Not So Plain as Black and White

Since the Middle Ages, Africans have lived in Germany as slaves and scholars, guest workers and refugees. After Germany became a unified nation in 1871, it acquired several African colonies but lost them after World War I. Children born of German mothers and African fathers during the French occupation of Germany were persecuted by the Nazis. After World War II, many children were born to African American GIs stationed in Germany and German mothers. Today there are 500,000 Afro-Germans in Germany out of a population of 80 million. Nevertheless, German society still sees them as "foreigners," assuming they are either African or African American but never German.

In recent years, the subject of Afro-Germans has captured the interest of scholars across the humanities for several reasons. Looking at Afro-Germans allows us to see another dimension of the nineteenth- and early twentieth-century ideas of race that led to the Holocaust. Furthermore, the experience of Afro-Germans provides insight into contemporary Germany's transformation, willing or not, into a multicultural society. The volume breaks new ground not only by addressing the topic of Afro-Germans but also by combining scholars from many disciplines.

Patricia Mazon is associate professor in the Department of History at the State University of New York at Buffalo.
Reinhild Steingrover is assistant professor in the Department of Humanities at the Eastman School of Music at the University of Rochester.

Reviews

[T]his anthology advances our understanding of exclusionary practices and the history of institutionalized biological racism in modern Germany. It also pays tribute to the growing corpus of complex and challenging texts and films produced by Afro-Germans and to the degree to which the community has become networked and vocal in significant ways. --RESEARCH IN AFRICAN LITERATURES, Winter 2008 [Nina Berman]

Not So Plain as Black and White will contribute in significant ways to the emerging field of Afro-German Studies and will be important as well for German Studies, Africana Studies, and Cultural Studies in general. --Sara Friedrichsmeyer, professor of German, University of Cincinnati

Details

First Published: 01 Mar 2005
13 Digit ISBN: 9781580461832
Pages: 266
Size: 9 x 6
Binding: Hardback
Imprint: University of Rochester Press
Series: Rochester Studies in African History and the Diaspora
Subject: African Studies
BIC Class: GTB

Details updated on 25 May 2013

Contents

• 1  Dangerous Liaisons: Race, Nation, and German Identity
• 2  The First Besatzungskinder: Afro-German Children, Colonial Childrearing Practices, and Racial Policy in German Southwest Africa, 1890-1914
• 3  Converging Specters of an Other Within: Race and Gender in Pre- 1945 Afro-German History
• 4  Louis Brody and the Black Presence in German Film Before 1945
• 5  Narrating "Race" in 1950s' West Germany: The Phenomenon of the Toxi Films
• 6  Will Everything Be Fine? Anti-Racist Practice in Recent German Cinema
• 7  Writing Diasporic Identity: Afro-German Literature since 1985
• 8  The Souls of Black Volk: Contradiction? Oxymoron?