New Reissue of Novel About German Colonials/Hereros

[Richard Romeo]

MORENGA
Author: Timm, Uwe 

Review Date: JANUARY 15, 2003
Publisher:New Directions 
Pages: 384 pp. 
Price (hardback): $25.95 
Publication Date: 2/26/03
ISBN: 0-8112-1514-8
ISBN (hardback): 0-8112-1514-8 
Category: FICTION
The German colonial experience in Africa is the
subject of this dense, often fascinating 1983 novel by
the German author (Midsummer Night, 1998, etc.).

Relations between German colonists and both Herero and
Hottentot tribes grow dangerously strained in the
former South West Africa (now Namibia) in the early
20th century—and a 34-year-old "Veterinary Lieutenant
(i.e., "horse doctor') identified as Gottschalk
arrives, with vague hopes of becoming both a helpful
and a civilizing influence (". . . at some point there
will be eyes in this wilderness reading Goethe, ears
listening to Mozart"). Excerpts from Gottschalk's
diary express his opposition to genocidal policies
carried out in attempts to seize African lands, and
are juxtaposed against the tale's semidocumentary
materials. These latter include (rather dry) "Battle
Reports" describing campaigns led by uncompromising
Teutonic commanders General von Trotha and "daredevil"
Colonel Deimling, and (much more interesting)
"Regional Studies," which retell stories of earlier
"conquests" (e.g., the misadventures of the hopeful,
hapless English missionary Goth, and the failed
entrepreneurial efforts of "energetic" surveyor
Treptow). Portrayals of native African heroes (like
the eponymous Herero leader and his Hottentot
counterpart Witbooi) are elliptical and fragmentary,
but succeed nevertheless as components of a syndrome
of ironic contrasts between the African peoples and
their putative superiors. That contrast is succinctly
stated in a scientific report alleging that Hottentot
society cannot be civilized, because within it
"competition is negated by the principle of mutual aid
. . . [as lived by] a human type that devotes all its
intelligence . . . to the single goal of living
comfortably." The thickness of detail and mastered
research are thus efficiently harnessed to Timm's
theme: the devastating consequences of collisions
between what are conventionally called civilization
and primitivism.

An intermittently slow read, but an important early
work in the career of one of the best living German
writers. 

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