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Chapter 3 Jews, Germans of Jewish Descent, and German Colonialism When colonial director Paul Kayser resigned in October 1896 from his position as the chief administrator of the Colonial Division of the German Foreign Of‹ce, he did so under a cloud of scandal. In late July and early August, the German press had been abuzz with news of the recent sentencing to ‹fteen years imprisonment of an of‹cial of the German East Africa Plantation Company for raping young girls and mistreating his workers “with fatal results.”1 The individual in question, Friedrich Schröder, had run the company’s plantation at Lewa from 1887 until 1895, during which time he gained a reputation for truly pathological brutality.2 Reports in the press about Schröder’s sentencing were coupled with allegations that the Colonial Division of the Foreign Of‹ce in Berlin had known about Schröder’s savagery for years but had done nothing about it. These allegations and the revelations about Schröder’s conduct emerged only a few months after the Carl Peters affair broke in the Reichstag. Together, they cemented the impression ‹rst given by the Leist and Wehlan affairs of 1894 that the colonial administration did little to vet its of‹cials and, perhaps , was unconcerned with moderating colonial violence.3 Kayser was criticized from across the political spectrum following Schröder’s sentenc133 1. Voss. Zeitung, July 27, 1896, Reichskolonialamt (hereafter RKA) 4812/1, Bundesarchiv Berlin (hereafter BAB). The German East Africa Plantation Company shared important leading members with Carl Peters’s German East Africa Company (or DOAG). 2. Schröder’s brutality toward his workers was such that the plantation constantly suffered from the problem of runaways (Jonathon Glassman, Feasts and Riot: Revelry, Rebellion, and Popular Consciousness on the Swahili Coast, 1856–1888 [Portsmouth: Heinemann, 1995], 188–90, 260–61; Fritz Ferdinand Müller, Deutschland-Zanzibar-Ostafrika: Geschichte einer deutschen Kolonialeroberung, 1884–1890 [Berlin: Rütten und Loening, 1959], 242–44). The Schröder case is also detailed in RKA 4812/1 and 4812/2. 3. See chap. 1 for information on Leist and Wehlan. ing. It was widely reported that he had actually visited the Lewa plantation during his 1892 trip to German East Africa and, therefore, had ‹rsthand knowledge of its horrors. Kayser received especially sharp criticism from the antisemitic press upon his resignation. Before 1896, the press had not made his Jewish ancestry a focus of attention in its coverage of colonialism, but this changed in the ‹nal months of Kayser’s directorship. On the heels of the Schröder scandal, the short-lived Berlin-based antisemitic newspaper Der Moderne Völkergeist printed a scathing indictment of German colonial policy, alleging a change in recent years from relatively peaceful and productive trade to “zealous commerce, eager for plunder” and “a practice of violence .” The author faulted Kayser in particular for this “unfortunate change.” “Herr Kayser is also a Jew, and this says much already,” he wrote. Referring to Kayser’s apparent reluctance to deal in a timely fashion with the problem of excessive violence by colonial of‹cials, he added that the director possessed “the businesslike spirit of his race: with diplomatic ›exibility , he understood not to cause offense, at all events not where it could develop into inconveniences for himself.” The author also faulted Kayser, “a Jew,” for lacking “an understanding of true justice” and sending “scandalous people” to the colonies.4 Other, more procolonial antisemitic periodicals attacked Kayser in a similar fashion. In an article in October, the Staatsbürger-Zeitung implicitly criticized Kayser’s concessionary policies (see chapter 1) and blamed him for the outbreak of the Peters and Schröder scandals. It then declared its expectation that “henceforth, men who are not even connected through their lineage with the interests and ideas of the German people will not be permitted in our imperial of‹ces.”5 The newspaper also noted, however, that Kayser was not to blame for all recent setbacks and disappointments with German colonialism. Paul Kayser’s exit from the colonial administration in the aftermath of a scandal that revolved around excessive violence, and the antisemitic attacks upon him before and after his departure, point to a hitherto ignored aspect of German colonialism: the in›uential participation in the creation and administration of colonial racial states of individuals who were themselves subjected to racist dehumanizing discourses because of 134 Colonialism, Antisemitism, and Germans of Jewish Descent 4. P. Kufhal, “Christische Gewaltpolitik und...

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