Blackness in Interwar Germany

Description

Germany’s past in relation to Blackness is often dismissed as peripheral: its colonial enterprise lasted merely three decades, and, until the end of World War Two, the Black population in Germany was small. Yet debates about Blackness, especially in the 1920s, were part of wider discussions in which social and political problems were articulated through race—problems the Nazis later claimed to have answers for.

Through a deep exploration of Germany’s imperial experiences in Africa, Stefan Ihrig reveals that ideas about Blackness played a significant role in German history, even when there were few Black people in Germany or, as under Hitler, Africa largely fell outside the regime’s predatory gaze. He examines the Weimar period, when Blackness served as a symbol—and to some extent the embodiment—of the Jazz Age. And he analyses how anxieties about racial mixing, the New Woman and the perceived corrupting influence of a Black and American modernity fuelled the cultural backlash in the years up to Hitler’s appointment as Chancellor. As Ihrig uncovers, anti-Blackness was a central theme in Nazi discourse.

This illuminating investigation is both a prehistory of the Third Reich and a history of an important, often overlooked dimension of modern Germany.

Reviews

‘An important cultural history of anti-Black racism and the discourse around jazz culture in the Weimar era. Drawing on an impressively broad study of popular journals, Ihrig shows how anti-Blackness was deeply intertwined with anti-feminism and antisemitism. Blackness in Interwar Germany demonstrates that anti-Black racism was no mere “also” feature of the Nazi worldview, but a core element of their racist ideology.’ — Jonathan Skolnik, author of Jewish Pasts, German Fiction

‘Stefan Ihrig’s thorough, elegantly written book synthesises the literature on Blackness in Weimar and Nazi Germany while offering pertinent arguments of the author’s own. By researching the contemporary press, he draws connections to antifeminism and antisemitism and contextualises anti-black racism within German culture.’ — Moritz Foellmer, author of Culture in the Third Reich

‘A fascinating history of largely ignored Blackness in the Weimar Republic, adding profound insights to the impact by those living in the belly of the beast on Nazi-Germany’s Arian obsession.’ — Henning Melber, Director Emeritus of the Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation, and author of The Long Shadow of German Colonialism

Author(s)

Stefan Ihrig is a historian of German and Turkish history. His book Atatürk in the Nazi Imagination has been translated into five languages, and Justifying Genocide won the 2017 Dr. Sona Aronian Book Prize for Excellence in Armenian Studies. He divides his time between the Eastern Mediterranean and northern France.