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9 Reduced and forgotten On 27 October 1927, the School of Oriental Languages had existed for 40 years. The development of discipline continues vigorously, but the development of the teaching personnel leaves much to be desired. I think you understood me. The secretary of the SOL, Wilhelm Hildebrandt, in a letter sent to Carl Meinhof in Hamburg on 31 October 1927, alluding to the marriage of Mtoro Bakari and the consequences of Carl Meinhof’s decision to leave Berlin Observing how society changed over many years and responding to the varying reactions of the audiences he lectured to, Mtoro Bakari did not apparently anticipate any advantages from engaging in political activity. One reason for the fact that he did not change his approach is the surge of racism which he faced after the defeat of Germany. Agitation in the press against the terms imposed by the victors exploited and reinforced the feelings of having been humiliated, in particular between 1920 and 1923, when false allegations were being launched against members of the West African contingents of the French Army stationed in southwestern Germany, accusing them of raping German women. These protests even expanded into the English press where they came to be known as “The black horror on the Rhine”, i.e. the title of a booklet published in 1920 and reprinted during the following years. Ironically, it was authored by Edmund Dené Morel, who had been one of the leading figures in the successful campaign against the brutality of the colonial regime in the Congo under the Belgian king.1 One of the earliest attacks on the “black horror” campaign occurred in the sessions of the German National Assembly in May 1920, when Luise Zietz, member of the Independent Social Democratic Party (USPD), 1 For the influence of the “black horror” (Schwarze Schmach) campaign in Germany see Christian Koller, ‚Von Wilden aller Rassen niedergemetzelt‘: Die Diskussion um die Verwendung von Kolonialtruppen in Europa zwischen Rassismus, Kolonial- und Militärpolitik (1914-1930), Stuttgart, 2001, 285ff.; Eberhardt Kettlitz, Afrikanische Soldaten aus deutscher Sicht seit 1871: Stereotype, Vorurteile, Feindbilder und Rassismus, Frankfurt, 2007, 96-100; Tina Campt, Pascal Grosse & Yara-Colette Lemke-Muniz de Faria, ‘Blacks, Germans, and the Politics of Imperial Imagination, 1920-60’, in S. Friedrichsmeyer, S. Lennox & S. Zantop (eds.), The Imperialist Imagination, Ann Arbor, 1998, 208-214. N I N E 96 denounced colonial crimes and argued that the campaign was not only hypocritical but also led to the spread of racial hatred1.2 Writing a newspaper article on behalf of the African Solidarity Association one year later, Louis Brody from Cameroon mentioned that an African had been attacked after being wrongly identified as a member of the French Army. In his eyes, this incident was related to the negative newspaper reports which caused Germans to regard “Blacks” as a “savage and wild race”. Therefore, he pointed out that “natives of the former German colonies” had served as soldiers and that, after the defeat of Germany, African immigrants were suffering, too, since it was not easy for them to return to “the occupied colonies” where they “are being treated politically as Germans”.3 Mtoro Bakari documented his experience with the nationalistic upsurge in Germany in the letter he sent to the German government in May 1922. Being mainly an application for the official backing of his lectures, it also appears to have been a well-timed attempt at probing the renewed possibility of working as a lecturer at the SOL where Eduard Sachau had vacated the position of director in 1920 and Carl Velten had resigned in 1921. Evidently, Mtoro Bakari preferred to keep a distance from the authorities in various ways. Judging from the handwriting, he had asked another person to write the letter for him. This fact can also be deduced from the use of formally correct German and the reference to himself in the third person – signalling a lower social status in relation to prospective readers. In particular, he tried to court their favour by changing some of his personal particulars:4 To the Distinguished Government of the German Reich, Berlin. Petition of the language lecturer at the School of Oriental Languages Mtoro bin Bakari for protection and support in obtaining subsistence. The undersigned, your humble servant, Mtoro bin Bakari, has lived in Germany since 1901 and was, as his documents show, employed by the former German government to teach Swahili to people travelling to East Africa. Thus he had a dependable income. But when the war...

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