University of Michigan needs your feedback to better understand how readers are using openly available ebooks. You can help by taking a short, privacy-friendly survey.
African Students in East Germany, 1949-1975
Sara Pugach
You don't have access to this book. Please try to log in with your institution.Log in
This book explores the largely unexamined history of Africans who lived, studied, and worked in the German Democratic Republic. African students started coming to the East in 1951 as invited guests who were offered scholarships by the East German government to prepare them for primarily technical and scientific careers once they returned home to their own countries. Drawn from previously unexplored archives in Germany, Ghana, Kenya, Zambia, and the United Kingdom, African Students in East Germany, 1949–1975 uncovers individual stories and reconstructs the pathways that African students took in their journeys to the GDR and what happened once they got there. The book places these experiences within the larger context of German history, questioning how ideas of African racial difference that developed from the eighteenth through the early twentieth centuries impacted East German attitudes toward the students.
The book additionally situates African experiences in the overlapping contexts of the Cold War and decolonization. During this time, nations across the Western and Soviet blocs were inviting Africans to attend universities and vocational schools as part of a drive to offer development aid to newly independent countries and encourage them to side with either the United States or Soviet Union in the Cold War. African leaders recognized their significance to both Soviet and American blocs, and played on the desire of each to bring newly independent nations into their folds. Students also recognized their importance to Cold War competition, and used it to make demands of the East German state. The book is thus located at the juncture of many different histories, including those of modern Germany, modern Africa, the Global Cold War, and decolonization.
Cover
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication Page
Contents
Preface and Acknowledgments
Abbreviations
Introduction
Chapter 1. Between Colonial Nigeria and Socialist East Germany
Chapter 2. Bumps in the Road
Chapter 3. Getting In
Chapter 4. The Politics of Home Abroad
Chapter 5. African Students at the Intersection of Race and Gender
Figure 13. Quedlinburg: view of the city. “Thirty-one young people from Africa are currently learning the secrets of medicine and nursing. The experienced doctors and nurses at Quedlinburg Hospital and other medical establishments in the GDR ensure a high level of education in physical assistance and nursing for students from Mali, Nigeria, Cameroon, and northern Rhodesia.” (caption text from Bundesarchiv) Zentralbild Schmidt, May 3, 1963 (Bundesarchiv).
Figure 16. “Malian medical students. Young Malian medical students are currently enrolled at the medical school in Quedlinburg, where they are learning as much as they can about medicine so that, after they graduate, they can return home to contribute to the improvement of public health. ‘Here are the true friends of our people,’ said the leader of the twenty-person delegation from the young African nation. In the last year the workers of our republic have already sent important medications to Mali. Above: you have to know how to correctly give a shot.” (caption text from Bundesarchiv) Zentralbild Schmidt, December 5, 1961 (Bundesarchiv). This image is stylized, with the white East German instructor clearly positioned as having authority over the Black Malian students.
x
This site requires cookies to function correctly.