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3 At the School of Oriental Languages in Berlin My student and friend called Velten came and told me: “Please, Sheikh Amour, let’s make friends and go out together”, and I replied: “Okay, sure”. So, we went around and he introduced me to German manners. […] In Berlin there are steel bridges, trees, ships, and very many dogs. Berlin is part of the mainland, not an island, and it is a nice place, not bad at all. During the cold season, however, the water becomes hard like stone, and the rain would fall like pebbles, and another kind of rain is like slices of coconut flesh. The Swahili lecturer, Amour bin Nassor, in 1892 Being much smaller than London and approximating the size of New York and Paris at the end of the nineteenth century, Berlin, the German capital, was, for a time, the fourth largest metropolis in the world. With almost two million people living in the urban areas plus the same number in the wider surroundings, it was the most important city in Germany. The second one, Hamburg, grew even more rapidly, profiting from the increase in maritime trade and thus reaching a total population of 900000 shortly after 1900. By that time, scientific and technological progress had begun to provide modern cities with such utilities as electricity, underground railways and modern sewage systems. Corresponding economic advancements, based on the development of capitalism, contributed to the rise of the German nation state, which had been founded in 1871, and facilitated its imperialist policies. While Germany was catching up with other European powers, Berlin was the centre of the political and institutional developments which ensued. The idea of establishing a language school for diplomats and interpreters emerged only in 1883. Originally, the proposed institution was to concentrate on important Middle Eastern and Asian languages and, in contrast to the university, to combine theoretical teaching with practical instruction – in Turkish, Arabic, Persian, Hindustani, Japanese and Chinese. The enthusiasm about Germany’s new role as a colonizing power proved to be a fertile ground for the suggestion of a well-known colonialist, Carl Peters, to include Bantu languages into the syllabus. A few months later the Seminar für orientalische Sprachen (School of Oriental Languages, SOL), where Mtoro Bakari was later to be employed, started work, the first semester beginning in T H R E E 28 October 1887; this included a grammar course and exercises in Swahili.1 While the foundation of the SOL had not primarily been the result of deliberate state intervention directed towards extending imperial influence, the addition of African languages to the syllabus was clearly motivated by colonial aspirations that were increasingly finding favour in Germany at the time. Attached to the University of Berlin during the fifty years of its existence, the main purpose of the SOL was to offer vocational training for German personnel serving in foreign countries. Over time, the school widened the range of courses by including geography, economics, law, and other subjects relating to non-European countries, increasingly focussing on the German colonies. This process ended at the beginning of the First World War, after which these colonies were transferred to other European powers and put under the protection of the League of Nations. The basic difference between teaching personnel was that between “teachers” (Lehrer), who were supposed to do theoretical teaching and research, and “lecturers” (Lektoren), who mainly worked as instructors and assistants. While this distinction characterized linguistic studies – with native speakers of non-European and European languages normally being employed as lecturers – there were also a growing number of associate teachers in other fields of education. Occasionally, teachers were endowed with the title “professor”. Being the only institution of its kind in Germany for more than twenty years, its indirect contribution to the colonization process was noteworthy. This was especially true in regard to German East Africa where, besides German, Swahili came to be used as an official language. The policy of spreading this language, however, grew out of glaring contradictions, which have not yet been fully researched. Swahili was made an object of academic study at a time when the idea of African languages being “primitive” and simple must have become more general, along with the rising interest in the colonies. From the beginning, it was the main medium for the colonizers in communicating with Africans and for gaining control over the country as quickly as possible, since they had little alternatives but to use this language.2...

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