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Americans). Prior to the 1980s, there
were virtually no books, articles,
documentaries or anything else
acknowledging the existence of black
Germans. Having no German rolemodels
or sources of information, many
black Germans turned to the US and
Africa for models of resistance. One of
the foremost achievements of black
activism in Germany was the
rediscovery of a long black German
history that had been completely erased
from the public record. A history that
includes people who due to their
exposed position left traces, like Anton
Wilhem Amo, a Ghanian sold to
Germany as a child in 1703 and later
become a distinguished professor of
philosophy at the University of Halle in
East Germany, close to where more than
a hundred years later Machbuba, an
Ethiopian woman, was brought as a
slave by the famous Count Pückler.
Sources indicate that the black German
population was small and dispersed up
to the late 19th Century, when
colonialism, more decisive for the black
presence in Europe than slavery, reached
Germany. The nation had colonies for a
very short period only (they were all lost
in the First World War), but with rather
devastating consequences for the
colonized. Resistance was widespread
in all of Germany's African colonies,
most persistently in "Southwestafrica,"
today's Namibia. In 1904, the Germans
ended an uprising there with the first
genocide of their history, slaughtering
three quarters of the Herero population,
many of them after the war was already
over (the Herero are still fighting for an
apology and reparations for this). Life
for Africans and their families in
Germany was difficult as well, they had
a precarious legal status and similar to
the US they were deemed fit only for a
restricted number of professions: menial |
labor, serving positions or the
entertainment industry. Prejudices
increased after the First World War,
when part of Germany was occupied by
French troops, some of which were
African. This lead to a massive
campaign against the "Black Horror on
the Rhine," vilifying the children of
African soldiers and German women. Dubbed "Rhinelandbastards," they were
recorded in special government lists. In
response, African migrants organized in
various ways, besides informal networks
across the nation, the "League for the
Defense of the Negro Race" (affiliated
with Garvey's "Universal Negro
Improvement Association") and the
more conservative "German African
League" sought to represent black
interests, and in 1930, the first congress
of the communist "International League
of Negro Workers" convened in
Germany, with delegates from Europe,
the Caribbean, and Africa. |
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After the end of the Second
World War, blacks weren't included in
the official list of persecuted groups (as
weren't, until recently, gays and draft
resisters) and their fate was never
publicly recognized. Instead, black
Germans entered the public discourse |
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The National Socialist takeover
in 1933 abruptly ended all these
activities, the offices of the "League of
Negro Workers" were immediately
raided, its members imprisoned or
deported. A few years later, using the
government lists of the
"Rhinelandbastards, African German
teenagers were systematically sterilized.
Generally, Nazi racist policies focused
on Jews and Gypsies, blacks were left
relatively unharmed in some areas of the
country, in others, though, they were not
only excluded from schools, public
spaces, and most professions, but also
sent to concentration camps. |