Hänschen klein, ging allein... Mein Weg in die neue Welt

by Hans J. Massaquoi

Used book in good condition, due to its age it could contain normal signs of use

Hardcover

First published September 30, 2004

About the author

Hans-Jürgen Massaquoi was a German American journalist and author, the son of a German mother and Liberian Vai father. His paternal grandfather was Momulu Massaquoi, the consul general of Liberia in Germany at the time and the first African diplomat to represent his country in Germany.

Growing up in Hamburg, Massaquoi suffered severe discrimination during the Nazi dictatorship, an experience he later wrote about in his memoir, Destined to Witness. After spending time with his paternal family in Liberia, he eventually emigrated to the United States, where he took up employment with and, over time, became editor in chief of Ebony magazine. In the course of his career as a journalist, he met and interviewed numerous celebrities, among them Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Jesse Jackson, Muhammad Ali (who also became a close friend), Diana Ross, Jimmy Carter, and former German foreign minister Walter Scheel.

Reviews

[Andre · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is the sequel to the author's praised Destined to Witness: Growing up Black in Nazi Germany, however while I liked that book through and through, this one here was ultimately disappointing to me. I do not think that it is a worthy sequel and sadly it is not very memorable in my eyes. Not in a good way at least.
Don't get me wrong, the book is easy to read, the structure choice is good (albeit the fact that the chapters often sounded like articles to me and sometimes repeat things that have been told already was sometime annoying) and you can read it quickly.
Now I was already aware that I would naturally not agree with everything Mr. Massaquoi wrote, e.g. I do not consider Colin Powell as black; the man is far too pale for that in my eyes. Also I am not sure whether the course of the magazine "Ebony" for a time was so great and I would personally no longer be as thrilled about the USA as he was. You see this book was published in 2004 so after the emergence of G.W. Bush and Afro-Germans are not as helpless as Massaquoi portrays them to be.
Actually the book started out very well. It seemed to be a good continuation to Massaquoi's previous book, he seemed not to be totally soaked into the myth of the American Dream (by mentioning some of the darker aspects of the USA) and I learned a few new things, e.g. the author had just moved to Chicago and experienced the city's strict racial segregation and racism. I learned the words "Uncle Toms" and "handkerchief-heads," referring to Chicago blacks cooperating with the racist mayor Richard J. Daley. When the author visited Germany, respectively then the BRD, again in 1966 he was told that in the North, where there were barely any black American GIs, prejudice was far less and attitudes more positive than in the South. However the attitudes towards "brown" babies seemed to be based mostly on their status as children born outside marriage, which especially in the south with its Roman-Catholic majority is a problem. And while many German men would have no problem with it, only few had the strength to accept it when it was so visible that the child could not be "his." In addition as far as my country has come, one of his accounts about a woman coming into a shop and speaking perfect accent free German and being answered in English, granted this was 1997, really shows that a lot of Germans are morons!
I googled the names of famous Afro-Germans and Africans in Germany and most at least look familiar, some I recognized and as for Roberto Blanco… well for all non-German readers: It would be weirder if I didn't know who he is. Also had this book been written a tad later he might also have had included Mo Asumang, Thando Walbaum and Elombo Bolayela..
Partially the book was very funny but the more and more I progressed with it the more did things disappoint me. Not only did I expect that I would read here some more about Germany and the Cold War in general, since he did work as a high profile journalist and claimed to be connected to Germany emotionally, but also I thought he would be more critical of militarism and racism. But it doesn't look like it. He never had any problem to comment on racism done by white people, but when people like Muhammed Ali and Elijah Muhammad spewed out racism and hate on par with Klux-Klux- Klan members and Hitler, he doesn't seem to comment on it, at all. And trust me if Ali has the same attitudes today that he had in 1967 when the interview happened he is a full blown racist and misogynist. He said outright that no sane black or white person would want their kids to mix with the other color, he even claimed blacks created the moon and that it is natural that men look down on women and women up to men because Allah wants it so. But the author didn't comment on it and trust me, he truly never had any problems commenting on racism in all the other cases (always racism of whites). But with these two, nothing, despite the fact that in his earlier books and in regard to Nazis or generally white people (which technically he belongs to as well, as a definitive half-white) he never had such reservations. When he got the purity certificate for his German Shepherd he commented it with "where have I heard that before?" but when Muhammed Ali and Elijah Muhammad speak about white devils and the extinction of white people (via war) … nothing! Despite the fact that it basically says that his own parents, many of his friends throughout his life and several of his former girl friends were allegedly to Ali's opinion not right in the head and Mr. Massaquoi, as well as several of the Afro-Germans and African Americans he met later should not have existed in the first place. And total eradication as Muhammed proclaimed it to happen within 10 years could just as well come from Hitler. But nothing, at all!!! Did he forget that they are thereby targeting him and many of his friends and how their words echo all those other racists and warmongers? As if there is some double-standard at work here because these two were black. Or more precise "African American." You see later the author had showed his dislike of Liberia's first lady Mrs. Doe due to the crimes of her husband very openly. So I especially wondered about his lack of comment on Ali's and Muhammad's racism and warmongering. Not to mention I think he either doesn't consider the USA's history, military industrial complex and foreign policy when it doesn't consider "black" people worth mentioning, or maybe in general since he barely mentioned the Vietnam War, or he is incredibly naive when it comes to the USA. Odd considered his past. Someone growing up in 1930s and 1940s Germany, especially as part of the underclass, should in my mind be more critical of military saber-rattling and the Cold War policy of the USA. At least the following chapter on Malcom X was much more interesting than the one about Ali or the later one about Muhammed.
Also at least one of his statements was pretty misleading in my eyes. You see I read his previous book and the book of the mentioned Theodor Vonja Michael and I cannot say that the experience of the two men during World War II when both were mistaken for stranded English pilots were similar.Michael was captured by a Nazi official and dragged to the officials, while Massaquoi encountered an angry mob who though he was a pilot due to his uniform and they didn't "nearly kill him," they didn't dare do anything without official approval and when a policeman came along and was convinced that Massaquoi's Hamburg accent was genuine he called those people idiots and let him go. That is a significant difference in my eyes.
As bad as his attitude was, you got some better and more interesting chapters about some quite unusual Africans and African Americans. At least the last few chapters have been a bit more interesting and made me a tad curious as to how good a job Shirley Temple did as ambassador to Ghana and what effects the end of the Vietnam War had on the Third World. However why the author considered Harry Truman a friend of African Americans I find a tad odd. Maybe he didn't know, like so many people, Truman's comments and racism. Still, I think it's odd that the Vietnam War was barely mentioned, but the later letters from fans of his previous book are one of the better parts of this book. Except for one, where the woman thinks that only "blacks" (for her half-black equals black since her children were fathered by an African man) and those close to blacks could understand him and she even pretends to know how he felt more lonely than he wrote in his book. To which I say: the author didn't shy away from telling the truth as he saw it, neither in this book nor the previous one, so I think what this woman did there was pretty arrogant, as well meaning as it might have been, since she claimed to know him and his situation better than he himself did.
I can give the author credit for not falling for Bush's war excuse and for speaking against many "isms" in these last two parts of the book, but his reasoning as for why 9/11 happened, that the terrorists hated the American way of life, could just as well have come from Bush and he doesn't seem to consider that the USA's militarism probably was the reason they were attacked. I wish I could say something else, but this book ended with a disappointment for me.
Overall I would say this is an ok book, since it has as much good things as it had bad things in it, but it is no comparison to Destined to Witness. If you want to read it out of curiosity I would say that you can do it and it would be no loss, but I wouldn't say that you need to read it. Skip it and it would be no loss.

[Sandras Mix · Rating 2 out of 5]

Irgendwie interessant, aber irgendwie auch aus der Zeit gefallen. Irgendwie seltsamer Ton, aber irgendwie auch genau richtig.

[Margrit Belfi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Goed naslagwerk
Het laat maar weer eens zien hoe slecht Amerika met zijn eigen( zwarte) mensen omgaat
Hoe oneerlijk ze zijn
Een groot verschil tussen binnen en buitenlandse politiek
Hoe discriminatie en armoede nog steeds niet naar behoren worden aangepakt