The Genocidal Gaze
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tHe geNoCIdal gaze Elizabeth R. Baer tHe geNoCIdal gaze From German Southwest Africa to the Th ird Reich Wayne State University Press | Detroit © 2017 by Wayne State University Press, Detroit, Michigan 48201. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without formal permission. Manufactured in the United States of America. ISBN 978-0-8143-4438-5 (hardcover) | ISBN 978-0-8143-4385-2 (paper) ISBN 978-0-8143-4386-9 (e-book) Library of Congress Control Number: 2017950993 Wayne State University Press Leonard N. Simons Building 4809 Woodward Avenue Detroit, Michigan 48201-1309 Visit us online at wsupress.wayne.edu For ClINt | again and always Contents List of Illustrations ix Acknowledgments xi Introduction 1 oNe Th e African Gaze of Resistance in Hendrik Witbooi and Others 17 tWo Th e Genocidal Gaze in Gustav Frenssen’s Peter Moor’s Journey to Southwest Africa 45 tHree Uwe Timm’s Critique of the Genocidal Gaze in Morenga and In My Brother’s Shadow 63 Four William Kentridge’s Black Box / Chambre Noire: Th e Gaze on / in the Herero Genocide, the Holocaust, and Apartheid 99 FIve Ama Ata Aidoo’s Our Sister Killjoy: Th e African Gaze of Resistance Today 115 Afterword 131 Notes 137 Bibliography 155 Index 167 Illustrations Illustrations follow page 82 FIgure 1. “Map of Deutsch Südwestafrika, 1904” (German Southwest Africa) FIgure 2. “Der Nama-Führer Hendrik Witbooi, um 1900” (Th e Nama Leader Hendrik Witbooi, around 1900) FIgure 3. “Surviving Herero after the escape through the arid desert of Oma- heke, c. 1907” FIgure 4. “Herero chained during the 1904 rebellion” FIgure 5. “Samuel Maharero (1856–1923), son of Maharero” FIgure 6. “Gustav Frenssen, Schriftsteller, Pastor, Deutschland” FIgure 7. Cover design for 1943 edition of Gustav Frenssen’s Peter Moors Fahrt Nach Südwest FIgure 8. Edition of Frenssen’s Peter Moor created for the Wehrmacht FIgure 9. “Le major Leutwein lors de son mandat dans le sud-ouest africain (1894–1904)” (Major Leutwein during his Mandate in Southwest Africa) FIgure 10. “Portrait of General Lothar von Trotha, ca. 1905” FIgure 11. “Photo of the Death Camp at Shark Island, German South West Africa (now Namibia),” circa 1903 FIgure 12. “Photo of Lieutenant von Durling at the death camp at Shark Island, German South West Africa (now Namibia),” December 1904 FIgure 13. “German Soldiers Packing the Skulls of Executed Namibian Ab- origines at Shark Island Concentration Camp, circa 1903” FIgure 14. “Kamelreiterpatrouille” (Camel rider patrol) FIgure 15. “Deutsch-Südwestafrika, Herero-Aufstand” (German Southwest Africa Herero Uprising) FIgure 16. “Jacob Morenga, leader of African partisans in the insurrection against German rule” FIgureS 17–19. William Kentridge’s Black Box FIgure 20. Mohrenköpfe Acknowledgments I often turn to the acknowledgments as I open a new book, curious to know what the author reveals about her/himself, and who the author’s infl uences have been. Did the author get fi nancial support for the project? Do archival research? Rely on other scholars for critiques? Who brought coff ee? As I think back over a long career and the work on this, my fi fth scholarly book, I have many debts to acknowledge and much gratitude to express. I want to begin with profound thanks to the people who have been important teachers, many of whom are no longer living. Th ese include my parents, who so highly valued education; Sister Emma, a Dominican nun who taught me the joy of research in seventh and eighth grade; and Terry Plunkett, a professor of American literature at Manhattanville College, who pushed his students to think critically and theoretically. In graduate school, at Indiana University, I had the enormous good fortune to study with Susan Gubar, whose pioneering work in women’s studies literally opened new worlds for me and gave voice to what I was dimly beginning to grasp. Vladka and Ben Meed, of blessed memory, survivors of the Warsaw Ghetto, took me to Poland and Israel with the Jewish Labor Committee, teaching me at every step about the Holocaust in a visceral and unforgettable way. More recently, I have had the pleasure of being taught by those far younger than I. Th ese include my children, Hester Baer, Chair of German Studies at the University of Maryland, with whom I have traveled to Germany many times and whose regular consultations considerably enriched this book, and my son, Nathaniel Baer, Energy Program Director at the Iowa Environmental Council, who inspires me daily with his dedication to addressing climate change. My sister Mary Louise Roberts, who is the Distinguished Lucie Aubrac Professor in the Department of History at the University of Wisconsin, gave me invaluable advice on the book at every stage—proposal, drafts, fi nal manuscript, dealing with academic presses. She read chapters and encouraged me to think historically. She told me, “You are not writing everything you know,” which somehow gave me permission to do so. My sister Pamela Bonina is an exemplar of generosity and caring, of which I have been the frequent beneficiary. My students over the years at Gustavus, the University of Minnesota, and Stockton University made many contributions to my understanding of the Holocaust, postcolonial literature, and theory. During the five years in which I was writing the book, many other people of- fered support, financial and otherwise, providing me the opportunity to make The Genocidal Gaze the best book possible. These include Phyllis Lassner, Professor of Jewish Studies, Gender Studies and Writing at Northwestern University, who mentored me through the final year of writing in a most candid and sage manner; Alejandro Baer, Stephen Feinstein Chair and Director of the Center for Holo- caust and Genocide Studies at the University of Minnesota, who provided me the opportunity to teach portions of the manuscript, always a clarifying experience; and the African Studies Association, whose stellar conferences taught me a lot and gave me a venue to try out ideas over the past four years. Because my career during the writing of The Genocidal Gaze was at a small, liberal arts college in a rural location, the daily assistance of Interlibrary Loan was essential; no scholar could ask for or find a finer ILL librarian than Sonja Timmerman at Gustavus Adolphus College. No request was too small or too obscure for Sonja. Similarly, the archivists Dr. Hartmut Bergenthum and Christina Sokol in the Lesesaal Afrika at Universitätsbibliothek Johann Christian Senckenberg in Frankfurt, Germany, were an unrivaled source of help and support, both electronically and in person. The thirty or more books I had requested to review during my visit there were neatly collected on a dolly when I arrived and further requests were handled promptly. I owe a great deal to Gustavus Adolphus College: the college partially funded three trips I made to Africa to do research, awarded me a sabbatical for writing, and recognized my work with the Faculty Scholarship Achievement Award. The Faculty Shop Talk provided a venue for sharing my ideas with colleagues as the book neared completion. Kathryn Wildfong, editor in chief at Wayne State University Press, demonstrated great enthusiasm for the book in the abstract and in its final iterations and accepted the manuscript expeditiously. Her staff have been terrific to work with. Fast friends Carolyn O’Grady, Michele Rusinko, Lois Peterson, Pat Conn, and Cathy Ahern com- miserated and celebrated with me along the way. Granddaughters Della and Flora brought joy to my life as I wrote about a dark topic. xii | Acknowledgments In addition to thanking those who taught me and those who supported my work in various ways, I want to thank those who have saved me. Zoe Barta, a healer and friend extraordinaire, has taken me through many crises during the past twenty-plus years. Dr. Todd Brandt literally saved me, resolving an unexpected and severe health problem. And, finally, and most significantly, my husband of almost fifty years, Clint Baer, to whom this book is dedicated. He nourishes me in so many ways, most importantly when the work has made me cranky. Acknowledgments | xiii tHe geNoCIdal gaze Introduction Here . are black men standing, black men who examine us; and I want you to feel, as I, the sensation of being seen. For the white man has enjoyed for three thousand years the privilege of seeing without being seen. Today, these black men have fi xed their gaze upon us and our gaze is thrown back in our eyes. By this steady and corrosive gaze, we are picked to the bone. JeaN-paul Sartre | Black Orpheus Th ere is a certain sense in which vision amounts to colonization. JoHN NoyeS After the genocide of the Herero and Nama people in the German colony of Southwest Africa between 1904 and 1907, the surviving indigenous men, women, and children were subjected to forced labor. Some of these forced laborers worked in the confi nes of a concentration camp; others built railroads or worked as miners; and many were farm laborers for the German settlers. Such laborers, in all locations, were frequently subjected to brutal fl oggings with a sjambok, a kind of whip made of heavy rhinoceros hide. Floggings had been commonplace prior to the genocide and were one of the atrocities, in addition to rape of indigenous women, land and cattle theft, and murder, cited by Herero as causes for their rebellion.1 Photographs of these beatings were taken by the military and sent home as postcards. Farm laborers were particularly vulnerable to unwarranted punishment, which was often administered by the local police at the direction of the farmer; those doing the fl ogging were sometimes themselves Herero.2 Just as often, the farmer took it upon himself to administer the fl ogging without pretext; the law required that such fl oggings be limited to no more than twenty-fi ve lashes at any one time and that women be spared such beatings; both of these regulations were routinely flouted.