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

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