Abstract
In this first essay, we delve into significant moments in the history (and pre-history) of twentieth century Afro-Americanophilia in Germany. We establish a periodisation stretching from the nineteenth century until the mid-1960s (from which point our second essay will continue), and take in the pre-colonial, the colonial, the Weimar, the Nazi; and the post-war eras. We draw out some of the particularly significant moments, ruptures, and continuities within that time frame. We also identify some of the salient ways scholars have interpreted ‘Afro-Americanophilia’ during the period. Focusing on a variety of practices of appropriation, communicative media, actors and forms of agency, power differentials, and sociocultural contexts, we discuss positive images of and affirmative approaches to black people in German culture and in its imaginaries. We attend to who was active in Afro-Americanophilia, in what ways, and what the effects of that agency were. Our main focus is on white German Afro-Americanophiles, but—without attempting to write a history of African Americans, black people in Germany, or Black Germans— we also inquire into the ways that the latter reacted to, suffered under the expectations levied upon them, or were able to engage with the demand for ‘black cultural traffic.’
Highlights
In this essay, which builds on the methodological considerations and the definitions we sketched in the introduction to the special edition on what we are calling twentiethcentury German Afro-Americanophilia, we delve into the history of AfroAmericanophilia in Germany and of its precursors
As we argue in the introduction to this special issue, our main term’s juxtaposition of the term ‘Afro-American’—which gained prominence in the 1960s in US Civil Rights discourse—with a Greek suffix that may have clinical connotations to some readers is intended to indicate the internal contradictions and occasional self-reflexivity of the phenomenon
We use the term Afro-Americanophilia for pragmatic reasons to refer to diverse occurrences at different points in time and in distinct contexts
Summary
Periodizing and Historicizing 1 approaches to black people in German culture and its imaginary prior to the colonial era, and during the colonial, Weimar, Nazi and postwar eras.[1]. This era transformed the völkisch nationalist rhetoric into state policy and state-promulgated violence, which would have dire effects for the group of colonial migrants, black people born in Germany and visiting African-Americans (Samples 1996; Massaquoi 1999; Lusane 2002; Bechhaus-Gerst & Klein-Arendt 2004; Campt 2004; Martin & Alonzo 2004; Dreesbach 2005; Bechhaus-Gerst 2007).[34] Black performers and individuals were subjected to restrictions of various kinds, with most being denied entry or being deported after 1933 (Lewerenz 2006; Nagl 2009: 744; Aitken & Rosenhaft 2013) Black communists and their supporters were forced into migration, or were interned (Martin 2004), as were others, without political reasons.
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