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Other Germans: Black Germans and the Politics of Race, Gender, and Memory in the Third Reich
It's hard to imagine an issue or image more riveting than Black Germans during the Third Reich. Yet accounts of their lives are virtually nonexistent, despite the fact that they lived through a regime dedicated to racial purity.
Tina Campt's Other Germans tells the story of this largely forgotten group of individuals, with important distinctions from other accounts. Most strikingly, Campt centers her arguments on race, rather than anti-semitism. She also provides oral history as background for her study, interviewing two Black Germans for the book.
In the end, the author comes face to face with an inevitable question: Is there a relationship between the history of Black Germans and those of other black communities?
The answers to Campt's questions make Other Germans essential reading in the emerging study of what it meant to be black and German in the context of a society that looked at anyone with non-German blood as racially impure at best.
Tina Campt is Associate Professor of Women's Studies at Duke University.
Tina Campt's Other Germans tells the story of this largely forgotten group of individuals, with important distinctions from other accounts. Most strikingly, Campt centers her arguments on race, rather than anti-semitism. She also provides oral history as background for her study, interviewing two Black Germans for the book.
In the end, the author comes face to face with an inevitable question: Is there a relationship between the history of Black Germans and those of other black communities?
The answers to Campt's questions make Other Germans essential reading in the emerging study of what it meant to be black and German in the context of a society that looked at anyone with non-German blood as racially impure at best.
Tina Campt is Associate Professor of Women's Studies at Duke University.
296 pages, Hardcover
First published December 11, 2003
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193 people want to read
About the author
Tina M. Campt
8 books22 followersTina Campt is Owen F. Walker Professor of Humanities and Modern Culture and Media. Campt is a black feminist theorist of visual culture and contemporary art. One of the founding researchers in Black European Studies, her early work theorized gender, racial, and diasporic formation in black communities in Europe, focusing on the role of vernacular photography in processes of historical interpretation. Her books include: Other Germans: Black Germans and the Politics of Race, Gender and Memory in the Third Reich (University Michigan Press, 2004), Image Matters: Archive, Photography and the African Diaspora in Europe (Duke University Press, 2012), and Listening to Images (Duke University Press, 2017).
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
December 6, 2015
Fascinating read and really insightful. Very scholarly and academic; definitely not "easy reading" but worth the effort if you're interested in social theory, oral history and racial identity.
November 20, 2020
A must read! Very insightful study on Black Germans. Her approach based on memory work was very inspirational and challenged the notion on African Diaspora and Identity in Germany.
December 12, 2018
This book has some saving graces, but the author's constant imposing of her own blackness on people not considered and not considering themselves black back then was too much for me.
It did start with some interesting information (like the French racial and psychological reasons for using Black African troops, or how even back and before World War I then American antimiscegination laws were a model for the mixed-marriage bans) and looked promising, but I already early on I ran into a problem: She refers to the child of a German mother and an Algerian father as black and seems to think the terms Afro-German and black German includes Northern Africans but they clearly do not. I never saw any Germans using it that way. And sadly this problem not only persisted but increased and was added to others. I think the author is either unaware or ignores the fact that in the 1920s Fischer and others published a book that stated that while there can be negative effects of racial mixing, there were also positive examples and big cultural achievements cannot only be achieved by pure races.
I had a very bad feeling about this. When the book was at this Hans Hauck guy again and even though he did not self-identify as black, even though he did not identify his Algerian father as black, the author still stated he was black. And even though the official citations she provided clearly show that Northern Africans were not considered black back then she nonetheless claims that they were. If she imposes so much on the records I don't think she is reliable.
Then she claimed “Mischling” literally means "half-caste" even though the literal translation is "mixed one". The equivalent of half-caste is “Halbblut” or “Halbbrut”. Her quotes do not even support that equalizing and yet she does it.
But even then I did not stop as it still had saving graces like the information that 20% of the German Population was considered undesirable for procreation by Nazi rules (How come you don't hear about that in shows, movies and popular culture?).
But at about 25 % of the book: I checked the notes on the Abel guy she claims studied the "Black children of the Rhineland" and it is the study I read already! And guess what, the study was about kids with Moroccan and Annamite (Vietnamese) fathers! Even if you somehow consider Moroccans black, since when the heck are Vietnamese black? There is no way in my mind that this is not lying what she does here.
I didn't know whether I could go on reading this crap. She even cited statements that these "bastards" often appear "to be an almost pure European type and therefore cannot easily be distinguished from the German population" and yet she still calls them black. But if their fathers were black this would be highly unusual, but for German-Vietnamese/Moroccan mixes that result is to be expected!!!
At about one third of the book she inserted "[what it means to be black]" into an Interview text even though it was not stated and this Hans Hauck never stated that he identified as black. The author forced her own "blackness" on him!
And what when she was equating a German with an Algerian father to one with a Liberian father I was “That's it"!” Of course a half-Algerian would have greater chance to join the Hitler Youth, they look more like "Aryans."
How can anyone equate the two?
This author did way too many mistakes and straight up lied if you ask me to be considered reliable.
PS. This author needs a better editor. She can be difficult to understand.
It did start with some interesting information (like the French racial and psychological reasons for using Black African troops, or how even back and before World War I then American antimiscegination laws were a model for the mixed-marriage bans) and looked promising, but I already early on I ran into a problem: She refers to the child of a German mother and an Algerian father as black and seems to think the terms Afro-German and black German includes Northern Africans but they clearly do not. I never saw any Germans using it that way. And sadly this problem not only persisted but increased and was added to others. I think the author is either unaware or ignores the fact that in the 1920s Fischer and others published a book that stated that while there can be negative effects of racial mixing, there were also positive examples and big cultural achievements cannot only be achieved by pure races.
I had a very bad feeling about this. When the book was at this Hans Hauck guy again and even though he did not self-identify as black, even though he did not identify his Algerian father as black, the author still stated he was black. And even though the official citations she provided clearly show that Northern Africans were not considered black back then she nonetheless claims that they were. If she imposes so much on the records I don't think she is reliable.
Then she claimed “Mischling” literally means "half-caste" even though the literal translation is "mixed one". The equivalent of half-caste is “Halbblut” or “Halbbrut”. Her quotes do not even support that equalizing and yet she does it.
But even then I did not stop as it still had saving graces like the information that 20% of the German Population was considered undesirable for procreation by Nazi rules (How come you don't hear about that in shows, movies and popular culture?).
But at about 25 % of the book: I checked the notes on the Abel guy she claims studied the "Black children of the Rhineland" and it is the study I read already! And guess what, the study was about kids with Moroccan and Annamite (Vietnamese) fathers! Even if you somehow consider Moroccans black, since when the heck are Vietnamese black? There is no way in my mind that this is not lying what she does here.
I didn't know whether I could go on reading this crap. She even cited statements that these "bastards" often appear "to be an almost pure European type and therefore cannot easily be distinguished from the German population" and yet she still calls them black. But if their fathers were black this would be highly unusual, but for German-Vietnamese/Moroccan mixes that result is to be expected!!!
At about one third of the book she inserted "[what it means to be black]" into an Interview text even though it was not stated and this Hans Hauck never stated that he identified as black. The author forced her own "blackness" on him!
And what when she was equating a German with an Algerian father to one with a Liberian father I was “That's it"!” Of course a half-Algerian would have greater chance to join the Hitler Youth, they look more like "Aryans."
How can anyone equate the two?
This author did way too many mistakes and straight up lied if you ask me to be considered reliable.
PS. This author needs a better editor. She can be difficult to understand.
May 14, 2019
Read for a paper, helped me get it done
November 20, 2017
Interesting background and research into the history of black Germans through the use of narrative interviews with two subjects. This book is very academic in nature. I plan to revisit it when my German is better to read the interviews in their native language. Gives perspective of some of the atrocities and discrimination black Germans endured up to WW2.
June 20, 2007
Very interesting book if you're into history, testimony, social theory. Tina Campt uses some psychoanalytic theory to analyze the testimonies of "Afro-Deutsch" men in Nazi Germany
Want to read
September 28, 2007Being part german, this is a book that i really want to read when i get a chance.
September 14, 2008
Something you hear very little about
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews