A Female Old Shatterhand? Colonial Heroes and Heroines in Lydia Höpker's Tales of Southwest Africa

Abstract

This article analyzes two novels by the colonial Farmersfrau Lydia Höpker, Um Scholle und Leben (1927) and Und wo der Wind weht (first published in 1994), works as yet virtually untouched by German Studies scholarship. Focusing on Höpker's narrative use of gossip, I demonstrate how the depictions of work, sport, and leisure, and the treatment of colonized African workers aid in the literary construction of a German colonial heroine. While Höpker employs gossip to destabilize and redefine gender hierarchies, her novels—written in the postcolonial period between 1913 and 1945—can be read as documents of historical revisionism and "colonial fantasy" that rework the history of colonial loss and reinforce the power of white Germans within the colonial space. (JSS)