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II. Colonial Studies in Imperial Germany

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2017

Jake W. Spidle Jr.
Jake W. Spidle Jr.*
Affiliation:
Department of History at the University of New Mexico
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Extract

During the peace deliberations at Versailles in 1919, the victorious Allies claimed for themselves the right of drawing up a balance sheet on the record of the German Reich as a colonial power. The tribunal, of course, was hardly objective or impartial. Four and a half years of bitter warfare and the concomitant propaganda had preordained the decision eventually reached. As has recently been noted, “The Germans lost their colonies on the fields of Liege and in the blackened ruins of Louvain. Huns could not be trusted with the sacred task of civilizing other peoples.” With few dissenting voices the Versailles peacemakers concurred in the opinion expressed several years before the war by a German Reichstag member that the entire history of the German colonial empire is a long, sorry spectacle of embezzlement, deception, debauched cruelties, sexual abuses, frightful mistreatment of the natives of the colonies—things which form no pages of glory.

Type
New Perspectives on German Education
Information
History of Education Quarterly , Volume 13 , Issue 3 , Fall 1973 , pp. 231 - 248
Copyright
Copyright © 1973 by New York University 

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References

Notes

1. Stengers, Jean, “British and German Imperial Rivalry: a Conclusion,” in Gifford, Prosser and Louis, William Rogers (eds.), Britain and Germany in Africa: Imperial Rivalry and Colonial Rule (New Haven, 1967), p. 345.Google Scholar

2. Stenographische Berichte der Verhandlungen des deutschen Reichstages, vol. 218, November 26, 1906, pp. 3973–74.Google Scholar

3. Louis, William Rogers, Great Britain and Germany's Lost Colonies, 1914–1919 (Oxford, 1967), p. 35.Google Scholar

4. Hamilton, Louis, “German Colonial Policy,” United Empire, 4 (1913): 165.Google Scholar

5. For information on educational developments in Germany in the 25 years before the war, see Paulsen, Friedrich, Geschichte des gelehrten Unterrichts (2 vols., Berlin and Leipzig, 1921), II, pp. 695–797; Lehmann, Rudolf, Die pädagogische Bewegung der Gegenwart: ihre Ursprünge und ihr Charakter (Munich, 1922); Nohl, Herman, Die pädagogische Bewegung in Deutschland und ihre Theorie (Frankfurt, 1935); and Alexander, Thomas and Parker, Beryl, The New Education in the German Republic (New York, 1929). Also, much interesting information is contained in Masur, Gerhard, Imperial Berlin (New York, 1970) and Fritz Ringer's challenging The Decline of the Mandarins: the German Academic Community, 1890–1933 (Cambridge, 1969), esp. chapter one.Google Scholar

6. Meyer, Adolph, The Development of Education in the Twentieth Century (2nd ed., New York, 1949), p. 236 and Masur, , Imperial Berlin, pp. 187ff.Google Scholar

7. On this point see Meyer, Adolph, Modern European Educators and Their Work (New York, 1934), pp. 81–159 and Nohl, , Die pädagogische Bewegung, passim .Google Scholar

8. For detailed discussion of the colonial crisis, see Crothers, George, The German Elections of 1907 (New York, 1941); Epstein, Klaus, “Erzberger and the German Colonial Scandals, 1905–1910,” English Historical Review, 74 (1959): 637–63; and Spidle, Jake W., “The German Colonial Civil Service: Organization, Selection, and Training,” (Unpub. Ph.D. dissertation, Stanford University, 1972), chapters 4 and 5.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

9. For the Peters case, see Bair, Henry, “Carl Peters and German Colonialism: A Study of the Ideas and Actions of Imperialism,” (Unpub. Ph.D. dissertation, Stanford University, 1968), pp. 205–08.Google Scholar

10. Berliner Neuesten Nachrichten and Badische Landeszeitung, September 5, 1906. (Clippings in Dernburg Personalakten, Beiakt 3, Band 1, held in the Bundesarchiv, Koblenz.) Google Scholar

11. Available in print: Bernhard Dernburg, Koloniale Lehrjahre (Stuttgart, 1907) and Koloniale Erziehung (Munich, 1907).Google Scholar

12. Dernburg, , Koloniale Lehrjahre, p. 14.Google Scholar

13. Ibid., pp. 15–16.Google Scholar

14. Westermann, Dietrich, “Zum fünfundzwanzigjährigen Bestehen des Seminars für orientalische Sprachen in Berlin,” Koloniale Rundschau, 10 (1912): 593. For short sketches of the Seminar and its work, see the Westermann article; Winkler, Heinrich, “Fünfundzwanzig Jahre Seminar für orientalische Sprachen,” Zeitschrift für Kolonialpolitik, Kolonialrecht, und Kolonialwirtschaft, 14 (1912): 864–71; and Schnee, Heinrich (ed.), Deutsches Kolonial-lexikon (3 vols., Leipzig, 1920), III, pp. 347–48.Google Scholar

15. The development of the curriculum at the Seminar can be traced through the annual issues of its Mitteilungen des Seminars für orientalische Sprachen, which first appeared in 1898.Google Scholar

16. Koloniale Rundschau, 4 (1912): 594.Google Scholar

17. Kolonial-lexikon, III, p. 348.Google Scholar

18. Die Deutsche Kolonialzeitung (January 25, 1919): 55–56. (Hereafter cited as DKZ.) Google Scholar

19. Spidle, , “German Colonial Civil Service,” pp. 283–86.Google Scholar

20. The journal-newsletter of the Colonial School, the basic source for information about it, was named Der Deutsche Kulturpionier. (Hereafter cited as Kulturpionier.) Google Scholar

21. For a short sketch of the Kolonialschule, see Kolonial-lexikon, III, p. 281. For a more detailed appraisal see the booklet of Schanz, Moritz, Die Deutsche Kolonialschule in Witzenhausen (Berlin, 1910).Google Scholar

22. For a statement of the objectives of the school, see the following pamphlets and articles by its founder Fabarius, where its general ethos comes through: Eine deutsche Kolonialschule: Denkschrift im Auftrage des Evangelischen Afrika-Vereins (Coblenz, 1897); Die Deutsche Kolonialschule und ihre Aufgabe (Braunschweig, 1908); and Kulturpionier, 4 (1903/04, no. 1): 13ff. Google Scholar

23. See the tables contained in Kulturpionier, 10 (1910, no. 2/3): 62–87.Google Scholar

24. Ibid. Google Scholar

25. Schanz, , Deutsche Kolonialschule, p. 34.Google Scholar

26. Fabarius, , Eine deutsche Kolonialschule, pp. 17–20, and Koloniale Zeitschrift, 2 (1901): 318–19.Google Scholar

27. Kulturpionier, 4 (1903/04, no. 1): 13–14.Google Scholar

28. Ibid., 1 (1900): 19.Google Scholar

29. For a typical curriculum, see any issue of the Kulturpionier.Google Scholar

30. See Meyer, , Modern European Educators, chapters 6 through 9; Alexander, , The New Education, passim; and Fishman, Sterling, “Alfred Lichtwark and the Founding of the German Art Education Movement,” History of Education Quarterly, 6 (1966): 3–17.Google Scholar

31. There is, of course, a large bibliography on the Young Germany movement. Perhaps the best general survey is contained in Laqueur, Walter, Young Germany: A History of the German Youth Movement (New York, 1962).Google Scholar

32. See his Dreissig Jahre Hamburger Wissenschaft, 1891–1921 (2 vols., Hamburg, 1923–24) and Bolland, Jurgen, “Die Gründung der Hamburgischen Universität,” in Universität Hamburg, 1919–1969 (Hamburg, 1969), pp. 17–105 for details of the establishment of the Kolonialinstitut .Google Scholar

33. Professor Thilenius of the Professorenrat of the institute. See his speech in full in Hamburgisches Kolonialinstitut, Beamten und Unterricht: Rede, gehalten bei der Eroffnungsfeier des Hamburgischen Kolonialinstituts (Hamburg, 1909), pp. 29–33.Google Scholar

34. For the curriculum of the Kolonialinstitut, see its annual report, Hamburgisches Kolonialinstitut, Bericht über das erste Studienjahr, 1908–1909 (Hamburg, 1909). Subsequent annual volumes run through 1913–1914.Google Scholar

35. It included, among others, the historian Erich Marcks, the Orientalist Carl Becker, the linguist Carl Meinhof, the geographer Siegfried Passarge, and the economist Karl Rathgen.Google Scholar

36. See Bolland, , “Die Gründung,” and Melle, , Dreissig Jahre.Google Scholar

37. Hamilton, Louis, “Colonial Education in Germany—With a Plea for a British Imperial Colonial University,” United Empire, 2 (1911): 38.Google Scholar

38. The Institute's program was greatly abbreviated during the war, then it was absorbed within the new university established in Hamburg in 1919.Google Scholar

39. DKZ (December 5, 1908): 854 and (July 10, 1909): 470. See also Fleischmann, Max, “Der Verwaltung der deutschen Kolonien,” Jahrbuch über die deutschen Kolonien, 1909, pp. 56–57.Google Scholar

40. DKZ (August 10, 1907): 322.Google Scholar

41. Ibid. (August 31, 1907): 350–52.Google Scholar

42. Ibid. (July 18, 1908): 516–17.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

43. (Berlin) Tägliche Rundschau, (April 15, 1906): 2.Google Scholar

44. DKZ (December 21, 1907): 539.Google Scholar

45. See the lists of courses offered in ibid. (October 27, 1906): 429–30 and (August 30, 1907): 350–52.Google Scholar

46. Pierard, Richard V., “The Transportation of White Women to German Southwest Africa, 1898 to 1914,” Race, 12 (1971): 317–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

47. DKZ (July 29, 1911): 507 and (May 31, 1913): 364–65.Google Scholar

48. Hamburgisches Kolonialinstitut, Beamten und Unterricht, pp. 15–17.Google Scholar