The failed Wilmersdorf Colonial Peoples' Show of 1927

Thomas Manga Akwa from Cameroon almost ended up as a living advertising figure in front of the sales stand of the chocolate manufacturer Monheim at a colonial peoples show planned for 1927 in the Stadtpark and on Kaiserallee in Berlin-Wilmersdorf – today the middle part of Wilmersdorf's Volkspark including Bundesallee (Fig. 1). The fact that the project failed and that he was thus spared this job was not least due to the conflicts and contradictions within the colonial interest groups of the Weimar era.

What consequences did the German defeat in the First World War and the subsequent end of German colonial rule have for colonial circles and their activities in Germany? Using the example of the failed project of a colonial peoples show in 1927 in the Wilmersdorf city park, the following article shows dynamics of attributions and appropriations in the colonial propaganda of the Weimar period. The postcolonial situation created a field of tension in which the interests of the state, colonial associations, commercial showmen, and migrants[1] from former German colonies worked together and against each other.

Give and take: authorities, colonial associations, showmen

During the Weimar period, the state refrained from direct colonial propaganda, as it wanted to avoid foreign policy conflicts with the victorious powers that administered the former German colonies. However, the Colonial Department of the Foreign Office (AA), which was re-established in 1924, regularly supported the propaganda activities of the German colonial associations, for example through loans or loans of objects. Externally, however, the Foreign Office was anxious to create the impression that colonial revisionism, i.e. the demand for the return of the former colonies, was "a pure people's movement [...], over which the Reich government had no influence". ^[2]

The fact that colonial propaganda was financially supported by the state was apparently also heard by some private-commercial actors. At least in addition to colonial associations, some fairground companies also applied for state support for events with colonial themes.

The Foreign Office received the activities of showmen in the field of colonial propaganda with great suspicion. According to the Foreign Office, the propaganda fund intended to support colonial propaganda activities "should not be reduced to helping circus stalls out of momentary embarrassments". ^[3] The colonial associations, on the other hand, often had much less reservations about such organisers. ^[4]

Black Man in Uniform: Projection Screen for Colonial Revisionist Myths

A private-commercial show that received a loan from the Foreign Office in August 1926 was the German Colonial Touring Exhibition under the direction of the entrepreneur Fritz Riebisch. For a time, the show was even under the patronage of the Colonial Reich Working Group (KORAG), the umbrella organization of Weimar colonial associations. ^[5] The show advertised itself as a "place of learning and education for all Germans". In addition to slide and film lectures, it showed an exhibition of colonial raw materials and ethnographic objects. In addition, Riebisch had employed a Cameroonian named Manga Akwa as a "chauffeur", "a capable motor fitter and car driver" (Fig. 3 follows). ^[6]

Riebisch had procured a tropical uniform for Manga Akwa, which he had to wear at work. ^[7] The latter thus not only worked as a driver for the show, but also served as a projection screen for colonial revisionist myths of the Weimar era. The appearance of a Black man in uniform invoked the myth of the "loyal Askari" in particular. African colonial soldiers, according to the narrative, fought "faithfully to the death" on the German side in the First World War – a claim that was intended to retroactively reaffirm Germany's colonial ability and underpin the demand for the return of the former colonies to Germany, since the victorious powers of the First World War had justified the end of German colonial rule above all with "Germany's failure in the field of colonial civilization". ^[8]

Thomas Manga Akwa was a nephew of the Duala ruler Dika Akwa, a signatory of the 1884 "Protection Treaty" between the Germans and the Duala. ^[9] During German colonial rule, he had come to Germany from Cameroon to train as a machinist. After the end of German rule over Cameroon, Manga Akwa had been involved in a list of demands addressed to the Reich Colonial Office in 1919, in which a group of colonial migrants had linked their loyalty to Germany – and thus their support for the colonial revisionist aspirations of the Weimar state – to the granting of equal rights for blacks and whites . ^[10] In 1921, he had returned to his country of origin with the permission of the French mandate power, which was now responsible for a large part of Cameroon. However, after a conflict with the French colonial administration, he had fled back to Germany. Because he could not find work as a machinist there, he trained as a chauffeur, which he completed in 1925. He had already applied for German citizenship in 1923, emphasizing both his origin from a Cameroonian ruling family and his loyalty to Germany – without success. But even without German citizenship, he ultimately succeeded in marrying his white German partner, with whom he had a daughter. ^[11]

Precarious Conditions: Colonial Migrants in the Weimar Republic

The situation of the small group of migrants from former German colonies, who lived mainly in Berlin and Hamburg, was precarious after the end of German colonial rule. In the face of economic crises and intensifying racism, many had problems making a living. Their mostly unclear citizenship status made the situation even worse. As in the case of Manga Akwa, the authorities usually rejected naturalization applications, so that the migrants were not entitled to unemployment benefits if they were unemployed. The state's primary goal was to deport them to their countries of origin. However, this often turned out to be unfeasible – not only for financial or foreign policy reasons. In the case of migrants married to white German women, there were also "racial-political" reasons: France and Great Britain, which administered most of the former German colonies as mandated powers, generally did not tolerate relationships between black men and white women any more than the Germans had done. ^[12] At the end of the 1920s, Manga Akwa was not allowed to return to Cameroon with his wife and daughter. In Germany, the family increasingly suffered from economic hardship, which ultimately broke up the marriage. ^[13]

Against this background, first the German Colonial Society (DKG) and, from 1926, the German Society for Native Studies (DGfE) took care of migrants from former German colonies who were in need and could not be deported on behalf of the Foreign Office. It helped those concerned – including Manga Akwa – to find work and, if necessary, also supported them financially. In addition, Alfred Mansfeld, managing director of the DGfE, was supposed to monitor the small number of migrants from the former colonies remaining in Germany on behalf of the Foreign Office. From the point of view of the authorities, these represented a security policy problem, especially when an increasing number of them moved in anti-colonial circles influenced by communism. ^[14]

The Colonial View: Employment Placement for Colonial Migrants

The areas of work that the DGfE considered suitable for colonial migrants were strongly influenced by the colonial view of Black people. Most of them were unskilled work at the interface between colonial propaganda and racist spectacle.

This becomes clear in Mansfeld's attempt at the end of 1926 to find a job for Manga Akwa, who at that time was apparently no longer working as a driver for the entrepreneur Riebisch, who specialized in colonial propaganda. Mansfeld turned to the Leonhard Monheim company, which owned cocoa and chocolate factories in Aachen and Berlin, and asked for employment for Manga Akwa (Fig. 4). The company then offered to employ Manga Akwa as a chocolate seller at "exhibitions, fairs and the like," and also suggested that he be placed "with a model of a cocoa plantation" at a "Völkerschau" planned for 1927 in Berlin-Wilmersdorf. ^[15] Similar to Riebisch, the company wanted to use the Cameroonian primarily as a living advertising figure with a colonial "aftertaste": chocolate was a product that was usually marketed as a "colonial commodity" and was often associated with Black people. ^[16]

In the tradition of the World Exhibitions: the Colonial Peoples' Show

Incidentally, Riebisch also wanted to take part in the ColonialPeople's Show in Wilmersdorf mentioned by the Monheim company with his exhibition. Not only that: he was apparently involved in the planning of the event himself, even though two other organizers named Rein and Tschirnitz denied an organizational connection between his company and the show in a later letter to the Foreign Office. ^[17] At least he and another participant sent the Foreign Office an exposé on the project at the end of 1926. According to the report, the organizers planned a "comprehensive and carefully compiled ethnographic and geographical ethnographic and geographical ethnographic exhibition" in the Wilmersdorf city park, in which "[t]he individual ethnic tribes [...] in the village and town structures that were true to life in their homeland and [...] were to show their customs and traditions and their occupation there". Under the motto "Colonies – a German must-demand!", this was to be combined with a "scientific show" that was to provide insights into the "achievements of Germany in its colonial possessions". This included panoramas and dioramas that were to show raw materials extracted in the colonies and their mechanical processing, "whereby their operation was to be carried out by the natives" – apparently participants in the "Völkerschau". In addition, film and photographic lectures were to be shown and "colonial goods" were to be offered at stalls in a bazaar and an "Arab city" on Kaiserallee – today's Bundesallee (Fig. 2). ^[18] The structure of the show was thus based on the great colonial and world exhibitions of the 19th and 20th centuries (Fig. 1). ^[19]

While the colonial lobby and the Foreign Office had supported Riebisch's German Colonial Touring Exhibition , they distanced themselves from the planned Colonial Peoples' Show . The vice president of the German Colonial Society and chairman of the Kolonialkriegerdank e.V. attested to the project "too much of a fairground-like character" and refused to support it. ^[20] The Association of Protected Area Officials and Members of the Protection Troops remarked that "a colonial [sic] Völkerschau emanating with insufficient resources from unsuitable forces" could "cause the most serious damage to colonial propaganda". ^[21] And the Foreign Office feared that the organizers, who were apparently not well known in colonial circles, might lack the necessary capital for their project. ^[22]

It is possible that the fact that advertising letters from the Kolonial-Völker-schau GmbH had suggested that its project was supported by the government without the government having been asked beforehand may have played a role in the AA's negative attitude. ^[23] The colonial lobby, on the other hand, may have been irritated by the fact that the company had initially suggested that it was supported by KORA, but later expressly refused to "place itself under the protectorate of the DKG[...]", which had initiated the founding of KORAG in 1922 and had a decisive influence on its policy. ^[24] In addition, the fact that the project included not only an exhibition including stalls, but also the use of Black people for colonial propaganda purposes, including in the context of a "Völkerschau", may have played a role. As early as April 1926, the placement of unemployed colonial migrants in a comparable job in the "Colonial Hygiene" department of the Düsseldorf Exhibition for "Health Care, Social Welfare and Physical Exercises" had led to a fierce conflict between the chairman of the DGfE Mansfeld and a group of migrants – including Manga Akwa. One of them, Peter Makembe from Cameroon, had refused to accept the job offer because of the low remuneration. Because Mansfeld then threatened to cut off financial support for the migrants, a serious dispute ensued. The Cameroonians threatened to hire a lawyer, while the authorities for their part considered Makembe's deportation. ^[25] Colonial migrants, however, not only began to defend themselves against state paternalism and poorly paid jobs, they also, as mentioned above, increasingly joined communist-influenced anti-colonial circles.^[26] This may have contributed to the colonial lobby considering the use of colonial migrants at propaganda events to be problematic. ^[27]

Without state support, the project of the Colonial Peoples Show failed. ^[28] Accordingly, Manga Akwa was spared from appearing as a living chocolate advertisement. At the same time, however, he also missed out on one of the rare opportunities to earn a little money.