Noch ein "Geheimnis des Jazz": Saying "oja" to Afro-German Studies

Abstract

The primary purpose of this paper is to introduce lesson material with which the African-American student of German can identify. The ideas discussed here are based on four years of teaching German at magnet high schools in St. Louis, Missouri. Much of the material presented stems from attempts to develop lessons for German classes in conjunction with Black History Month. The methodology has been, and admittedly so, one of trial and error. An all-important first step is overcoming the preconceived notion that African-Americans have nothing in common with German language and culture. To this end the anthology Farbe bekennen 1 is an invaluable tool for documenting the Afro-German experience in contemporary Germany and establishing a sense of identity with the target language for African-American students. In parallel fashion, the focus of this paper is on Rezeption, with the goal of providing students with a basis for understanding how the German-speaking world both perceives and receives African-Americans. My experience in the high school classroom has revealed that no explanation can be too simple. In fact, some of the more successful classes have grown out of grade-school-style, show-and-tell sessions. For example, to introduce the topic of reception I take an anecdotal approach, recounting a visit during the summer of 1987 to the town of Weimar, where I came upon a movie poster announcing Eddie Murphy as Beverly Hills Cop with the German subtitle Ich Ils' den Fall auf jeden Fall. I do not try to explain reception by telling students how popular this movie was with East or West German audiences, citing statistics and the like, but instead seek to show reception in the form of a personal photograph of that GDR poster promoting a feature film from the USA with a caricature bearing not the least resemblance to the movie's AfricanAmerican star. The young people are confronted with an obvious if not insulting lack of likeness owing to the blatant exaggerations of ethnic facial features, to say nothing of the choice of a banana for his tongue. Reactions range from bewilderment to disgust; the use of the banana led one student to respond that Germans appear to think of AfricanAmericans as monkey people. My task as teacher is to assure that the photograph sharpens, not suspends critical thinking skills. In other words, the very crudity of this portrayal should place students on guard for the more subtle messages often at work in a cross-cultural literary enterprise. Contemporary German literature provides ample source material for image studies, and my strategy is to concentrate on postwar German poetry in order to demonstrate attitudes, changing and otherwise, with regard to African-Americans. I shall focus on two primary areas: (1) AfricanAmerican poets who appear in German translation and (2) the subject of Black America as expressed in German poetry, particularly German travel poems. What follows, then, offers an overview of the reception of Black America as expressed in German poetry since 1945. To begin I choose Stephan Hermilin's 1948 anthology of Black American poets in German translation.2 This collection offers the learner the obvious: the opportunity to read classic poems by Claude McKay, Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, and others in German. Familiarity with the original English-language versions can facilitate basic understanding of the poems; otherwise one could compare selected originals and the translations, whereby beginning students can build vocabulary while more advanced learners might sharpen recognition skills pertaining to word order and syntax. The selected poems, along with samples of Negro folklore and Gospel songs, adapt well