Creating Germans Abroad: Cultural Policies and National Identity in Namibia

Abstract

Listen

Translate article

Daniel Joseph Walther. Creating Germans Abroad: Cultural Policies and National Identity in Namibia. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2002. xiv + 268 pp. Bibliography. Index. $55.00. Cloth. $26.95. Paper. In January 1904 despair among the Herero in German Southwest Africa reached such an peak that they rose up in arms against the colonial power. August 2004 will mark the hundred-year anniversary of the battie at the Waterberg and the Vernichtungsbefehl, the Extermination Order, issued by General von Trotha. This provides an opportune moment for Daniel Walther to draw attention to the particularities of the frontier identity that emerged at the beginning of the twentieth century in a territory which, after a long and bitter struggle, finally achieved independence in March 9 1990 as the sovereign state of Namibia. There have been solid analytical studies before, especially by the German-speaking scholars Klaus Rudiger (1993) and Brigitta Schmidt-Lauber (1993; 1998). Walther refers only to the latter's earlier graduate work, Die abhangigen Herren, and not to her doctoral thesis published as Die verkehrte Hautfarbe. In contrast to their approaches, however, this book emphasizes the formative stages of German settler identity from the early twentieth century until World War II. While the introduction acknowledges theoretical conceptualizations by scholars such as Benedict Anderson as a strong influence on the author's own approach, his presentation shows hardly any traces of such schools of thought. The book is largely a compilation of (more or less interesting) quotations from archival sources, an approach that lacks systematic analytical rigor. By the end, the reader has had the opportunity to learn much about the emerging mindset of the German Southwestern Africans but has been led to few conclusions or theoretically based insights. Walther largely confirms the earlier findings of Rudiger and Schmidt-Lauber, namely that the Germans in the colony created a hybrid identity that combined Deutschtum with a strong dose of Southwestern conditions and life (102). Nevertheless, the Sudwester-were far from being rigidly homogeneous: Indeed, the various groups that constituted Southwestern society had different interests and wants. Each tried to influence colonial for its own benefit (184-85). Walther misses the opportunity to explore this important aspect further by analyzing property relations and the class structure within the German settler community. In light of the colonial genocide from 1904 onward, it is particularly regrettable that he does not concentrate more on the debates on native policy between the Southwesterns and the German colonial authorities in Berlin or among each of these groups (who displayed considerable differences in their views). …