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6. Of Conjunctions, Comportment, and Clothing: African Teaching Assistants in Berlin and Hamburg, 1889–1919
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mans and Africans together in a common humanity. When speaking of myths and sagas, for instance, Meinhof drew on the fact that for Africans both were distinct combinations of history and fantasy, just as they were for Europeans.73 Further, he told his audience that he saw evidence of possible Hamitic invasion in the same myths and sagas, sharing his ideas about linguistic , cultural, and racial difference with a broad cross-section of the Hamburg public.74 It was thus in these open lectures and not in individual classes that Meinhof had the most success disseminating his theories on the linguistic, cultural, and racial makeup of Africa. If the practical aspects of Afrikanistik had not attracted as much attention as Meinhof had hoped, he could console himself with the fact that his academic output not only was proli‹c but had an extensive reach. Moreover, through the in›uence of the laboratory and journal, Meinhof eventually established Hamburg as a meeting point for Africanist scholars from around the world. Pedagogy and Research in Meinhof’s Department and Laboratory Expressly political factors motivated the development of Meinhof’s academic department in Hamburg. As the importance of West Africa heightened , for instance, the curriculum expanded to accommodate its languages . What, however, actually went on in African studies classrooms? How were courses taught, and what kinds of “scienti‹c investigations” did Meinhof and his colleagues conduct? To a great extent, Meinhof and his staff used techniques similar to those of Berlin. Labor was divided between Europeans—mostly Germans —and Africans. The Germans were the lecturers who “translated” African grammar and vocabulary into terms students could understand, whereas the Africans’ main job was to demonstrate correct pronunciation and elocution. Meinhof believed that their roles could not be reversed. He found it unlikely that even the best European instructor would be able to mimic “exotic” African sounds on a consistent basis, unless he happened to be the son of a missionary and raised with an African language as his native tongue.75 Therefore, very few Europeans could teach students to speak an African language correctly, at least on a purely mechanical level. At the same time, Meinhof said that Africans could not teach Europeans grammar in terms that Europeans could comprehend. He explained it this way at the 1910 World Missionary Conference in Edinburgh. 130 Africa in Translation The native . . . is doubtless master of his material in the fullest sense, but he does not understand European thought as it appears in the brain of the pupil. Thus he is totally unable to supply the connecting links between European and non-European ideas. . . . He who has ever interested himself in non-European languages knows . . . how great the gap is between these and our own. The discrepancy is based not only on the vocabulary or in a few deviations in the method of expression , but is founded on a complete differentiation in the whole construction of the language, or in other words on quite another method of thought. What is plain to the one is unintelligible to the other, and what appears dif‹cult to one is natural to the other. So, in African dialects, it is quite frequently the case that what the European calls the front, the African calls the back.76 Thought was largely determined by grammatical structure. Europeans and Africans, who spoke languages belonging to different families that were on different levels of sophistication, would not fully be able to describe their languages to each other. This did not mean Germans were to take European grammatical categories and simply superimpose them on African ones; this could produce unreliable results and even hinder communication . Nor did it mean that Africans had no input into the construction of grammars, especially when they were being written for the ‹rst time. Without Africans, as will be further explored in chapter 6, German scholars had no means of deepening their knowledge of African languages on any level. Nonetheless, the actual mechanism of teaching the laws of African grammar to the untrained, nonacademic European could only be done by another European. In the department’s classrooms, African assistants worked mainly on helping European students with their pronunciation, while German lecturers and professors taught grammar. At the phonetics laboratory Africans and Europeans also served different functions, even if the line there was not so clear-cut. Here European students were encouraged not only to listen to Africans and repeat what they heard them say but also to examine them with...