Being Black In Nazi Germany; 'Rhineland Bastards'
'Being Black In Nazi Germany,' BBC News, May 21, *2019.
- This photo was used in genetics lectures at Germany's State Academy for Race and Health.
Film director Amma Asante came across an old photograph taken in Nazi Germany of a black schoolgirl by chance. Standing among her white classmates, who stare straight into the camera, she enigmatically glances to the side.
Curiosity about the photograph - who the girl was and what she was doing in Germany - set the award-winning film-maker off on a path that led to Where Hands Touch, a new movie starring Amandla Stenberg and George MacKay. It is an imagined account of a mixed-race teenager's clandestine relationship with a Hitler Youth member, but it is based on historical record.
Warning: Some people may find some of the content of this article upsetting
In the Nazi era, from 1933 to 1945, African-Germans numbered in their thousands. There was no uniform experience, but over time, they were banned from having relationships with white people, excluded from education and types of employment, and some were sterilised, while others were taken to concentration camps. 'Disbelief and dismissiveness: But their story has largely been untold - and it has taken Ms Asante 12 years to get her account of the period on to the big screen.
- Amandla Stenberg plays mixed-race teenager Leyna in 'Where Hands Touch.'
"Often there's a form of disbelief, of questioning, sometimes even a dismissiveness of the difficult lives these people led," she told the BBC about the reaction she received from some when she spoke about her research for the film.
The African-German community has its origins in the country's short-lived empire. Sailors, servants, students and entertainers from present-day Cameroon, Togo, Tanzania, Rwanda, Burundi and Namibia came to Germany.
Once World War One broke out in 1914 this transient population became more settled, according to historian Robbie Aitken. And some African soldiers who fought for Germany in the war also settled there. But there was a second group whose presence went on to feed into the Nazis' fear of racial mixing. As part of the treaty that was signed after Germany's defeat in World War One, French troops occupied the Rhineland area of western Germany.
France used at least 20,000 soldiers from its African empire, mainly North and West Africa, to police the area, some of whom went on to have relationships with German women.
Racist caricatures: The derogatory term "Rhineland bastards" was coined in the 1920s to refer to the 600-800 mixed-race children who were the result of those relationships. The term spoke to some people's imagined fears of an impure race. Made-up stories and racist caricatures of sexually predatory African soldiers were circulated at the time, fuelling concern. While anti-Semitism occupied a pre-eminent place at the heart of Nazi ideology, a line in Mein Kampf, the book published in 1925 outlining the political beliefs of party leader Adolf Hitler, linked Jewish and black people. "It was and is the Jews who bring the Negroes into the Rhineland," Hitler wrote, "always with the same secret thought and clear aim of ruining the hated white race by the necessarily resulting bastardisation."
Once in power, the Nazis' obsession with Jews and racial purity gradually led to the Holocaust, the industrialised slaughter of six million Jewish people during World War Two, as well as the mass murder of Roma, people with disabilities and some of the Slavic peoples...
More, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-48273570
- The 1936 headline in the Frankfurter Volksblatt says: "600 Bastards Accuse, the legacy of black crime against the Rhinelanders"
- This photo is thought to show Jean Voste (R), b. in Belgium Congo, the only black prisoner in Dachau concentration camp (Photo courtesy of Frank Manucci)
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From the DW Article above.
Afro.Germany, Films: Where are you from? Afro-German journalist Jana Pareigis has heard that question since her early childhood. In fact, black people have been living in Germany for 400 years. Pareigis travels through the country to speak with other black Germans.
https://www.dw.com/en/afrogermany/av-38132509
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-Jennifer Tegee, Granddaughter of Nazi Commandant Amon Goeth, Played By Ralph Fiennes in 'Schindler's List,'
https://stmuhistorymedia.org/he-would-have-killed-me-the-story-of-jennifer-teege-granddaughter-of-nazi-commandant-amon-goeth/
