Auf den Spuren ihrer Geschichte: Black German Detectives and the Cases of Anäis Schmitz and Fatou Fall

The various types of detective work that Black individuals and communities undertake enables them to collect evidence and knowledge and disseminate tactics for resistance. I first contextualize the advent of Black German detection in real life and then turn to fictional Black German detectives in literature and on television. In doing so, I explore the interconnectedness of Black German belonging—both real and imagined—through the act and art of detection. The earliest official, fictional Black German female detectives within these media, Anäis Schmitz and Fatou Fall, allow for an exploration of the intersectionality of race, cisgender, and heteronormative reproduction. Their introduction to this genre overlaps in the timing of their debut appearances (2019), but the characters contrast in terms of representation, due in part to the medium employed and to the racial positionality of their creators. Thus, I investigate how crime novels and crime television shows shift the representation and recognition of Black Germans but remain attuned to how institutional and historically anchored racist structures “frame” Black German belonging.

“Distant Ties”

By attending conferences, workshops, and symposia in London, New York, Minnesota, and Accra, May Ayim, an Afro-German writer and activist, engaged in political activism internationally. Through these events, Ayim confronted diverse forms of inequality. Yet she also cultivated strong activist ties in Germany. With the support of Afro-Caribbean feminist and writer Audre Lorde, Ayim helped to usher in the Afro-German movement of the 1980s and 1990s. She also cofounded the organization the Initiative of Black Germans (Initiative Schwarze Deutsche, ISD). Motivated by her diasporic politics and international connections, Ayim employed her literary work as a form of activism to obtain social visibility and equality for herself, Afro-Germans, and other people of color. This essay provides one of the first sustained accounts on Ayim’s global activism.

Afro-German Histories at the Time of the Second World War. The Transnational Memooirs by Ruth Kluger and Hans-Jurgen Massaquoi

The point of departure in the present article is a discussion of the concept of multidirectional memory, the category proposed by Michael Rothberg in his book ANGIELSKI TYTUŁ. The article then analyzes the memoirs by Jewish-Austrian Ruth Klüger and Afro-German Hans-Jürgen Massaquoia, as examples of transnational narratives. It thus highlights the problem of the war experience of black Germans, concomitantly tracing the process of identity formation resulting from an ethnic person’s dialogue with the representatives of other marginalized and oppressed groups within the Nazi system

Translator’s Preface

Many readers will pick up this book looking for the story of a Holocaust survivor, and it is certainly one of the few works of testimony that give us first-hand insights into what black people experienced in the Nazi “racial state”. Readers should start at the beginning and read on to the end, however, since what Theodor Michael has done is to tell three overlapping stories from the privileged perspective of a long life fully lived: a German story, a black story and a story of global diasporic consciousness. Equally important, he is self-consciously inserting himself into a continuous chain of storytelling in which black Germans explain their history to each other. ...

Embracing Germany: Interwar German Society and Black Germans through the Eyes of African American Reporters

This article looks at the published reports on visits made to interwar Germany by prominent black journalists Robert S. Abbot, J. A. Rogers and Lewis McMillan. Drawing on their own experiences as well as their engagement with German-based blacks, the reporters contrasted the oppressive conditions black people faced in the US with the apparent lack of colour prejudice in Germany. Their coverage serves as a critique of race relations in the US, while also providing snapshots into the conditions under which black Germans lived as well as an insight into the writers’ own perceptions of a broader black diaspora in development.

Survey Essay 1. Periodizing and Historicizing German Afro-Americanophilia: From Antebellum to Postwar (1850-1965)

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.’