Colonial Worlds – Photo Presentation and Reading

On Saturday, 7 June 2025 at 12:30 p.m., Rainer Beuthel will provide further insights into the German colonial era after the market.

Until 1918, the German Empire ruled over its colony of German East Africa. To this day, its history remains largely a blind spot in the public consciousness in this country.
The extremely brutal suppression of the great uprising of the African population (‘Maji Maji War’) between 1905 and 1907 by the German ‘Schutztruppe’ with its 250,000 to 300,000 deaths is still not recognised as genocide by the official authorities of the Federal Republic of Germany – in contrast to the massacre of the Herero and Nama in German South West Africa (approx. 80,000 victims). The high number of victims was not only the result of direct combat, but also of a ‘scorched earth’ strategy designed to deprive the people living in the rebel area of any food supply.

The image archive of the German Colonial Society comprises tens of thousands of photos from the colonial era, taken by colonial officials, officers, plantation owners or missionaries, mostly on glass plates, which were common at the time. It is freely accessible in digital form on the Internet. At the beginning of the event, a small selection from German East Africa will be shown.

Rainer Beuthel will then read passages from his novel Ackerstraßenmord (Murder on the Farm Road), published in 2014: At the beginning of 1907, the body of a nobleman and officer in the colonial army is found in a Berlin cellar. The solution to the case leads to the colonial war, which is just coming to an end…