, in the early 1930s.

Using a wide array of sources from newspapers, modernist and popular
journals, as well as items from the music press, this work intervenes
in the debate over the German encounter with jazz by arguing that the
music was no mere "symbol" of Weimar's modernism and modernity.
Rather than reflecting intra-German and/or European debates, it suggests
that jazz and its practitioners, African American, white American, Afro-European, German and otherwise, shaped Weimar culture in a central
way.

This chapter examines how white Germans and Austrians defined the relationship between art music and black musicianship in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It argues that listeners came to believe that African American spirituals – more than any other form of ‘black music’ or ‘Negro music’ – were capable of entering the realm of high art music. Audiences worked out fluid, contradictory and fragile constructs of blackness and culture in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries as they struggled to locate spirituals within the world of ‘black music.’ What if, Germans wondered, African American spirituals were proof that blacks were capable of civilization? What if these spirituals belonged in the opera house more than in an ethnological exhibit? Debates about African American spirituals and ‘Negro music’ in cities such as Berlin and Vienna illustrate how Austro-German musical culture accepted or denied black people’s ability to create high art.

When African American concert singers began to perform German lieder in central Europe in the 1920s, white German and Austrian listeners were astounded by the veracity and conviction of their performances. How had they managed to sing like Germans? This article argues that black performances of German music challenged audiences' definitions of blackness, whiteness, and German music during the transatlantic Jazz Age in interwar central Europe. Upon hearing black performers masterfully sing lieder by Schubert, Schumann, Brahms, and others, audiences were compelled to consider whether German national identity was contingent upon whiteness. Some listeners chose to call black concert singers “Negroes with white souls,” associating German music with whiteness by extension. Others insisted that the singer had sounded black and therefore un-German. Race was ultimately the filter through which people interpreted these performances of the Austro-German musical canon. This article contributes to a growing body of scholarship that investigates how and when audiences began to associate classical music with whiteness. Simultaneously, it offers a musicological intervention in contemporary discourses that still operate under the assumption that it is impossible to be both black and German.

Social media has long been a powerful tool for marginalized individuals to connect and form communities. Yet the digital tools used to facilitate these modes of communication, including the hashtag, can also be overpowered by misuse from users outside of these communities. This essay analyzes recent eff orts by people of colour in Germany and the US to curate digital spaces by creating and utilizing hashtags such as #BlackLivesMatter and #MeTwo that center their voices, while also discussing appropriation and right-wing responses to progressive social justice activism that threaten the hashtag's ability to make meaningful content available to the users who need it.

Rabaul Creole German or Unserdeutsch is a poorly documented language of East New Britain Province that has many grammatical similarities with Tok Pisin. It arose in an home for mixed-race children at the Vunapope Catholic Mission near Kokopo that was started in 1897. After 1903, a decision was made not to permit the children to have contact with their mothers’ communities, thus cutting them off from regular contact with their maternal language or Tok Pisin. At the school students were punished for not speaking German. In the dormitories they played with using German words in Tok Pisin sentences. New students learned this pidgin language from the older students. When the Australians took over the colony at the beginning of World War I, they intensified the forceful removal of mixed-race children and introduced English as the medium of instruction at the school. At this time, the first students were becoming adults, marrying each other, and starting families in which the main language of the household was Unserdeutsch.

Because of racism during the colonial period, the mixed-race community was isolated, but as Papua New Guinea independence approached in 1975, most were offered, and accepted, Australian citizenship and decided to move to Australia. In the more racially relaxed atmosphere there, the community became dispersed and many married outside the community. The result is that today very few children are raised with any knowledge of Rabaul Creole German.

While most pidgin languages arise because of the need for people speaking different language to communicate, Rabaul Creole German arose because of the need for an identity marker for the group. In this way it is similar to Pitcairn-Norfolk, which has been described as a cant, i.e., a deliberate creation to exclude outsiders linguistically. Now that their is no need for protective self-isolation, Rabaul Creole German is disappearing. This purpose of self-identification and self-isolation must be regarded as the reason for the genesis and survival of at least some pidgin languages.

Die Staatlichen Schlösser und Gärten Baden- Württemberg laden am 18. November ein zu einem digitalen Werkstattgespräch. Im Rahmen der Veranstaltung präsentiert der österreichische Regisseur Markus Schleinzer zudem seinen Spielfilm ANGELO (2018) über den berühmten Wiener „Hofmohren“ Angelo Soliman.
Anmeldung unter https://www.schloesser-und-gaerten.de/besuchsinformation/veranstaltungen/werkstattgespraeche-und-filmpraesentation

The links takes you to  information about a travelling exhibition I have been working on since 2014. Among other venues the exhibition has now been shown at the following venues:

2019
Goethe Institute, Yaounde, Cameroon

Off the Shelf Festival, Sheffield
https://www.offtheshelf.org.uk/event/black-history-in-germany/

German Historical Institute, London

Lahntal Secondary School in Biedenkopf, Hesse
https://www.lahntalschule.de/?tag=black-germany

2017
Global South Studies Center, University of Cologne

Goethe Institute, Freiburg
https://www.hereandblack.org/black-germany/

2015
The Annual Postcolonial Studies Association Conference, University of Leicester

AfroEuropeans Conference, University of Münster, Germany

The Northern Postcolonial Studies Group Workshop, Sheffield Hallam University

International Museum of Slavery, Liverpool

Afropolitan Encounters: Literature and Activism in London and Berlin explores what Afropolitanism does. Mobile people of African descent use this term to address their own lived realities creatively, which often includes countering stereotypical notions of being African. Afropolitan practices are enormously heterogeneous and malleable, which constitutes its strengths and, at the same time, creates tensions.
This book traces the theoretical beginnings of Afropolitanism and moves on to explore Afropolitan practices in London and Berlin. Afropolitanism can take different forms, such as that of an identity, a political and ethical stance, a dead–end road, networks, a collective self–care practice or a strategic label. In spite of the harsh criticism, Afropolitanism is attractive for people to deal with the meanings of Africa and Africanness, questions of belonging, equal rights and opportunities.
While not a unitary project, the vast variety of Afropolitan practices provide approaches to contemporary political problems in Europe and beyond. In this book, Afropolitan practices are read against the specific context of German and British colonial histories and structures of racism, the histories of Black Europeans, and contemporary right–wing resurgence in Germany and England, respectively.

Growing numbers of Black men and women spent time in Germany in the period immediately prior to the outbreak of World War One. This was foremost a consequence of the establishment of a German colonial empire in Africa in 1884 and the emergence of Germany as a maritime power. In particular, new migration pathways brought an almost continuous movement of young men from Germany's African colonies, primarily, but not exclusively from Cameroon and Togo. They formed part of a diverse Black presence which was largely transient in nature with most Black men and women staying in Germany only as visitors, eventually returning to their countries of origin. Nonetheless, by 1914 others were remaining on a longer term basis either out of choice or necessity and a small, but visible and increasingly interconnected population of Black residents was emerging. As will be shown the potential for growth of this Black population was greatly curtailed by the war and Germany's loss of its colonies under the Versailles Settlement. Focusing on the lives of Africans from the German colonies and their German-born children, this chapter takes a chronological look at the development of a Black community in Germany from the 1880s up to 1945. It begins by outlining the migration pathways that brought African colonial subjects to Germany pre-1914, before examining the difficulties they faced in setting down roots in interwar Germany; difficulties that were exacerbated by their increasingly unclear citizenship status. The chapter also considers the formal and informal social and political networks they and others of African heritage created at a national and transnational level during the Weimar years. The final section outlines the increasing assault on Black lives and Germany's Black community from the National Socialists.

The fall of the Berlin Wall and German reunification promised a new historical beginning, yet it stirred deep discussions about contemporary Germany's relation to the genocidal Nazi past and about ideas of citizenship and belonging in a changing Europe. Migration to Germany (including people of color from around the world as well as Jews and ethnic Germans from the former Soviet Union) suggested the economic and cultural attraction of a changing society, while a wave of murderous attacks on new migrants and Turkish Germans (who had resided in Germany for more than a generation) stoked fears. In " blues in schwarz weiss " (1990), the poet May Ayim writes " a reunited germany celebrates itself in 1990, without its immigrants, refugees, jewish and black people. " In this poem Ayim forges a collective " we " out of immigrants, refugees, Jewish and black people, united in their experience of exclusion, here in the context of German/German unification. Taking Ayim's poem as its departure, this conference seeks to address and explore the following questions: What are possible intersections (and divergences) between Black German, Turkish German and German Jewish experiences and aesthetic interventions into German public and political discourses on memory, racism, citizenship, immigration, and history? How do collaborations between artists from various backgrounds like Esther Dischereit's and DJ Ipek's multimedial bilingual performance of Blumen für Otello (2014), the anthologies Talking Home (1999) and aus dem Inneren der Sprache (1995), the repertoire of the Ballhaus Naunynstraße, the rap songs by Advanced Chemistry and projects of the transethnic activist network Kanak Attack reveal, emphasize and/or communicate similarities, differences, and overlap in their cultural, social, and political positioning? Despite the ways in which their histories, discrimination and strategies for resistance overlap, ethnic minorities in Germany are often discussed in isolation.Thus, the aim of this conference is to bring together scholars from various fields and disciplines working on minorities in the German context to collaboratively examine conceptual overlap and methodological approaches pertinent to our research.

We have chosen the focus of our conference to start in 1990, because as a seminal moment in German history, this was a critical juncture when German identity started being reframed. At the same time we would like to address the current situation in Germany – how have discourses on immigration, integration, and racism shifted, changed, and/or remained consistent in the context of the so-called refugee crisis?

Our confirmed keynote speakers are: Leslie Adelson (Cornell University), Fatima El-Tayeb (The University of California at San Diego) and Michael Brenner (LMU/American University). Moreover, Daniel Kojo Schrade, DJ Ipek and Olga Grjasnowa will each contribute a performance-lecture/reading. As a special event, DJ Ipek will also spin at the concluding party.

In addition to postdocs and faculty, we seek submissions from advanced graduate students. Please submit a short bio and a 250-word abstract (addressing the conference topic thematically or methodologically; comparative perspectives and themes are especially encouraged) to the organizers by September 18, 2016. We unfortunately cannot offer travel support for conference participants.

Organizers: Ela Gezen (UMass Amherst, egezen@german.umass.edu), Priscilla Layne (UNC-Chapel Hill, playne@email.unc.edu), and Jonathan Skolnik (UMass Amherst, jskolnik@german.umass.edu)

In the aftermath of the Kulturkampf, involvement in the German colonial project provided an opportunity for German Catholics to demonstrate their patriotism. In particular, German Catholic missions sought to carve out a role for themselves in the education of African youngsters not just in the new overseas territories in Africa, but also in Germany itself. Prior to the First World War, a handful of youngsters, primarily from Cameroon, were thus educated by the Pallottine Mission at Limburg an der Lahn and by the Benedictine Mission at St Ottilien, near Munich. This article looks at the ways in which these African students were soon used both publicly and privately to promote Catholic missionary work at home in order to secure support from amongst the Catholic elite of Europe, both financial and political, for ventures abroad. This allows for an analysis of domestic missionary promotional practices as well as of evolving representations of colonial Africans during the Imperial period. The article considers public religious ceremonies (primarily baptisms), mission newspaper reports and fundraising tours in order to demonstrate that these African youngsters came to personify an image of the civilized African, who was devout, intellectually capable and hard-working; an image which offered a counterpoint to the more prevalent negative representations of blacks.

"This groundbreaking history traces the development of Germany's black community, from its origins in colonial Africa to its decimation by the Nazis during World War II. Robbie Aitken and Eve Rosenhaft follow the careers of Africans arriving from the colonies, examining why and where they settled, their working lives and their political activities, and giving unprecedented attention to gender, sexuality and the challenges of 'mixed marriage'. Addressing the networks through which individuals constituted community, Aitken and Rosenhaft explore the ways in which these relationships spread beyond ties of kinship and birthplace to constitute communities as 'black'. The study also follows a number of its protagonists to France and back to Africa, providing new insights into the roots of Francophone black consciousness and postcolonial memory. Including an in-depth account of the impact of Nazism and its aftermath, this book offers a fresh critical perspective on narratives of 'race' in German history.

Contents
Introduction
1. The first generation: from presence to community
2. Should I stay and can I go? Status and mobility in the institutional net
3. Settling down: marriage and family
4. Surviving in Germany: work, welfare and community
5. Problem men and exemplary women? Gender, class and 'race'
6. Practising diaspora – politics 1918–33
7. Under the shadow of national socialism
8. Refuge France?
Epilogue.