‘So long as I am imperial chancellor, we shall not pursue a policy of colonialism.’1 Throughout his life, Bismarck – who made this statement in 1881 – was unequivocal in his objections to any formal colonization by the German Reich. And yet it was he who in 1884 gave way to massive pressure from colonial businesses and, with his famous telegram of 24 April, placed under the ‘official protection of the German empire’ the ‘acquisitions’ that the Bremen tobacco merchant Adolf Lüderitz had made in the bay of Angra Pequena (now known as Lüderitz Bay) in Namibia.2 Thus did Bismarck, albeit reluctantly, set the still new nation-state of Germany on the path to colonial power. During the years that followed, the Wilhelminian empire gathered up a whole series of colonies which, covering some 2.9 million sq km (1.12 million sq miles), comprised an area six times greater than that of the ‘motherland’. Like Belgium and Italy, Germany was a latecomer to colonial power, but it was eager to catch up with its much-envied rivals, England and France. However, the race was to last barely thirty years before the straggler’s imperial policy came to an involuntary end. The question of whether this ‘historical experience’ remained ‘an imperial episode largely without consequence’3 for Germany is one that we shall be discussing, along with such questions as whether the Federal Republic can be regarded as an ‘unburdened’ former colonial power, according to perceptions at home as well as abroad.4
The totalitarian preconditions for founding a ‘second empire’ overseas did not come about until 1871, with the creation of the German Reich, which was characterized by rampant industrialization. Before the Imperial Reich entered the stage of European colonialism by hosting the West Africa Conference (also known as the Congo Conference)5 in Berlin from November 1884 to February 1885, it had already played a major role a few months earlier in the ‘scramble for Africa’, acquiring various ‘protectorates’ from which were to emerge the colonies of German Southwest Africa (now Namibia), Togo and Cameroon. After 1885 there were further imperial declarations of ‘protection’ for German East Africa (now Tanzania, Rwanda, Burundi) and in the South Seas, with possessions scattered throughout the South Pacific: German New Guinea (Kaiser-Wilhelmsland, the Bismarck Archipelago, the northern Solomons, Nauru, and the Caroline, Mariana, Palau and Marshall islands) as well as German Samoa.6 In China, the ‘leasehold’ occupation of Kiaochow (the German Hong Kong) in 1897 was regarded by the then chancellor Bernhard von Bülow as a particularly prestigious project. Through enormous investments in its infrastructure, Kiaochow was to be built up as a model colony, and it was the most expensive of all Germany’s colonial enterprises. But there was no attempt to establish any formal sovereignty in this part of the world; the intention of the German Reich was to use Kiaochow – or the province of Shantung (Shandong) – as a springboard for German trade in East Asia, limiting its power to what was later to be called ‘informal’ imperialism.
German colonialism can only be understood in the context of European expansion in early modern times – i.e. within a general historical framework. This extends as far as the Portuguese exploration of the African coasts by Henry the Navigator, and the later, epoch-making ‘discovery’ of America by Christopher Columbus in 1492. The global process by which the European colonial powers sought political and territorial domination of the world, and their imposition of a Eurocentric, capitalist market system was closely linked, among other things, to the transatlantic expansion of the African slave trade, in which Brandenburg/Prussia also participated for a short time.
Earlier attempts at overseas expansion by the Germans had generally been unsuccessful or, at best, short-lived. Chronologically, the first notable instance followed on from the Spanish and Portuguese conquista, with the Welsers’ governorship in 1528 of what is now Venezuela. The best known, however, was the Brandenburg/Prussian attempt to colonize the Gold Coast in West Africa (now Ghana). Founded in 1683, the colony of Großfriedrichsburg was finally lost in 1717, mainly as a result of financial problems.7 Not until the 1840s was there a new wave of colonial projects, which entailed the creation of a fleet of ships that could conquer the high seas. The impetus for this nascent colonial movement came partly from long-established mercantile and economic factors, but also and especially from German emigration, which was to be steered in the direction of German-owned colonies. The list of targets was a long one: the Chatham Islands in New Zealand, California, Texas, Brazil and La Plata, and also the Far East: Siam, China, Japan and Formosa (Taiwan) all came under discussion as possible bases for Germany’s colonial empire.
As far as Africa was concerned, German explorers such as Heinrich Barth, Gerhard Rohlfs, Eduard Vogel, Gustav Nachtigal, Hermann von Wissmann and later Leo Frobenius all played a significant role in opening up the ‘Dark Continent’, paving the way for it to be carved up by the great imperial powers. Although some of them were apologists for and servants of German colonialism, the majority of these explorers travelled to regions that did not belong to Germany. ‘For all the imperial rivalry that was fought out for decades over the alternative scene of Africa, scientific and cultural colonialism was mainly a European project, while territorial colonialism was nationalistic.’8
The German colonies in Africa have so much in common that it is not unreasonable to describe them in general terms. They were all born around 1884 and expired in 1918. The Germans themselves had no illusions about the fact that, in their quest for colonial booty, most of the regions available to them were left over by the other European colonial powers when they carved up the southern hemisphere. Max Weber spoke of ‘ridiculously modest colonial acquisitions’.9
In West Africa, Togo as a ‘trading colony’ was sandwiched uncomfortably between (British) Gold Coast and (French) Dahomey. Its main exports – to Germany – were palm oil and palm kernels. Occupation of Cameroon took place at the same time, though its extent was increased later by exploration. Cameroon – at least in its coastal regions and especially around the Cameroon Mountains – bore the features of a ‘plantation colony’. In the west and in the southern forests, the land was expropriated from the Africans, who were put into reservations, and large areas were taken over by joint-stock companies that exported mainly rubber and cocoa, bringing about a system of crude exploitation which was not confined to Cameroon.
Although mocked because of its arid climate as a ‘sandbox’, Southwest Africa developed into a ‘settlement colony’ where more than half of all German colonists lived. This was Adolf Lüderitz’s acquisition, confirmed by Chancellor Bismarck. The farms of these German ‘southwesterners’ (Südwester-Deutschen), however, were all too often uneconomic. The colony suffered from serious revolts in 1893–94, 1896–97, 1903 and 1904–08. In addition to large- and small-scale cattle breeding, there were various ores and minerals, and the diamonds discovered in the south of the country in 1908 eventually made up two-thirds of the colony’s income.
In terms of sheer size, German East Africa was the largest colony. It was known as a ‘mixed colony’, since it was a combined trading centre and settlement, with the traders and planters concentrated mainly on the coast and in economic centres such as the region around Kilimanjaro. Its wealth was derived mainly from sisal, cotton, coffee, groundnuts and copra. In order to solve labour problems and to squeeze out growing competition from native producers, the colonial masters forced the Africans into service by means of poll and property taxes, tributes and socage – conditions that did not improve until the lengthy governorship of Freiherr Albrecht von Rechenberg. From 1889 the country was administered by the German government, which imposed its authority by force, frequently brutal, leading to the Maji-Maji War in 1905–07. After the First World War it became a British protectorate called Tanganyika, in 1961 an independent state and in 1964 united with Zanzibar under the name of Tanzania.
Kiaochow was a geostrategic base and an outpost of the German economy, while the main products from the remote islands in the South Pacific, handled by Hamburg-based traders, were copra and phosphate.
Around 1913, the distribution of white settlers among the individual German colonies was extremely varied: Togo (368), Cameroon (1,871), German Southwest Africa (14,830), German East Africa (5,336), South Seas (1,984), Kiaochow (4,470). In total, up until the First World War, there were barely 29,000 white people (24,000 of them German) to be found living in the colonies of the Wilhelminian empire – an ever-decreasing figure when compared to the migration of Germans to the two Americas: from the 1840s onwards, some 4.5 million emigrated, four million of them to the USA.
As we have seen, Chancellor Bismarck had always resolutely opposed any policy of colonization by the state. In his view, the Reich was primarily a land power and territorially ‘saturated’, and he also feared conflict with Great Britain. He regarded colonialism as a form of foreign trade, and would only speak of ‘protectorates’ which must be financed, administered and exploited at their own risk by private, chartered companies with sovereign rights. However, Bismarck’s concept of colonialism soon foundered, as the government was compelled to take over responsibility for these territories by sending its own administrators. The establishment of formal sovereignty under the aegis of the German Reich then led to the formation of a colonial army. The dispatch of imperial troops to the colonies came about as a result of a major crisis in 1888–89, when Germany failed to maintain its dominance in German East Africa, and saw its first attempts to establish authority in Southwest Africa and in Samoa brushed aside. Since the cost of the military, of administration and of infrastructure had to be borne by the Reich, approval had to be given by parliament. Yearly debates on the budget offered a public forum for the SPD and the Central Party to mount a sharp attack on this colonial policy.
German colonialism can be described as arbitrary rule by force – a definition equally applicable to European colonialism in general – and it was characterized by harsh discipline, forced labour and expropriation, even going as far as mass destruction and murder during the colonial wars.10 Not infrequently, the violence stemmed from the ‘sub-imperialism’ of the men on the spot – the all-powerful officials and administrators or the radical settlers. A particularly blatant example of this racist conquistador attitude is associated with one Carl Peters, the so-called ‘founder’ of German East Africa. On account of his brutality – the Africans named him ‘Mkono-wadamu’ (‘the man with the bloody hands’) – he was finally dismissed from colonial service after the Reichstag scandal of 1896–97.11 Christian Geulen wrote of this archetypal member of the ‘master race’: ‘It was not because such people believed themselves to be the master race that they gave themselves the right to create a position of colonial power; they colonized in order to produce and to maintain the feeling that they were the master race.’12 It was no coincidence that Peters was later declared a national hero by the Nazis and ranked as ‘one of the great educators of the German Nation’.
There were, however, marked differences in German policy towards the indigenous peoples, as can be seen from a comparison between German South West Africa and German Samoa. In the former, especially after the colonial war of 1904–08, a ‘racist society of privilege’13 was set up with almost complete subjugation of the blacks, who were deprived of all rights, whereas in Samoa the governor, Wilhelm H. Solf, followed a relatively moderate line. He was one of the ‘enlightened imperialists’, and even if he was by no means exempt from the prevailing ideas of racial superiority, nevertheless his paternalistic approach demanded a ‘fiduciary trusteeship with the native people’. He was convinced that the ‘white man’ had a cultural mission, and in his view colonized people were not to be oppressed or killed, but their cultural identity should in fact to a large extent be protected. Otherwise, German colonial ideology was virtually anchored in the basic principle that the ‘natives must be taught to work’. There was greater uniformity when initial attempts from 1884 onwards to ‘Germanize’ them with a degree of European culture gave way after the turn of the century to a policy of segregation between white Germans and blacks.14 People feared a levelling out of the ‘racial hierarchy’ and of the metropolitan and colonial claim to superiority. Being ‘German’ and being ‘white’ were synonymous in nineteenth-century racial discourse, while ‘German’ and ‘black’ were seen as irreconcilable opposites. Colonial social policy aimed at preserving the racial purity of the German nation, and so there were separate legal systems in accordance with German and indigenous law, which included a ban on ‘mixed marriages’ passed in 1905 and imposed in German Southwest Africa and various other German colonies. Although there was no such formal ban in Germany itself, the authorities did everything in their power to prevent such ‘immoral’ alliances. If one of the few African men living in Germany wished to marry a German woman, he was refused the necessary papers, or was made to fulfil difficult conditions, such as acquiring various documents from the colonies.
Through its colonial possessions and its pursuit of naval prestige by way of an expanding fleet, the German empire sought to become not just a major continental but also a world power. In his quest for glory, Kaiser Wilhelm II proudly announced in 1896 that the German empire had now become a ‘world empire’.15 And along precisely the same lines, the former governor of German East Africa, Eduard von Liebert, wrote that ‘colonial possessions mean power and a share in world domination’.16 While this sort of ‘world empire’ rhetoric also played its part in the self-presentation of other imperial states, only in Germany did ‘the concept of “world politics” take on a provocative and aggressive tone’.17 Within the colonial movement, the Deutsche Kolonialgesellschaft was the umbrella organization, and it played a major part in making colonial policy a central component of the empire’s quest for world domination. Together with other nationalistic and imperialistic organizations such as the Pan-German League, the German Naval Association and the Association for Germans Abroad, it campaigned not least for an accelerated expansion of the navy as a necessary basis for Germany’s ambitions in relation to colonialism and world power. There was no shortage of chauvinists to advance this campaign for further colonial acquisitions. However, the planned appropriation of Portuguese colonies and the attempted takeover of Morocco both failed, the latter bringing in its wake the two Moroccan crises of 1905 and 1911. Wilhelminian propaganda for new settlements even extended as far as Palestine, and the quest for expansion culminated in plans for a unified Central African colonial empire – ‘German Central Africa’.
The most important prestige project set up by Wilhelminian world politics after 1900 – and viewed with great suspicion abroad – was the construction of the Baghdad Railway, which was meant to link Berlin with the Orient, extending the already existing line to Constantinople. This project, another prime example of imperialism unconnected with colonialism, fired the imagination of the speculators, while politicians dreamed of two million German settlers living along the route. The Prussian king Friedrich III, later Kaiser (Emperor) Friedrich, and after him Kaiser Wilhelm II, who was passionate about the East, had even taken the trouble to acquire permits for German archaeologists to excavate in the Ottoman empire. Their discoveries in Asia Minor, of which the Pergamon Altar and the Market Gate of Miletus were the finest, are now prize exhibits in the Pergamon Museum in Berlin, evidence of the German cultural colonization of the Near East.
After the First World War, Germany was forced to bow out as a colonial power. Article 119 of the Treaty of Versailles (28 June 1919) stipulated that Germany must surrender its overseas colonies, and these were then divided up among the allies as ‘mandates’ under the League of Nations. The allied and associated powers justified this thinly disguised annexation by talk of Germany’s ‘unworthiness in colonial matters’ – a criticism that caused great resentment among the German people and was rejected as a ‘lie of colonial guilt’.18 There was also violent opposition to the occupation of the Rhineland and the Ruhr when the French occupying forces sent in troops of African origin. The presence of Africans was felt to be a reversal of the situation coloniale – with the colonial power now being colonized – and it provoked a storm of protest from the German public against the ‘black disgrace on the Rhine’. Many Germans saw themselves as having been ‘also conquered by the blacks in the world war’.19
After the loss of the colonies, the empire returned in the form of cultural memory, undergoing a process of nostalgic transformation. Burgeoning legends spread the image of a patriarchal regime that governed the ‘natives’ strictly but fairly, a successful German cultural mission, the loyal Askari, the Lettow-Vorbeck myth.20 The precursor of this ‘colonialism without colonies’ was once again the Deutsche Kolonialgesellschaft, which led the campaign against the ‘shameful dictates of Versailles’ and for the restoration of Germany’s colonial rights. With unprecedented unity, every party represented in parliament, apart from the Communists and the Independent Social Democrats, supported the demand for a revision of the colonial ban – even if most of them only did so verbally. Colonial affairs, however, were rarely part of the agenda in the Reichstag, although restoration of the colonies remained a firm component of Weimar foreign policy, and in spite of intensive propaganda by the various colonial associations, the issue was never given priority by the Weimar Republic. Of the four major fields covered by the Treaty of Versailles, the loss of the colonies came a poor fourth in German consciousness behind the financial, military and territorial conditions imposed in Europe. This is why, at the end of the 1920s, representatives of the colonial movement sought to join up with the National Socialists, because they hoped to gain new impetus from the radical right wing, even though the Nazi Party had so far done virtually nothing in this field.
In 1933, after Hitler had seized power, their propaganda became revitalized as many hoped to get involved once more in the power politics that had marked the period before 1914. But although the demand for colonies continued during the Third Reich, the majority of leading figures in the party – and especially Hitler himself – were thinking of establishing a new Lebensraum through conquests in eastern Europe, as opposed to Africa, which was the target of the colonialists. To their disappointment, out of all the different opinions concerning the colonial question, the one that prevailed was the unshakable quest for hegemony in Europe.21 All other ideas were made secondary to that of continental imperialism, although at no time was eastern Europe meant to constitute the limit of German expansion. Ambitious plans for regaining the colonies and for establishing a German empire in Central Africa fell through in the latter part of the Second World War when, in February 1943, reversals on all fronts caused Hitler to call a halt to colonial activities. In this context, it must be said that conventional concepts of colonialism have long since been stretched to include Germany’s expansion to the east – discounting Central Europe – as a feature of its colonial history. This view leads to the question of whether the fixation with the east should not perhaps be regarded as the ‘most important field of colonial expansion’.22
If one were to draw up a balance sheet with regard to the period of German colonialism, it might well coincide with the view of the historian Klaus J. Bade: ‘For Germany the visions of socio-economic, national and socio-ideological crisis therapy through colonial expansion… remained almost completely unfulfilled.’23 The idea of sending off all the surplus population – which initially did exist, though greatly exaggerated by the colonial propaganda of the time – into the colonies proved to be unrealistic, while the exportation of the ‘social problem’ was equally illusory. The vast majority of German emigrants headed for North America, thanks not least to the fact that the African colonies – not to mention the South Seas and Kiaochow – were simply unsuitable for mass settlement. Furthermore, the significance of the colonial economy remained minor with regard both to imports and exports. The colonies played a very small role as markets and as providers of raw materials, and barely 2 per cent of Germany’s foreign capital was invested there. However, through enormous expenditure on the infrastructure and, increasingly, on putting down ‘native rebellions’, German colonialism represented a large, state-subsidized loss, while only individual financiers and commercial enterprises stood to make a sizeable profit. In the long run, the Pan-German League and the naval movement offered a far greater potential for national, ideological integration than the colonial movement, which never developed any mass appeal. And so Germany’s colonial policy, which frequently led to internal conflict, never overcame the contemporary perception of it as a dire disappointment. The consequence of this disillusionment – much lamented by the colonial movement itself – was the general ‘colonial fatigue’ of German society.
It is difficult to draw a general conclusion from the perspective of the subjugated peoples in the colonies. Conditions varied considerably according to place, time and the degree of constraint and repression imposed by the system. As colonialism by definition entails government by a foreign power – characterized by racism, paternalism and exploitation – the tendency was to argue theoretically in terms of dependence, i.e. to foreground the destructive effects brought about by the processes of colonization.24 In more recent times, by comparison with the decades of decolonization, more emphasis has been laid on balancing out the good and the bad sides of German (and European) imperialism: quite apart from vague generalizations about its ambivalence, the racially motivated practices of repression and destruction in relation to native cultures have been set against the introduction of enlightened, pragmatic and constructive policies.25 However, the imposition of such ‘developments’ by an outside dictatorship can only be viewed with a degree of scepticism, bearing in mind that it entails a purely Western concept of development and modernization.
The reactions of indigenous societies to their German colonial masters were extremely varied. They ranged from ‘insubordination’, resistance and refusal on the one hand, to co-operation in the role of middle man, and collaboration whether voluntary or under compulsion on the other.26 It would therefore be just as wrong to see the colonized people purely as victims of white imperialism as it would be to underestimate the range of actions open to the Africans and Oceanians, the dichotomous image of the omnipotent colonialist and the helpless subject having long since been discredited. A post-colonial history of colonial cultures must reach beyond the dichotomies of master and slave, centre and periphery, black and white.27
The whites certainly did not have a monopoly on matters of initiative. In total contrast to the strategy of the colonialists, to make indigenous peoples invisible as subjects of their own history, the Africans vigorously pursued their own interests, as can be seen for example in the context of missionary work. The tale is told of how local Nama chiefs in pre-colonial Namibia asked for missionaries to come to them, and then shared them out among themselves. Christianity was only one of the European achievements that the Nama wished to adopt. In particular they hoped that through it they might acquire firearms and increasingly important cultural assets such as colonial languages, agricultural techniques, new handicrafts and, not least, the ability to read and write.28
It is misleading, then, to claim that the ‘modern’ way of life was always forced on them, and furthermore one should not simplistically equate these processes of modernization with Westernization. Even if these new ways often were imposed on them, they nevertheless actively and even subversively adopted Western products and ideas to suit their own purposes. If we single out trade relations, the rapid expansion of the cocoa export industry in Cameroon will serve as a good example. Despite the obstructive economic policy of the German colonial government, the introduction of cocoa as a cash crop was an African initiative.
There is, however, a strong case to be made for the contrary point of view. Petitions from the Duala to the German Reichstag, protesting against its policy of expropriation and resettlement, offer an eloquent instance of African ‘self-will’. King Rudolf Duala Manga Bell – who lived in South Germany from 1891 until 1896, and initially was far from anti-German – later paid for his resistance with his life. In 1914, he and some of his fellow countrymen were executed by the Germans for alleged high treason.29 In 1904–08, rebellions in German Southwest Africa (Herero and Nama) and German East Africa (the Maji-Maji War), and unrest in northwest and southeast Cameroon (Mpawmanku wars) bore witness to the struggle of the ‘natives’ to protect their own identity and throw off the yoke of their oppressors. The Herero and Nama freedom-fighters were brutally crushed by German troops. There are serious historians who still maintain that the colonial war in German Southwest Africa was ‘normal’ and simply in keeping with the excessive violence that marked the imperial age.30 The truth is very different. The general in charge, Lothar von Trotha – one of those soldiers who regarded this as a battle between the races – conducted the war as an exercise in genocide.31 There is some debate as to whether and in what degree there are analogies between this colonial genocide and the Holocaust.32 Hannah Arendt is always quoted as a witness for the prosecution, since her reading of Nazi tyranny also encompasses the historical roots of colonialism and imperialism.33 In more recent times, Reinhart Kössler and Henning Melber argue emphatically that ‘the uniqueness of the Holocaust [is relative to the extent] that its singularity is to be found in the synthesis of different forms of violence but absolutely not in a complete denial of any continuity with the exterminatory practices of colonialism’.34 Modern research is at pains to provide empirical evidence for the analogies. If one focuses on such motivational concepts as ‘race’ and ‘space’, one can hardly ignore the structural affinities between colonialism and the Nazi policy of conquest and extermination, while reference to genocide and other colonial crimes also contradicts the traditional claim that Europeanization of the world was a progress-orientated enterprise.
What is the current view of historians vis-à-vis German colonialism? Earlier empirical studies were mainly written from the perspective of the colonizers and their modes of governmental practice; more recent approaches also examine the role played by German women in the imperial process.35 With the abandonment of these Eurocentric perspectives, interest for some years has focused increasingly on the colonized societies.36 Here the subject matter of African, Asian and Oceanian history is no longer viewed solely in terms of colonization.37 Innovative approaches also deal with the role of colonialism in the collective consciousness and memory of native societies,38 or with the history of the African diaspora, which had been going on for centuries within the German-speaking world, not least as a result of Germany’s colonial activities.39 Related disciplines such as the history of literature, photography, film and art have also provided numerous studies analysing the image of the colonial ‘other’.40 Virtually unexplored sources are now being opened up, such as visual records of the mass culture of the colonial age, in order to track down the stereotypical image-building that went into the dichotomy of ‘us and them’.41 There has been particular emphasis on research into the home territory of the colonialists. The impetus here has come from the interdisciplinary work – especially discourse analysis – carried out in the field of post-colonial studies,42 which tackles the subject in terms of a counter-process. With emphasis on exchange and interaction, this approach examines the effects of the colonial experience not only on the colonized people but also on the society of the colonizers. This discussion tends to centre less on political, military and economic colonialism than on questions relating to the interdependence of identity and otherness, i.e. the manner in which colonial discourse has shaped the cultural and mental self-image of the former imperial powers.43
There is a consensus insofar as Germany’s attempt to catch up on overseas expansion – described by Russell A. Berman as secondary-epigonic44 – had a significant impact on its history and culture. ‘Colonial possessions are one thing, colonialism and colonial thinking are another… Germany [was] closely linked to this project, with or without its colonies.’45 In other words, colonial discourse in the history of German culture and science goes far back into the eighteenth century, and did not even end with the decolonization that followed on from defeat in the First World War.46 However, without wishing to deny that there are national characteristics, one must question the view still held by some today that Germany followed a unique colonial path of its own.47
Despite the fact that there are now so many individual studies that it is difficult to keep track of them all, German history has still treated the subject of colonialism as an almost peripheral matter. Some even talk of the ‘historiographical exclusion of Germany’s colonial experience’.48 This also applies to the attitude of the public at large, which remains barely conscious of Germany’s colonial history, except sporadically on commemorative occasions.49 Even initiatives such as the renaming of colonial street names, the toppling or redesignation of the few surviving colonial monuments, and local efforts to shake the public out of its indifference towards the colonial past have, at best, had an extremely limited effect.50 Entirely in keeping with this situation is the fact that the book Deutsche Erinnerungsorte (‘German Places of Memory’) by Étienne François and Hagen Schulze, which attempts to present a comprehensive survey of Germany’s cultural memories, has no section under the heading of colonialism.51 There are similar gaps in international research, for instance in the otherwise comprehensive collection of Imperial Cities,52 which covers London, Paris, Marseille, Rome, Madrid and even Vienna, but fails to include either Berlin53 or Hamburg.54
Clearly, then, colonial interaction has left no tangible presence in the historical memory of German society – in contrast to the British empire, which made a substantial contribution to the British identity55 – ‘either in the form of imperial buildings or as the disposition of a colonially marked social group’,56 and until now it has played little part in the interpretation of Germany’s own national history. Most literature attributes this to the following causes: the brevity of the German colonial age; the lack of any direct effects in the years of decolonization that followed 1945; the dominance of the Holocaust and of National Socialism in the political memory; the relatively small presence of a black diaspora, or Afro-German community;57 and finally, the anti-imperialist movement that began at the end of the 1960s, for all its identification with the ‘damned of this Earth’ (Frantz Fanon), very rarely turned its attention to German colonialism and its long-term consequences.
One may conclude that German colonialism has still not been properly placed within the continuum of German history. Interpretations offered so far could scarcely be more varied: while some treat the colonies as a mere footnote in the history of the German empire, others see them as a kind of laboratory preparing the way for Nazi policies of racism and expansion. The same applies to the former colonial countries themselves: no doubt the debate will continue for a long time yet over whether colonialism, despite its many far-reaching consequences, represented just an episode or a fundamental transformation. In any case, in addition to post-colonial studies, the concept of ‘entangled histories’58 offers another transnational approach that will shed new light on the age of colonialism as a global history of interconnections. What remains untenable is the view that Germany was ‘unburdened’ with colonial power and had a negligible tradition of imperialism. The year 2004 commemorated the centenary of the genocide inflicted on the Herero and the Nama, and provided a painful reminder of this fallacy.59 And if there is truth in Charles S. Maier’s contention that, in the context of globalization, the history of colonialism could catch on as the dominant tale, replacing other competing stories such as those of progress or of the Holocaust, then such a development will also leave its mark on Germany.60