On the 22nd of November 2022, Gabriele Metzler (Weizsäcker Visiting Fellow, St Antony’s College, Oxford) delivered a presentation entitled “A Postcolonial Society in a World of Empires: Perspectives on German History since 1919.” The meeting was chaired by Paul Betts (St Antony’s College, Oxford).
In his introduction of Metzler, Betts highlighted two of her more recent publications: Konzeptionen politischen Handelns von Adenauer bis Brandt (Conceptions of Political Statecraft from Adenauer to Brandt) and Der Staat der Historiker (The State of Historians). The first book discusses how state planning functions and how it is understood in a pluralistic society. It argues that the modern welfare state has dissolved the dividing line between state and society, making the state more vulnerable to legitimation crises. In the second book, Metzler surveys changing images of the state put forward by German historians. She focusses on how the new democratic welfare state redefined the idea of community after Hitler’s defeat.
As Betts stated, Metzler would “shift gears” for her presentation, revisiting the issue of Weimar modernity while examining the tension between imperialism and postcolonialism. The material she presented will form part of a new book, whose historical scope stretches from the year 1919 to the present. As Metzler explained, the year 1919 marked a historical rupture for Germany, which, upon the signing of the Treaty of Versailles, became the first postcolonial nation in Western Europe. Some areas of the post-Versailles era are much better researched than others. Property and compensation issues, foreign policy, and continuities in economic protections and other activities are themes that have yet to receive substantial attention in academic circles.
Metzler’s presentation focused on five men, who serve as case studies of changes in post-colonial Germany. The first was Adolf Friedrich von Mecklenburg, the last governor of Togo before the outbreak of the First World War. When he was put in charge of Togo, the German Empire was at its highest extension and Togo was considered a model economy, being the only one in Germany’s possession to manage without subsidies before WWI. Nevertheless, Togo was also the first colony to capitulate after the outbreak of the war when it was attacked by French and British troops. No one in Berlin had planned the defence of the colonies, nor did anyone plan to mobilise their populace as France and Britain did.
Following the war, many colonial administrators were unemployed. Some ascended to prominence, while Mecklenburg took Germany’s seat on the Permanent Mandate Commission in 1926. This achievement was somewhat of a disappointment for the country, as it had been hoping to receive a mandate. Nevertheless, the Weimar Republic did not reclaim its colonies and, in fact, helped stabilise the colonies of other powers. Notably, London and Berlin cooperated to restrain anti-colonial forces in Europe, and the Weimar Republic did not protest the use of extreme violence by the colonial powers in the 1920s and 1930s. Part of the reason why is that it sought to receive UK support on the issue of easing post-war reparation payments.
Mecklenburg was sympathetic to National Socialism and expected the Nazis to facilitate the reacquisition of colonies in Africa. Comprehensive planning for the administration of former German East Africa did indeed begin after 1933, but Mecklenburg and other former colonial administrators were side-lined by Nazi party authorities. The quest for a German Empire in Africa peaked between 1940 and 1942 after France was defeated and victory over Britain seemed imminent, but Hitler lost interest in the continent as he turned his sights on the USSR.
Some historians note the colonial nature of Nazi plans for the administration of Eastern Europe, focussing on their intention to displace and kill much of the local populace. It is unclear, however, whether the Nazis truly intended to emulate colonialism. Their plans, Metzler explains, resembled far more clearly German strategies in the First World War and the Italian strategy for the subjugation of Ethiopia.
Following the Second World War, Mecklenburg continued his career in West Germany, becoming the head of the National Olympic Committee. During this period, German ex-officials were still pushing for the re-acquisition of their lost colonies. This was not altogether surprising given that all European powers were committed to restoring their colonies, particularly those lost to Japan during the war. Both they and Germany saw colonialism as a forward-looking model of world order. At the same time, Mecklenburg’s services were also enlisted against the growing threat of Communism, and his visit to Togo in 1960 served to solidify relations where East Germany might otherwise have scored political points.
The second case study was of Hjalmar Schacht, who served as the head of Germany’s Reichsbank between 1923-1930. In this position, Schacht took part in discussions on ‘fixing’ Germany’s reparations agreements, lobbying for the colonies to be deducted from the country’s reparations. Germans who had made their fortunes in the colonies also wanted to be compensated for their losses and to rebuild their plantations and businesses in Africa. Schacht had them in mind when he negotiated the Young Plan and the Dawes Plan.
For Schacht, direct rule would only create more expenditures for Germany. In its stead, he proposed the establishment of a charter company according to the model of the East India Company, which would supply the German economy with raw materials at cheap prices. This aversion to the territorialisation of colonial rule was unusual for Schacht’s era. After all, the UK was attempting to incorporate its mandate of Tanganyika into British East Africa at the very same time that Schacht was proposing an entirely new international order. This order would be one of joint capitalist exploitation, a European venture into Africa that would also serve as a bulwark against communism.
Schacht’s career ended when he distanced himself from Hitler’s expansionism in 1937. Nevertheless, he continued to defend his ideas on colonialism after the war. His legacy also found echoes in European cooperation on African issues. Franco-German friendship, for example, involved cooperation in fighting the National Liberation Front in Algeria.
Metzler’s third case study involved Ludwig M’Bebe Mpessa, a Cameroonian-born actor known in Germany as Louis Brody. As was the case for many others, discrimination motivated Mpessa to participate in anti-colonial activism, including organisations like the League for the Defence of the Negro Race. Unsurprisingly, Mpessa tended to gravitate towards Communism, as the Communist Party was the only major party to disavow colonialism.
Mpessa’s acting career stood on his appearances in colonial films, with the former colonies becoming perhaps even more present in German culture after their loss. In that regard, Germany was no different from other Western powers, which also intensified their cultural promotion of colonialism after the First World War. Mpessa continued as an actor even under the Nazi regime, which had forced many people of minority backgrounds to undergo sterilisation. The regime did, however, end Mpessa’s involvement in activism. Symbolically, Mpessa died in East Berlin in 1951, having weathered multiple political regimes.
Metzler’s fourth case study was that of Rudi S., whose poem on international solidarity with Angola served as a focal point for an analysis of the Friendship Brigades. East Germany dispatched these to Africa as well as Latin America to teach technical expertise and forge closer relations. Many of these countries did indeed become important trading partners, with Angola importing GDR machines in exchange for coffee exports.
Nevertheless, the diaries of Friendship Brigades volunteers contain racist stereotypes about Africa quite that were typical for the age. Africans were seen as indigent and simple, and the continent as one constantly in need of paternalistic help. Campaigns raising funds for African causes invariably portrayed the continent as a child, while films tended to underscore ecological messages over social ones. As Odd Arne Westad argues, one thing that united the East and West was their joint belief in a modernising mission, which of course continued the civilising mission of the 19th century.
Metzler’s final case study was on Paul Lettow-Vorbeck, whose funeral in 1964 became an occasion for remembering the 'glory days' of the German Empire. As an officer, Lettow-Vorbeck had been employed everywhere there was brutal conflict. He was involved in quashing the Boxer Rebellion in China, served in the genocidal war against the Herero and Nama, and led German troops against the British in the destructive war over East Africa. Undefeated in the last of these conflicts, Lettow-Vorbeck was long seen as a hero and he returned to Germany in style after the end of the First World War: he rode through the Brandenburg Gate on horseback to the applause of massive crowds. The ‘war hero’ never faced a moment of reckoning; indeed, after being courted by the Nazis, he regretted Germany’s defeat in WWII, for which he blamed Hitler’s dilettantism. He saw the entire matter as settled with the Nuremberg Trials.
Nevertheless, Lettow-Vorbeck’s funeral marked a turning point in German public consciousness. Protests challenged the legend of ‘good German colonialism’ and an alternative image emerged of Lettow-Vorbeck as a merciless guerrilla warrior who took no care of his troops and cared little for civilians. Protests in the 1960s led to many reckonings across Germany with the colonial past. In Hamburg, a monument to Hermann von Wissman was taken down due to its glorification of colonialism. Numerous barracks and streets changed names, including those named after Lettow-Vorbeck.
At the same time, most media attention was directed towards denazification, with real interest in decolonization only emerging again in the 1990s. It was then that Namibia and other countries began to demand reparations for colonial abuses and debates unfurled over the returning of looted colonial art. An explicit link also began to be drawn between Germany’s colonial violence and the Holocaust, making debates about Germany’s colonial past more heated than in other European countries.
In the Q&A session, Betts highlighted Metzler’s emphasis on continuities over ruptures in German history. He also observed that Metzler’s analysis refocuses Germany’s post-war history from Europe to Africa, pointing out that its investments in the continent were five times higher than the USSR’s in the 1950s and 1960s.
Audience members asked about the place of business and corporate interests in Germany’s decision-making, an interest that Metzler seconded. She added that the importance of raw materials was a major consideration for Germany, which was obsessed with comparisons to French and British supplies facilitated by the colonies. Other audience members asked about the spirit of cooperation with Europe after the First and Second World Wars. Metzler argued that following the first, Germany had to adjust to a world dominated by empires, in which it would need to devise a capitalist substitute for colonies. After 1945, of course, interest in cooperation increased across Europe as the grasp of empires over their erewhile possessions became more tenuous.
Ladislav Charouz (Research Assistant)
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