In this Book

summary
Germans and African Americans unlike other works on African Americans in Europe, examines the relationship between African Americans and one country, Germany, in great depth.Germans and African Americans encountered one another within the context of their national identities and group experiences. In the nineteenth century, German immigrants to America and to such communities as Charleston and Cincinnati interacted within the boundaries of their old-world experiences and ideas and within surrounding regional notions of a nation fracturing over slavery. In the post-Civil War era in America through the Weimar era, Germany became a place to which African American entertainers, travelers, and intellectuals such as W. E. B. Du Bois could go to escape American racism and find new opportunities. With the rise of the Third Reich, Germany became the personification of racism, and African Americans in the 1930s and 1940s could use Hitler's evil example to goad America about its own racist practices. Postwar West Germany regained the image as a land more tolerant to African American soldiers than America. African Americans were important to Cold War discourse, especially in the internal ideological struggle between Communist East Germany and democratic West Germany. Unlike many other countries in Europe, Germany has played a variety of different and conflicting roles in the African American narrative and relationship with Europe. It is this diversity of roles that adds to the complexity of African American and German interactions and mutual perceptions over time.

Table of Contents

restricted access Download Full Book
  1. Cover
  2. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. Title Page
  2. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. Copyright
  2. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. Contents
  2. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. Introduction
  2. pp. vii-xxi
  3. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. Prologue: African Americans in the German Democratic Republic
  2. pp. 3-16
  3. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. An Unexpected Alliance: August Willich, Peter H. Clark, and the Abolitionist Movement in Cincinnati
  2. pp. 17-36
  3. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. German Immigrants and African Americans in Charleston, South Carolina, 1850–1880
  2. pp. 37-49
  3. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. Louis Douglas and the Weimar Reception of Harlemania
  2. pp. 50-69
  3. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. Race in the Reich: The African American Press on Nazi Germany
  2. pp. 70-87
  3. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. Field Trip into the Twilight: A German Africanist Discovers the Black Bourgeoisie at Howard University, 1937-1939
  2. pp. 88-104
  3. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. Love across the Color Line: The Limits of German and American Democracy, 1945–1968
  2. pp. 105-125
  3. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. The Erotics of African American Endurance, Or: On the Right Side of History?: White (West)-German Public Sentiment between Pornotroping and Civil Rights Solidarity
  2. pp. 126-140
  3. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. “Nazi Jim Crow”: Hans Jürgen Massaquoi’s Democratic Vistas on the Black Atlantic and Afro-Germans in Ebony
  2. pp. 141-165
  3. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. A Raisin in the East: African American Civil Rights Drama in GDR Scholarship and Theater Practice
  2. pp. 166-184
  3. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. Ollie Harrington: His Portrait Drawn on the Basis of East German (GDR) Secret Service Files
  2. pp. 185-200
  3. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. Exploding Hitler and Americanizing Germany: Occupying “Black” Bodies and Postwar Desire
  2. pp. 201-217
  3. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. Reconstructing “America”: The Development of African American Studies in the Federal Republic of Germany
  2. pp. 218-230
  3. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. Contributors
  2. pp. 231-233
  3. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. Index
  2. pp. 234-244
  3. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
Back To Top

This website uses cookies to ensure you get the best experience on our website. Without cookies your experience may not be seamless.