BLACK SOCIAL HISTORY
Afro-Germans (German: Afro African-Germans or Black Germans are defined as members of the Black African community and diaspora in Germany.
Cities such as Hamburg and Berlin, centers of occupation forces in the postwar years as well as more recent immigration, have substantial Black communities, with a high percentage of ethnically mixed families. With modern trade and migration, communities such as Frankfurt,Munich, or Cologne have an increasing number of Afro-Germans. As of 2005, there were approximately 500,000 Afro-Germans in a nation of 80 million. This number is difficult to estimate because the German census does not use race as a category, following the genocide committed during World War II under the "German racial ideology." Up to 70,000 (2% of the population) people of Black African origin live in Berlin.
In 926, the Nubian Saint Maurice was adopted as a patron saint by the Holy Roman Emperors. He has been honored in various sculptures and graphics throughout Germany such as the City of Coburg's Coat of Arms and a sculpture in Magdeburg.
African and German interaction since 1600
The first Africans in Germany proper were slaves and connected to slave trade by Brandenburg; after after king Friedrich Wilhelm I of Prussia sold his estates in Africa used to trade up to 30,000 slaves to Dutch East India Company in 1717, the new owners were bound by contract to "send 12 negro boys, six of them decorated with golden chains" to the king. The enslaved children were brought to Potsdam and Berlin. Individual Africans were brought to Germany to work as household servants at around 17th century. During the 1720s, Ghana-born Anton Wilhelm Amo was sponsored by a German duke to become the first African to attend a European university; after completing his studies, he taught and wrote in philosophy.
Africans and German interaction between 1884 and 1945
At the 1884 Berlin Congo conference, attended by all major powers of the day, European states "divided" Africa into areas of influence which they would control. The creation of the African German colonies set the stage for a larger number of Africans to migrate to Germany for the first time. Managing the German colonies required indigenous specialists for the colonial administration and economy, and many young Africans went to Germany to be educated. Some received higher education at German schools and universities, but the majority were trained at mission training and colonial training centers as officers or domestic mission teachers. Africans frequently served as interpreters for African languages at German-Africa research centers, and with the colonial administration. Others migrated to Germany as former members of the German protection troops, the Askari. Interracial couples in the colonies were subjected to strong pressure in a campaign against miscegenation, which included invalidation of marriages, declaring children illegitimate and stripping them of German citizenship.
Rhineland bastards
During the tempestuous years following World War I, the French Army occupied the Rhineland, where their forces included soldiers from their African colonies. They fathered children with German women, and the mixed-race children were later called "Rhineland bastards". As the derogatory name suggests, the children were subject to discrimination.
Weimar Republic
In the course of World War I the Belgians, British and French took control of Germany's colonies in Africa. The situation for the African colonials changed in various ways. For example, these Africans had possessed a colonial German identification card, and this became a status which allowed for treatment as "members of the former protectorates". After the Treaty of Versailles (1919), the Africans were encouraged to become citizens of their respective mandate countries, but most preferred to stay where they were. In numerous petitions (well documented for Togo by P. Sebald and for Cameroon by A. Rüger), they tried to inform the German public about the conditions in the colonies and continued to request German help and support.
Africans founded the bilingual periodical that was published in German and Duala: Elolombe ya Cameroon (Sun of Cameroon). A political group of Africans established the German branch of a Paris-based human-rights organization: "the German section of the League to the Defense of the Negro Race".
Many of the Africans endured the Great Depression in Germany without being able to gain unemployment compensation, as this depended on German citizenship. Some Africans were supported through a small budget from the German Foreign Office.
Nazi Germany
The conditions for Africans in Germany grew worse during the Nazi period. Naturalized Afro-Germans lost their passports. Working conditions and travel were made extremely difficult for Black musicians, variety, circus or film professionals. Based on racist propaganda, even willing employers were unable to retain or hire black employees.
The Nazis speculated about gaining the support of Africans from former German colonies for pro-German colonial propaganda. They planned an "African colonial empire under German predominance". The legislation for a planned, apartheid-like system already existed in design in 1940, including laws for slaves and an African passport design. Nazi Germany never approached the realization of its colonial dreams.
Africans in Germany were socially isolated by the racial laws. In reaction to the so-called Rhineland bastards, some 500 Afro-German children in the Rhineland were subject to forced sterilization.
- For the biography of a black African in Germany under Nazi rule see also Hans Massaquoi's Destined to Witness.
Afro-Germans in Germany since 1945
The end of World War II brought Allied occupation forces into Germany. United States, British and French forces included numerous soldiers of African American, Afro-Caribbean or African descent, and some of them fathered children with German women. At the time, the armed forces and Germany generally had non-fraternization rules and discouraged interracial marriages. Most single German mothers kept their "brown babies", but thousands were adopted by American families and grew up in the United States. Often they did not learn their full ancestry until reaching adulthood.
Until the end of the Cold War, the United States kept more than 100,000 U.S. soldiers stationed on German soil. These men established their lives in Germany. They often brought families with them or founded new ones with German wives and children.The federal government of West Germany pursued a policy of isolating or removing from Germany children that it described as "mixed-race Negro children"
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