With the onset of the American revolutionary war, Hessian soldiers were sent to America to snuff out the American rebellion. During their campaign, they met, and were influenced by, both American slaveowners and American slaves. They were introduced to a new idea of blackness, of the “Negro” or Neger, and the idea of blackness as something inferior. However, this was not a sentiment the Hessians were unfamiliar with, nor was it their first encounter with Black people. What the Hessians viewed as blackness could be described as the Moor. Maria Diedrich writes, “As the terminology they originally used–Mohren— illustrates, the Africans who came to live in Europe, though almost as a rule purchased as slaves, were associated not primarily with slavery or savagery but with the black Magi; the black saints and madonnas in German churches… they perceived the Moors as privileged, even pampered, individuals.” (Diedrich 98). Moors in German culture were often associated with power because, since they were often viewed as “exotic” and “magical” people, they were sought after in German-speaking courts as a way of establishing the power of a lord or duke. However, I believe they were still viewed as less important than the newly educated white Europeans, having just emerged from the Renaissance era. Regardless, the Hessians experience of blackness in America was vastly different from their idea of blackness in Europe. They now had a chance to interact with the Neger, and see them being abused, forced to work, and generally degraded and dehumanized by the white American slaveowners. This, I believe, combined with their interactions with free or self-liberated slaves who aligned themselves with the Hessians in the hope of either being given work to provide for themselves and their newly liberated families or joined the Hessian military force and moved to Germany, caused the Hessians to stop and examine their ideas of race and blackness.
To explain this, Diedrich says, “… the transformational power of black agency and its influence on white perceptions… The Negro/slave resurfaced as refugee, laborer, groom, forager, and guide, all assignations focusing on military rank, social class, and performance rather than race.” (Diedrich 101). Thus, self-liberators were supposedly given a chance to work in a system that sorted them not by race, but by their rank and ability. However, this ideal was not always the reality. A Hessian officer, Captain John Erwald, kept a detailed account of his experiences in America during the war, and Diedrich comments on his accounts by saying, “Cultural “othering” becomes a self-protective move to retain [Erwald’s] authority as a white European and officer… [The slaves] enter the text only as informers, spies, and workers… but he leaves intact the hierarchy he as an officer constructs between military and nonmilitary action, between a white European performance of the superior military task and the… inferior service work performed by the army’s black allies.” (Diedrich 104-105). In this sense, while Black people were given jobs, they were never given jobs that the Hessians deemed as equal to white men’s jobs, in order to keep the idea of white supremacy both in the minds of the African Americans, but also to reaffirm the idea in the minds of white Europeans. This proves that the Hessians truly did have an idea of white superiority before and during the American revolutionary war, although sometimes Diedrich’s writing tried to tip-toe around this issue. One criticism of her work says, “…Diedrich went out of her way to make race and the ill-treatment of Black people look like an American construct that the Hessians got trapped into as opposed to admitting that these ideals existed in the homeland, even with Black people existing in high ranking positions.” (Victor 2). However, this idea of white superiority would only skyrocket with the onset of German colonialism in Africa.
The German colonial period marked the beginning of a true lack of compassion for, and cruelty towards, Africans by German people. To justify colonization of Africa, Germans used many explanations, most of them centering around sympathy for the intellectually superior Volk Ohne Raum (people without space). Olusoga describes, “With the American experience as their example, a swathe of the nation’s philosophers, geographers, and politicians… that the colonial frontier might become a new arena in which the German spirit could undergo a revitalization, in terms similar to those which they believed had forged the rugged character of white America.” (Olusoga 108). Thus, the Germans planned on using African land to expand their empire and let their people explore, without any regard for the Africans living on that land. I believe they did, however, have a plan for the Africans. Zimmerman wrote, “The belief that cotton required black labor, … contained a grain of truth: the production of cotton for the mechanized textile industry did require the levels of control exercised over black cotton growers in both slavery and freedom.” (Zimmerman 1371). The Germans used this line of thinking to justify their colonialism in many ways. They believed that they needed the land for expansion, and thus would need to grow crops on this land. A growing textile industry suggested that they grow cotton, which was a perfect opportunity to the Germans, since they believed cotton to be a black crop. Thus, they could provide the “poor”, “savage” Africans with work in order to give them a sense of purpose , although I believe in reality they simply wanted to put the available Africans to use, and keep them under white European control. Subsequently, the German desire and justification for colonialism was born.
During this time, Africans were subjected to immeasurable horrors by the German colonists. They were beaten, raped, forced into labor, overall abused and dehumanized. Olusoga comments, “The racial contempt that both settlers and soldiers felt towards the Africans was compounded by their frustrations, impatience and greed.” (Olusoga 117). The African genocide, and subsequent imprisonment of Africans in what I would call the ‘original concentration camps’ lead to the deaths of a shocking amount of Africans, an amount we may never truly know, as many of these deaths were not reported by the colonists. Many Germans justified these killings with their idea of white superiority, saying “…that perhaps the inner cultural weakness of the native races of Africa, America and Asia made them passive, and therefore incapable of withstanding the European assault.” (Olusoga 110). Mixed-race children, born from either the rape of African women, or true relationships between white colonists and African women, were viewed as a threat to German society, because the German believed these children inherited the “savage”, “unintelligent” ways of their mothers. One German wrote, “Mischlinge should be brought no closer to the whites than absolutely necessary,… Yet the thought of giving these poor abandoned children a home… gives [the German teachers] the courage to carry on and to fight against the lies and the laziness that infects these children’s blood only too greatly.” (O’Donnelle 72). These ideas of African savagery and unintelligence were dragged into the twentieth century, and minutely tweaked the post-World War I era.
After Germany’s defeat in World War I, France was given control of the German, material-rich Rheinland. The French decided that they would use African troops in the occupation, both as a way to keep the armed, militarily-trained men away from their homeland, where they could instigate rebellion, and as a psychological attack on the Germans, who they knew viewed the Africans as “savage” and “inferior”. They believed this would be both an effective way to scare the Germans into submission, since the Africans were viewed as powerful warriors, and I also believe as an assault to their egos, since the people the Germans had once subjugated and held under their thumb now controlled their everyday lives. This occupation was referred to as the “Black Shame”, and led to a transformation of the German’s ideas of blackness. The Germans took to their media and wrote slandering articles about the African soldiers, displaying their contempt for their savagery, and lack of control, as well as the danger they presented to the pure German race. They viewed the Africans as wild, sexual creatures, who had seen and longed after German women for so long, and now had their chance to be with them. “The dichotomy set up implicitly within this discourse opposed germans as a white, civilized Kulturvolk to blacks as an uncivilized or primitive Naturvolk characterized by savagery and unbridled passions, appetites, and instincts.” (Campt 52). From this stemmed another interesting perspective, one which Campt describes by saying, “…the white German woman was presented as the channel of this threat. … she functions as both an active and a passive conduit of Black male sexuality… On the other hand, Blacks’ access to white European women through service in the occupying forces represented another form of racial parity–that is, a sexual equality between Black and white men in relation to (or perhaps in the possession of) white women.” (Campt 55). Based on this logic, women were now the targets of increased protection, so that German purity could remain intact, and also increased discrimination, so that women who did have relationships with Black men were ostracized, and set an example for other German women. Just like during the colonial period, the mixing of the races was viewed as terrible and terrifying.
There were also scientists who did research on racial mixing, to prove to the public how dangerous it was, but their findings were far from what they wanted. Campt writes, “[Fischer’s] conclusions were that… there was no evidence of the dominance of one race over the other…. thus also rejecting the assertion of “biological inferiority” of mixed-race people. Yet in a chapter on “the psychology of the Rehoboth” (which lacked any empirical basis), Fischer also remarked on the mental aptitude of the group… he made the dubious assertion that the “cultural” psychological and intellectual aptitude of these individuals was inferior to that of “pure whites”” (Campt 40). Because there was no biological factor, or even a factor of intellectual inferiority, Fischer, and possibly many other scientists, published studies that suggested mixed race children lacked “cultural” intelligence, despite the fact that there was no evidence to back up their claims. I believe this was a tactic to assure Germans that they were superior in some way.
To compare and contrast these eras, when the Germans thought of the Moor, an enslaved, but highly revered African, they thought of them as interesting and exotic. This perception changed to a more negative one when they thought of the African native, as they saw someone who was ready to be subdued, who was not locked into their idea of an enslaved Neger, as someone who was a little too free for their liking. That extremely negative view of Africans is very similar to the post World War One era, when they saw the African occupation soldiers, they saw a terrifying and dangerous threat. This was different from the colonialist era perception of black people only in the fact that the Germans now viewed black people as a physical threat, instead of a passive threat through racial mixing.
In conclusion, the views of blackness harbored by the Hessians were vastly different from those harbored by post-World War I era Germans. However, there is an underlying theme of black inferiority that permeates throughout this entire time period, and beyond. White people have always viewed black people as some form of “less”, be it less intellectual, less reserved, less “cultural”, even less human. I believe it is easy, then, to see that as black people gained more authority and self-advocacy in the eyes of the white Germans, the Germans retaliated and spread ideas of African dangerousness and inferiority, in order to console themselves and protect their own position of power and their identity as “the superior white race”.
Works Cited
Campt, Tina. Other Germans. Chapter 1: “‘Resonant Echoes’: The Rhineland Campaign and Converging Specters of Racial Mixture”
Diedrichs, Maria. “From American Slaves to Hessian Subjects: Silenced Black Narratives of the American Revolution.” Germany and the Black Diaspora: Points of Contact, 1250-1914. Ed. Mischa Honeck, Martin Klimke, and Anne Kuhlmann. New York: Berghahn Books, 2013: 92-111.
O’Donnell, Krista Molly. “The First Besatzungskinder: Afro-German Children, Colonial Childrearing Practices, And Racial Policy in German Southwest Africa, 1890-1914.” Not so Plain as Black and White: Afro-German Culture and History, 1890-2000. Ed. Patricia M. Mazón and Reinhild Steingröver. New York: Boydell&Brewer, 2005: 61-81.
Olusoga, David, Casper Erichsen. The Kaiser’s Holocaust: Germany’s Forgotten Genocide and the Colonial Roots of Nazism. New York: Faber&Faber, 2011.
Victor, Sharisse. “Re: Reading Blog Week 4: German – American Encounters.” Web log comment. Courses.agnesscott.edu. Agnes Scott Moodle, 17 Sept. 2016. Web. 1 Oct. 2016.
Zimmermann, Andrew. “A German Alabama in Africa: The Tuskegee Expedition to German Togo and the Transnational Origins of West African Cotton Growers.” The American Historical Review 110.5 (2005): 1362-98.
