_Creating Germans Abroad: Cultural Policies and National Identity in Namibia_

[pynchonoid]

H-NET BOOK REVIEW
Published by H-SAfrica at h-net.msu.edu (July 2003)

Daniel Joseph Walther. _Creating Germans Abroad:
Cultural Policies
and National Identity in Namibia_. Athens: Ohio
University Press,
2002. xiv + 268 pp. Bibliography, index. $55.00
(cloth), ISBN
0-8214-1458-5;  $26.95 (paper), ISBN 0-8214-1459-3.

Reviewed for H-SAfrica by Henning Melber, The Nordic
Africa
Institute, Uppsala, Sweden

The Making of a German South West African Settler
Society and Its
Identities

A hundred years ago, in January 1904, despair among
the colonized
Herero in German South West Africa had reached such an
extent that
they rose in arms against the colonial power.  Both
the August 1904
battle at the Waterberg and the "Vernichtungsbefehl"
(extermination
order) issued by General von Trotha now date back
almost a century.
The recent debates over compensation for historical
injustices have
motivated a group of Herero representatives in Namibia
to initiate a
claim, in a private case at a U.S. court, for
compensation against
the German state (which has in the meantime refused to
accept the
claim) and several companies they accuse of having
benefited, at
that time, from the oppressive nature of German
colonialism and its
exploitative character.  The case is currently in its
preparatory
stage but already highly publicized and of
far-reaching general
legal interest.  Hence this is an opportune moment for
Walther's
book.  It draws attention to the German South Western
frontier
identity emerging at the beginning of the twentieth
century in a
territory which, after a long and bitter struggle,
finally achieved
independence in March 1990 as a sovereign Namibian
state--a state
that inherited a German-speaking minority among its
citizenry.

Previous to this and partiularly of late, there have
been solid
analytical efforts, especially by German-speaking
scholars, on the
role and (self-)perception of the Namibia-Germans.[1]
In contrast to
these other earlier approaches, the author reviewed
here puts an
emphasis on the formative stages of German settler
identity from the
early twentieth century until World War II. [...] It
is largely a
compilation of--more or less interesting--quotations
from archival
sources, which lack a systematic analytical rigor.  By
the end, the
reader has learned more about the emerging mindset of
the German
South Westerns, but has few conclusions at hand that
might allow for
a theoretically based insight.  [...] With reference
to what happened in terms of the colonial genocide
from 1904 onward, it is particularly regrettable that
Walther does
not concentrate more on the debates over "native
policy," either
those between the South Westerns and the German
colonial authorities
in Berlin, or those within each of these groups (who
displayed
considerable internal differences of viewpoint).  Paul
Rohrbach, as
an influential advocate of a settler colony, is not
featured as
prominently as the ideas he represented merit,[2] nor
is von Trotha
and the impact of his "Vernichtungsbefehl" (in terms
of not only
warfare but the subsequent debate surrounding the aims
and
intentions of the German "civilizing mission").  The
genocide and
its ideology play hardly any role as a thematic focus,
neither in
the related debate on the aims and practices of the
colonial war nor
in the following treatment of the "natives."  But the
native policy
certainly had a marked impact on the definition and
application of
"Deutschtum" in the colony. In addition to these
omissions, some of
the semantics are far from comforting.  Walther refers
to the
beginning of armed resistance by the Herero as
"hostilities broke
out" (p. 17), while the primary phase of colonial
subjugation during
the early 1890s is unfortunately termed "the
pacification of the
Africans" (p. 14).  Similarly misplaced is the
reference to
"mulattos" (p. 4), a term which did not appear in any
local
vocabulary. [...] 


...read it all:
<http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.cgi?path=160171064253034>



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