"Germans and African Americans," unlike other works on African
Americans in Europe, examines the relationship between African
Americans and one country, Germany, in great depth.
"Germans and African Americans" encountered one another within
the context of their national identities and group experiences. In
the nineteenth century, German immigrants to America and to such
communities as Charleston and Cincinnati interacted within the
boundaries of their old-world experiences and ideas and within
surrounding regional notions of a nation fracturing over slavery.
In the post-Civil War era in America through the Weimar era,
Germany became a place to which African American entertainers,
travelers, and intellectuals such as W. E. B. Du Bois could go to
escape American racism and find new opportunities. With the rise of
the Third Reich, Germany became the personification of racism, and
African Americans in the 1930s and 1940s could use Hitler's evil
example to goad America about its own racist practices. Postwar
West Germany regained the image as a land more tolerant to African
American soldiers than America. African Americans were important to
Cold War discourse, especially in the internal ideological struggle
between Communist East Germany and democratic West Germany.
Unlike many other countries in Europe, Germany has played a
variety of different and conflicting roles in the African American
narrative and relationship with Europe. It is this diversity of
roles that adds to the complexity of African American and German
interactions and mutual perceptions over time.
General
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