Unofficial Empire: Germans Between Germany and Tanganyika, 1925–1945

FAIN: FT-259521-18

Willeke Sandler, PhD
Loyola University Maryland (Baltimore, MD 21210-2601)

Research and writing leading to publication of a book on Germany's former African colony Tanganyika (1925-1945).

Although Germany was stripped of its overseas empire in 1919, from the mid-1920s through the mid-1940s hundreds of Germans immigrated to the former colony of German East Africa (now the British Mandate of Tanganyika). They established tightly-knit communities in the Mandate that received support from the German Foreign Office as well as Nazi organizations. I use the case study of Tanganyika to explore the (re)creation of an expatriate community within the context of a territory that had once been German. This obstinate form of “colonialism without colonies” ignored the reality of Germany’s official position in Africa and helped to establish an unofficial German colony in Tanganyika. A space of overlapping imperial claims, of German pasts and hoped-for futures, and of individual Germans’ economic goals, Tanganyika in the interwar period demonstrates the continued importance of the African continent to the German nation and state after the end of formal empire.

Associated Products

A Foot in the Door: The Colonial Section of the German Foreign Office and the Settlement of Germans in Interwar Tanganyika (Article)
Title: A Foot in the Door: The Colonial Section of the German Foreign Office and the Settlement of Germans in Interwar Tanganyika
Author: Willeke Sandler
Abstract: After 1925, German settlers began to return to the former German East Africa, lost through the Treaty of Versailles and transformed into the British Mandate of Tanganyika. The German Foreign Office's Colonial Section took on a proactive role to facilitate these Germans’ settlement in their former colony, including working with German ministries to release funding and navigating the British administration and settlers on the ground in Tanganyika. While Germany had lost its overseas colonies, these officials, many of whom had served in the pre-war empire, did not view their activity in colonial spaces like Tanganyika as belonging to the past. Officials in the Colonial Section navigated the appearance of political neutrality while also promoting their ‘colonial-political’ goals, hoping to create footholds of Germanness in Tanganyika that would keep open the possibility of future empire.
Year: 2024
Primary URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/contemporary-european-history/article/abs/foot-in-the-door-the-colonial-section-of-the-german-foreign-office-and-the-settlement-of-germans-in-interwar-tanganyika/76B520F5A7C691CB360E32A51DD949C7
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: Contemporary European History

‘The War was a Great Link’: German First World War Commemorations in Interwar Tanganyika (Article)
Title: ‘The War was a Great Link’: German First World War Commemorations in Interwar Tanganyika
Author: Willeke Sandler
Abstract: When Germans began to return to the British Mandate of Tanganyika (formerly German East Africa) in the mid-1920s, they had to navigate their new position in the territory, in particular vis-à-vis their British neighbours and British authorities. The history of German colonialism in the region and, more immediately, the local history of a war fought between the British and the Germans could have proven an obstacle to smooth relations between the two groups in the interwar mandate. However, German commemorations of the First World War in Tanganyika offered opportunities for British-German reconciliation. These same moments also eclipsed the role of African soldiers in the war, shaping a memory of the war along European lines. German commemorations of the First World War in interwar Tanganyika therefore both provided evidence of the continuity of a German presence in East Africa and helped to craft a narrative of the war that, by bringing the British and the Germans closer together, spoke to the needs of the present.
Year: 2025
Primary URL: https://doi.org/10.1080/19475020.2025.2539340
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: First World War Studies

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