African Students in East Germany, 1949-1975 PDF
Preview African Students in East Germany, 1949-1975
2RPP African Students in East Germany, 1949– 1975 2RPP Social History, Popular Culture, and Politics in Germany Kathleen Canning, Series Editor Recent Titles Moderate Modernity: The Newspaper Tempo and the Transformation of Weimar Democracy Jochen Hung African Students in East Germany, 1949–1975 Sara Pugach The Arts of Democratization: Styling Political Sensibilities in Postwar West Germany Jennifer M. Kapczynski and Caroline A. Kita, Editors Decolonizing German and European History at the Museum Katrin Sieg Spaces of Honor: Making German Civil Society, 1700–1914 Heikki Lempa Bankruptcy and Debt Collection in Liberal Capitalism: Switzerland, 1800–1900 Mischa Suter Marking Modern Movement: Dance and Gender in the Visual Imagery of the Weimar Republic Susan Funkenstein Anti-Heimat Cinema: The Jewish Invention of the German Landscape Ofer Ashkenazi Dispossession: Plundering German Jewry, 1933–1953 Christoph Kreutzmüller and Jonathan R. Zatlin, Editors Sex between Body and Mind: Psychoanalysis and Sexology in the German-speaking World, 1890s–1930s Katie Sutton Imperial Fictions: German Literature Before and Beyond the Nation-State Todd Kontje White Rebels in Black: German Appropriation of Black Popular Culture Priscilla Layne Not Straight from Germany: Sexual Publics and Sexual Citizenship since Magnus Hirschfeld Michael Thomas Taylor, Annette F. Timm, and Rainer Herrn, Editors Passing Illusions: Jewish Visibility in Weimar Germany Kerry Wallach Cosmopolitanisms and the Jews Cathy S. Gelbin and Sander L. Gilman Bodies and Ruins: Imagining the Bombing of Germany, 1945 to the Present David Crew The Jazz Republic: Music, Race, and American Culture in Weimar Germany Jonathan Wipplinger The War in Their Minds: German Soldiers and Their Violent Pasts in West Germany Svenja Goltermann For a complete list of titles, please see www.press.umich.edu 2RPP Social History, Popular Culture, and Politics in Germany Kathleen Canning, Series Editor Recent Titles Moderate Modernity: The Newspaper Tempo and the Transformation of Weimar Democracy Jochen Hung African Students in East Germany, 1949–1975 Sara Pugach African Students in The Arts of Democratization: Styling Political Sensibilities in Postwar West Germany Jennifer M. Kapczynski and Caroline A. Kita, Editors East Germany, 1949– 1975 Decolonizing German and European History at the Museum Katrin Sieg Spaces of Honor: Making German Civil Society, 1700–1914 Heikki Lempa Bankruptcy and Debt Collection in Liberal Capitalism: Switzerland, 1800–1900 Mischa Suter Marking Modern Movement: Dance and Gender in the Visual Imagery of the Weimar Republic Susan Funkenstein Anti-Heimat Cinema: The Jewish Invention of the German Landscape Ofer Ashkenazi Sara Pugach Dispossession: Plundering German Jewry, 1933–1953 Christoph Kreutzmüller and Jonathan R. Zatlin, Editors Sex between Body and Mind: Psychoanalysis and Sexology in the German-speaking World, 1890s–1930s Katie Sutton Imperial Fictions: German Literature Before and Beyond the Nation-State Todd Kontje White Rebels in Black: German Appropriation of Black Popular Culture Priscilla Layne Not Straight from Germany: Sexual Publics and Sexual Citizenship since Magnus Hirschfeld Michael Thomas Taylor, Annette F. Timm, and Rainer Herrn, Editors Passing Illusions: Jewish Visibility in Weimar Germany Kerry Wallach Cosmopolitanisms and the Jews Cathy S. Gelbin and Sander L. Gilman Bodies and Ruins: Imagining the Bombing of Germany, 1945 to the Present University of Michigan Press David Crew Ann Arbor The Jazz Republic: Music, Race, and American Culture in Weimar Germany Jonathan Wipplinger The War in Their Minds: German Soldiers and Their Violent Pasts in West Germany Svenja Goltermann For a complete list of titles, please see www.press.umich.edu 2RPP Copyright © 2022 by Sara Pugach All rights reserved For questions or permissions, please contact [email protected] Published in the United States of America by the University of Michigan Press Manufactured in the United States of America Printed on acid- free paper First published September 2022 A CIP catalog record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication data has been applied for. ISBN 978- 0- 472-0 7556- 0 (hardcover : alk. paper) ISBN 978- 0- 472-0 5556- 2 (paper : alk. paper) ISBN 978- 0- 472- 22057- 1 (ebook) 2RPP To Scott, Catriona, and Saskia Frey, and in Memory of Joseph Pugach 2RPP 2RPP Contents Preface and Acknowledgments ix Abbreviations xv Introduction 1 Chapter 1: Between Colonial Nigeria and Socialist East Germany: The Story of the First Eleven African Students in the GDR, 1949– 1965 30 Chapter 2: Bumps in the Road: Uncertain Journeys to the GDR and Beyond, 1959– 1964 52 Chapter 3: Getting In: From Ghana to the GDR, 1957– 1966 81 Chapter 4: The Politics of Home Abroad: African Student Organizations in the GDR, 1962–1 971 104 Chapter 5: African Students at the Intersection of Race and Gender 128 Conclusion: African Students into the 1970s and 1980s 157 Notes 171 Works Cited 225 Index 247 Digital materials related to this title can be found on the Fulcrum platform via the following citable URL: https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.12077279 2RPP 2RPP Preface and Acknowledgments I first began research for this project in December 2010. I spent about ten days at the University of Leipzig Archives, poring over documents about African students who had come to the German Democratic Republic (GDR) between the 1950s and 1970s. When the workday ended, I wandered around Leipzig’s Weihnachtsmarkt—t he Christmas market. I thought about the students, almost all of whom had arrived in Leipzig to take German classes before fanning out to other destinations in the GDR, and how they had perceived the city. It had been very different when they lived there, as I knew. I spent some time in Leipzig during the mid- 1990s, when the city was undergoing a transformation from its recent socialist past—t he landscape that would have been most famil- iar to the students— to its approaching capitalist future. The ubiquitous con- struction cranes of the early post- Wende era dotted the sky, and West German and American businesses were moving into the downtown. The City- Hochhaus, a skyscraper that locals referred to as the Weisheitszahn (wisdom tooth), was still part of Leipzig’s Karl Marx University (KMU), as it had been from the early 1970s. By the time I went back to Leipzig in 2010, the building was pri- vately owned and housed various companies, including the local German tele- vision station, MDR. Cold War Leipzig, and the GDR more generally, have often been depicted as cold, grey, bleak places. That is not the impression you get, however, from the stories of African students. Instead it was the gateway to an education that they hoped would improve their lives and those of their families. Their experiences were ambiguous: they had close, affective relationships but also experienced hor- rific racism and the ideological pressure to conform. In some ways they had advantages that their East German peers lacked; while the mobility of East Ger- mans was extremely restricted, especially after the Berlin Wall went up in 1961, for the most part Africans were free to come and go as they pleased, traversing
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