They were in charge – but how did the German colonial masters talk about their sphere of influence and its indigenous peoples between 1884 and 1919? A linguistic project from the University of Würzburg has dealt with this question. The evaluations of texts from the German colonial period mainly reflect arrogance and racism. But there are also examples of a somewhat more respectful perspective.
Like the other powers, the young empire wanted to own exotic pieces of the world – in the late 19th century, Germany therefore acquired colonies in Africa, Oceania and East Asia. The Chair of German Studies at the University of Würzburg has now dealt with a special aspect of this German colonial period as part of a master’s seminar: Under the leadership of the linguist Matthias Schulz, students analyzed the language used by the colonial masters between 1880 and 1920. They were served around 1000 texts from the “Digital Collection of German Colonialism”, which has been accessible online since 2019. The University of Würzburg is now reporting on the results of the team.
Arrogance and ignorance speaks from the texts
The doctoral student Miriam Reischle was able to document how the basic view of the colonial space was reflected in the language at that time. As she reports, many reports testify to prejudices and firm mental constructs about the character of the colonies. Instead of paying attention to and emphasizing the complexity, the linguistic constructions often depict the colonial areas intensely as a whole. “Like everywhere in this area …” is a typical linguistic generalization, for example, reports Reischle. Colonial attitudes and certainties can also be the reason why some topics were not explicitly promised at all, says project manager Schulz.
The colonial arrogance, which was widespread at the time, is also reflected in the results of master student Jinyang Ma. The extent of the use of terms from the word family “colony” – that is, words such as colonial officials, colonial government or colonizing – showed how strongly the colonial masters’ gaze was directed towards their own interests: “These words describe the actions and the perspective of the colonists “Said Ma.
The lack of respect of the colonial masters also speaks from the texts that deal with the aspect of religion. Accordingly, the term religion was generally used only to denote the Christian faith. In contrast, the terms “superstition” or “pagan ideas” were used to refer to the religious beliefs and practices of the indigenous population. Typical adjectives in this context were also “naive”, “childlike” or even “ridiculous”.
Much negative – but also bright spots
According to the text analyzes, racism becomes clear when it comes to German women in the colonies. Ruling the colonies was almost exclusively a job for men, but women were also needed for them. Apparently, they should often be persuaded to move to the colonies with national patriotic arguments. Some statements were clearly racist. An example: “The presence of the woman is necessary in order to keep the breed pure.”
The participants in the research project also took a close look at the statements made by linguists of the time. Their view was obviously also often shaped by prejudice and superiority: The analyzed texts speak of a “very imperfect” vocabulary of the indigenous population. In addition, the grammar resembles a “children’s language” and certain word formations have an “amusing” effect. “It is subliminally clear from the texts that German was regarded as the perfect language, the language of the indigenous people is compared as imperfect,” says team member Alicia Hückmann.
But, as project manager Schulz finally emphasizes, there were a few linguistic bright spots in addition to the negative examples, which speak for a somewhat more respectful perspective of some of the people at that time: “It doesn’t all ooze a specifically colonial vocabulary,” says the linguist. In some cases, for example, the language of the indigenous peoples was described with positive words: It was “very melodic and sonorous” or the verbal forms were “incredibly varied”, report Schulz and his team.
Source: University of Wuerzburg