Seeing the Colonies

This chapter examines colonialists’ use of visual culture to develop metropolitan Germans’ identification with the distant colonial territories. Colonialists mobilized a variety of visual forms, including posters and photography, to reach Germans who had seemed unresponsive to their written and oral propaganda. These images, which colonialists believed had a unique power to transcend viewers’ critical distance, would provide an “experience” of the colonies. Broadly speaking, colonialist visual culture focused on three themes: the creation of a German Heimat in the African landscape, the heroism of colonial Germans, and Germans’ protection of an “authentic Africanness” through their benevolent colonialism. In this arena as well, however, colonialists faced a wealth of visual representations of Africa created by other sources. As case studies of these other representations, the chapter examines Werner Peiner’s African paintings, the commercial imagery of Reklamesammelbilder (illustrated trading cards), and feature films with colonial or African themes.

Archaeology · Art · Art history · Colonialism · Metropolitan area · Painting · Photography · Power (physics) · Visual arts · Visual culture · African history and culture studies · German Colonialism and Identity Studies · History