Retrospective and futuristic idealization: Defining German coloniality after the loss of empire. (June 2017)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Krobb, Florian
• Other Names: Krobb Florian guest-editor.
• Is Part Of: Journal of European studies. Volume 47:Number 2(2017)
• Page Start: 142
• Page End: 157
• Publication Date: 2017-06
• Subjects: Germany -- post-colonialism -- post-imperialism -- Third Reich -- Weimar period; 940.05
• DOI: 10.1177/0047244117700072
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0047-2441

Abstract

The article discusses two very different examples of German post-imperial writing as manifestations of a colonialist imaginary that was both retrospective / nostalgic and futuristic / aspirational. They serve to illustrate how colonialist discourse after 1918 shaped attitudes towards colonial space in ways that survived the next historical caesura, that of 1945. Some of the animal stories from former German East Africa assembled in Rudolf Sendke's book of reminiscences (1925) enact an idealized benevolent and respectful, yet determined and capable role of Germans in unruly and dangerous colonial space, while Adolf Kaempffer, 15 years later, devises a vision of the perfect National Socialist society based on social engineering and racial segregation to be created in an imaginary regained German South-West Africa.