Over the course of the nineteenth century, drastic social and political changes, technological innovations, and exposure to non-Western cultures affected Germany's built environment in profound ways. The economic challenges of Germany's colonial project forced architects designing for the colonies to abandon a centuries-long, highly ornamental architectural style in favor of structural technologies and building materials that catered to the local contexts of its remote colonies, such as prefabricated systems. As German architects gathered information about the regions under their influence in Africa, Asia, and the Pacific—during expeditions, at international exhibitions, and from colonial entrepreneurs and officials—they published their findings in books and articles and organized lectures and exhibits that stimulated progressive architectural thinking and shaped the emerging modern language of architecture within Germany itself. Offering in-depth interpretations across the fields of architectural history and postcolonial studies, Itohan Osayimwese considers the effects of colonialism, travel, and globalization on the development of modern architecture in Germany from the 1850s until the 1930s. Since architectural developments in nineteenth-century Germany are typically understood as crucial to the evolution of architecture worldwide in the twentieth century, this book globalizes the history of modern architecture at its founding moment.

This book explores the wide-ranging consequences of Germany's short-lived colonial project for the nation, and European and global history.

As Germany's industrial and military power grew towards the end of the nineteenth century she belatedly went in search of land overseas. In an era when the empires of other European powers were firmly established, Henderson studies why, how and where Germany secured her colonies.

Germany’s Colonial Pasts is a wide-ranging study of German colonialism and its legacies. Inspired by Susanne Zantop’s landmark book Colonial Fantasies, and extending her analyses there, this volume offers new research by scholars from Europe, Africa, and the United States. It also commemorates Zantop’s distinguished life and career (1945–2001). Some essays in this volume focus on Germany’s formal colonial empire in Africa and the Pacific between 1884 and 1914, while others present material from earlier or later periods such as German emigration before 1884 and colonial discourse in German-ruled Polish lands. Several essays examine Germany’s postcolonial era, a complex period that includes the Weimar Republic, Nazi Germany with its renewed colonial obsessions, and the post-1945 era. Particular areas of emphasis include the relationship of anti-Semitism to colonial racism; respectability, sexuality, and cultural hierarchies in the formal empire; Nazi representations of colonialism; and contemporary perceptions of race. The volume’s disciplinary reach extends to musicology, religious studies, film, and tourism studies as well as literary analysis and history. These essays demonstrate why modern Germany must confront its colonial and postcolonial pasts, and how those pasts continue to shape the German cultural imagination.

This collection provides a comprehensive treatment of the German colonial empire and its significance. Leading scholars show not only how the colonies influenced metropolitan life and the character of German politics during the Bismarckian and Wilhelmine eras (1871–1918), but also how colonial mentalities and practices shaped later histories during the Nazi era. In introductory essays, editors Geoff Eley and Bradley Naranch survey the historiography and broad developments in the imperial imaginary of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Contributors then examine a range of topics, from science and the colonial state to the disciplinary constructions of Africans as colonial subjects for German administrative control. They consider the influence of imperialism on German society and culture via the mass-marketing of imperial imagery; conceptions of racial superiority in German pedagogy; and the influence of colonialism on German anti-Semitism. The collection concludes with several essays that address geopolitics and the broader impact of the German imperial experience. Contributors. Dirk Bönker, Jeff Bowersox, David Ciarlo, Sebastian Conrad, Christian S. Davis, Geoff Eley, Jennifer Jenkins, Birthe Kundus, Klaus Mühlhahn, Bradley Naranch, Deborah Neill, Heike Schmidt, J. P. Short, George Steinmetz, Dennis Sweeney, Brett M. Van Hoesen, Andrew Zimmerman

Doctoral Thesis / Dissertation from the year 2020 in the subject History of Europe - Colonialism, grade: 2,3, University of Hildesheim (Geschichte), language: English, abstract: This doctoral thesis starts with a general introduction and will end with a general conclusion, which summarizes the main output of the entire work. Each chapter will begin with a special introduction and finish with a partial conclusion. The study set off a description of the historical background of Germany's colonial policy in Africa and the circumstances which surrounded its conquest and exit. Furthermore the question of multiple collective memories will be raised up from the interwar to the post war period. In a next step the strategic goals of West and East Germany's Africa policies since 1949 will be analyzed especially with regard to their interests. The EC-ACP relationship became much more relevant starting up with 1960. This process already exist until today. Taken together, in 2016 the 28 EU member states and 79 ACP countries constitute more than fifty percent of the 193 UN members states1. In the last part, this work demonstrates the German contribution to development policies in general and how mechanism worked within the framework of the association policies pursued by Germany with the so called ACP countries. Germany began its colonial expansion in the 1880s under Bismack's leadership, encouraged not only by bourgeoisie but also by gentry. Germany occupies a place in Africa's historical contemporary experiences. It was in Berlin in 1884/85 when the European great powers met in order to split up Africa into a patchwork of colonial possessions which later became states in theory. It was called the “Scramble” for Africa. The Conference also marked the dawn of one of the most brutalising and humiliating experiences endured by Africans: colonization. And although Germany was only a “minor” player at the Berlin Conference, the meeting had profound impact on the African governance, economics, culture politics and psyche. There is a lot of merit in the argument that Africa's position in the global economy, its place among other continents, its role in world politics and international relations in general, are related to the decisions in 1884/85. In short, it is not possible for Africa and Africans to say “good-bye to Berlin” because its legacies-tangible and intangible-continue to stare us in the face both within and outside Africa. In the Cold War period (1945-1989), the “German Question”, that is, the division of Germany into communist east and capitalist west, also had an impact directly and indirectly on Africa and its populations.

Germany developed a large colonial empire over the last thirty years of the 19th century, spanning regions of the west coast of Africa to its east coast and beyond. Largely forgotten for many years, recent intense debates about Africa's cultural heritage in European museums have brought this period of African and German history back into the spotlight. German Colonialism in Africa and its Legacies brings much-needed context to these debates, exploring perspectives on the architecture, art, urbanism, and visual culture of German colonialism in Africa, and its legacies in postcolonial and present-day Namibia, Cameroon, and Germany. The first in-depth exploration of the designed and visual aspects of German colonialism, the book presents a series of essays combining formal analyses of painting, photography, performance art, buildings, and space with the discourse analysis approach associated with postcolonial theory. Covering the entire period from the build-up to colonialism in the early-19th century to the present, subjects covered range from late-19th-century German colonial paintings of African landscapes and people to German land appropriation through planning and architectural mechanisms, and from indigenous African responses to colonial architecture, to explorations of the legacies of German colonialism by contemporary artists today. This powerful and revealing collection of essays will encourage new research on this under-explored topic, and demonstrate the importance of historical research to the present, especially with regards to ongoing debates about the presence of material legacies of colonialism in Western culture, museum collections, and immigration policies.

This book contributes to global history by examining the connected histories of German and United States colonial empires from the early nineteenth century to the Nazi era. It looks at multiple and multidirectional flows, transfers, and circulations of ideas, people, and practices as Germany and the US were embedded in, and created by, an interconnected world of empires. This relationship was not exceptional, but emblematic of the diverse entanglements that created colonial globality. Colonial entanglements between Germany and the United States took on many forms, but these shared and intersecting histories have been underanalyzed. Traditionally, Germany and the United States have been understood to have taken, respectively, an authoritarian and liberal path into modernity. But there is no neat dichotomy, as the contributors to this book illustrate. There are many more similarities than have previously been appreciated – and they are the result of multilayered entanglements made visible via conquest, settler societies, racialization, and rule of difference. Building on present historiographies of empires, colonialism, and globalization, this book introduces new analytical possibilities for examining these two relatively understudied empires alongside each other, as well as at their intersections. Chapter 1 is available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.

An exploration of anti-Semitic behaviors in the German empire in the pre-WWI period