Surviving in the Metropole: The Struggle for Work and Belonging amongst African Colonial Migrants in Weimar Germany

Abstract

This paper looks at the fate of the Africans in Germany during the Weimar Republic in terms of their search for belonging and struggle to find work. In doing so it allows for a discussion of the day-to-day experiences and survival strategies of Germany's African Diaspora, their struggle for political recognition and self-definition as well as economic survival. Their presence was tolerated by German officials only as long as it served the purpose of a German colonial propaganda which sought to regain the lost colonies. In the wider context of economic hardship in Germany and rising racial prejudice, particularly in the late 1920s, many of these migrants faced a continual struggle for economic survival. Increasingly, one of the means of carving out an existence remaining for members of the African Diaspora was to turn to the stage. Here they were asked to ‘perform’ their blackness – to take on roles of a constrictive nature, reflecting and reinforcing stereotypes of the Black as primitive or exotic.