Seminar questions:

How did the Nazis see the Black people?

How did Nazis' anti-Black racism intersect with their overall racial policies?

What were the experiences of Black people during the Third Reich?

Core readings:

Kira Thurman, "When Marian Anderson Defied the Nazis," New Yorker online, July 15, 2020.

Testimony of Marie Nejar

Testimony of Theodor Wonja Michael

Extended readings:

A great place to start: Black Central Europe

Clarence Lusane, Hitler's Black Victims: The Historical Experience of Afro-Germans, European Blacks, Africans and African Americans in the Nazi Era (New York and London: Routledge, 2003).

Esi Edugyan, Half Blood Blues, (London: Serpent's Tail 2011) (novel).

Burleigh, Michael and Wolfgang Wipperman, The Racial State: Germany 1933-45 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991)

Campt, Tina, Other Germans. Black Germans and the Politics of Race, Gender, and Memory in the Third Reich (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2004)

Campt, Tina, 'Pictures of "US"? Blackness, Diaspora, and the Afro-German Subject', in Darlene Clark Hine, Trica Danielle Keaton, and Stephen Small (eds.), Black Europe and the African Diaspora (Illinois: University of Illinois Press, 2009), pp.63-91

Eckert, Andreas, 'Louis Brody (1892-1951) of Cameroon and Mohammed Bayume Hussein (1904-1944) of Former German East Africa', in Dennis Cordell (ed.), The human tradition in modern Africa (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2011), pp.159-74

von Joeden-Forgey, Elisa, 'Race Power in Postcolonial Germany: The German Africa Show and the National Socialist State, 1935-40', in Eric Ames, Marcia Klotz and Lora Wildenthal, Germany's Colonial Pasts (London: University of Nebraska, 2005), pp. 167-88 [E]

Kesting, Robert W., 'The Black Experience During the Holocaust', in Michael Berenbaum and Abraham J. Peck (eds.), The Holocaust and History: The Known, the Unknown, the Disputed, and the Reexamined (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998), pp.358-365, Full version available on google books

Kesting, Robert W., 'Blacks Under the Swastika: A Research Note', Journal of Negro History 83, no. 1 (1998): 84-99

Lewerenz, Susann, 'A Conversation with Theodor Wonja Michael and Nicola Lauré al-Samarai', in BDG Network (eds.), Black Diaspora and Germany (Munster: Edition Assemblage, 2018), pp. 50-66

Lusane, Claude, Hitler's black victims: the historical experiences of Afro-Germans, European Blacks, Africans, and African Americans in the Nazi era(New York: Routledge, 2003)

Massaquoi, Hans, Destined to Witness: Growing Up Black in Nazi Germany (London: Fusion, 2001)

Massaquoi, Hans, 'Chilly Winds', in Terkel Studs, The Good War: An Oral History of World War Two (London: Hamilton, 1985), pp.496-504

Nagl, Tobias, 'Louis Brody and the Black Presence in German Film before 1945', in Patricia Mazon and Reinhild Steingrover (eds.) Not So Plain as Black and White: Afro-German Culture and History, 1890-2000 (Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 2005), pp.109-35

Pommerin, Reiner, 'The Fate of Mixed Blood Children in Germany', German Studies Review 5, no.3 (1982): 315-323

Reiprich, Dorothea and Erika ul Kuo Ngambi, 'Our Father was Cameroonian, our Mother, East Prussian, We are Mulattoes', in May Opitz, Katharina Oguntoye and Dagmar Schultz (eds.), Showing Our Colors. Afro-German Women Speak Out (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1992), pp.56-76

Rosenhaft, Eve, 'Blacks and Gypsies in Nazi Germany: the Limits of the ‘Racial State', History Workshop Journal 1/72 (2011): 161-70

Samples, Susann, 'African Germans in the Third Reich', in Carol Aisha Blackshire-Belay (ed.), The African-German Experience: Critical Essays (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1996), pp.53-69. 

Scheck, Raffael, Hitler's African victims: the German Army massacres of Black French soldiers in 1940 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006)

Scheck, Raffael, '‘They are Just Savages’: German Massacres of Black Soldiers from the French Army in 1940', Journal of Modern History, 77 (2005): 325-344 [E]