Bayume Mohamed Husen

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Bayume Mohamed Husen ( maiden name Mahjub bin Adam Mohamed ; born February 22, 1904 in Dar es Salaam , German East Africa , today Tanzania ; † November 24, 1944 in Sachsenhausen concentration camp ) was an African-German askari (soldier) and actor. Husen was in the First World War in the protection force of German East Africa used as a child soldier and came to Berlin in 1929, demand for his outstanding pay. Here he started a family and worked as a waiter, language lecturer and actor, among others at the side of Hans Albers . In August 1941 he was arrested by the Gestapo for a relationship with an “ Aryan woman ” and in September was sent to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp on charges of “ racial disgrace ”, where he died after three years in prison.

Childhood and Adolescence in East Africa

The Kaiserstraße in the European quarter of Dar es Salaam, where Husen was born in 1904

Mahjub bin Adam Mohamed (translated "son of Adam Mohamed") was the son of an African officer in the Imperial Protection Force (" Wissmann Troop"). Adam Mohamed had the rank of Efendi , this was the highest rank and only officer rank that an African could achieve in the Imperial Protection Force. In Dar es Salaam Husen (he later adopted the name in Germany, it is a German translation from Hussein) attended a government school, where he acquired his first knowledge of German. After moving to Lindi in 1913, he worked as a clerk in Karl Strecker's German cotton factory. During World War I , in which the Schutztruppe fought against British troops, Husen was deployed as a child soldier under General Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck - presumably as a signal student he was responsible for transmitting messages by heliograph . In the Battle of Mahiwa in October 1917 Husen was wounded by a bullet in the thigh and became a British prisoner of war.

After the war and the end of German colonial rule, he was apparently unable to enter the service of Great Britain , under whose administration the League of Nations had placed Tanganyika as a mandate area . At times Husen worked in Zanzibar as a teacher and as a "boy" (servant) on English and German ships. In 1925 he hired the ship owner Adolph Woermann as a waiter on a ship on the German East Africa Line .

live in Berlin

The adventure restaurant Haus Vaterland on Potsdamer Platz . Husen worked here from 1930–1935.

At the end of 1929 he traveled to the German capital Berlin to claim the outstanding pay for himself and his father. The application was rejected by the Foreign Office on the grounds that the fund had already been settled. Husen resisted the attempt to send him back to Africa and instead settled in Berlin. Here he worked from April 1930 until his resignation in 1935 as a waiter in the "Wild West Bar" in the Vaterland house on Potsdamer Platz , where he was employed because of his "exotic" appearance.

From 1931 to 1941 Husen also worked as a language assistant at the Department of Oriental Languages (later the Faculty of Foreign Studies at Berlin University). He instructed officials who were to be prepared for a later recovery of the German colonies by the German Reich in his native Swahili . For a relatively low salary, he worked under the founder of German African studies, the former missionary Diedrich Westermann . In April 1941 he quit his job at the university, apparently because of the degrading treatment by Professor Martin Heepe .

On January 27, 1933, three days before Hitler was appointed Chancellor , Husen married the Sudeten German Maria Schwandner. Their son, Ahmed Adam Mohamed Husen, was born on March 2, 1933. On January 10, 1933, the son Heinz Bodo Husen, who emerged from a simultaneous relationship with Lotta Holzkamp, ​​was born, who was later recognized by Husen as his son and accepted into the couple's household. Another daughter, Annemarie Husen, was born in September 1936. Ahmed Adam died in 1938 at the age of five, Annemarie in 1939 at the age of two, Heinz Bodo was killed in an air raid on March 9, 1945 .

It is not known whether Husen had the status of a member of the Reich . It was widespread practice in Germany to issue blacks with a German ID card or passport with the addition “Immediate Reich Citizen” or “German Protector”, with which they did not have the nationality according to the Reich and Nationality Law of 1913. After the takeover of the National Socialists , however, all black Germans and their wives were with aliens' passports equipped and were regarded as members of the respective mandatory powers who had taken over the former German colonies. That should have also applied to Husen.

The German “Askari” in the neo-colonial movement

At the same time, the former mercenary in German service found a home in the neo-colonial movement in the German Empire , which advocated the recovery of the former colonies. At conferences and marches of the German Colonial Warrior Association, he embodied the "loyal Askari ". The African participants were supposed to symbolize the success of the German colonization. At one event there was a meeting with General Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck , who was revered as a hero by the neo-colonial movement. In 1936 Husen, whose family was in a difficult economic situation, accepted an engagement in the " German Africa Show ". Blacks living in Germany were presented as "natives" - at the same time the superiority of the German "masters" was to be demonstrated and the claim to German colonies in Africa underlined.

Despite Husen's commitment to the neo-colonial movement, he did not want to accept his subordination to the National Socialist racial state. As early as October 1934, he applied to be awarded the Cross of Honor for front-line soldiers . He did not want to accept a refusal with reference to his gunshot wound. The German authorities decided not to give this award to “colored people”, and Lettow-Vorbeck also rejected Husen's award in a letter to the Ministry of the Interior. He saw wearing the badge as his "right", which is why he obtained the medal in the militaria trade. In several photos Husen can be seen in Askari uniform with the front fighter badge. After Great Britain declared war on the German Reich on September 3, 1939, Husen asked unsuccessfully to join the Wehrmacht .

Actor in German feature films

Between 1934 and 1941 Bayume Mohamed Husen played in at least 23 German film productions. In his first role in Die Reiter von Deutsch-Ostafrika , the then 30-year-old played a “signal student” in 1934 during the First World War. The film, directed by Herbert Selpin , was partly shot in the British mandate of Tanganyika , so that Husen returned to his former home for a short time. In the 1937 film To New Shores , Husen portrayed the governor's servant (played by Edwin Juergensen ) alongside the main actors Zarah Leander and Willy Birgel . In addition to extra and small speaking roles, he occasionally took on the role of a consultant in the Swahili language.

Husen's greatest role was also his last: Between August 1940 and February 1941 he played in the Nazi propaganda film Carl Peters Ramasan, the leader and interpreter of the "colonial pioneer" Carl Peters , who was played by Hans Albers . Peters was known as "Hänge-Peters" in the colonial times and was relieved of his offices, the National Socialists stylized him as a hero.

Arrest, Sachsenhausen concentration camp and death

During the filming of Carl Peters , Husen met a German woman and began a relationship with her that was his undoing. After a denunciation he was arrested by the Gestapo . During the investigation into " racial disgrace " he was incarcerated in the notorious Gestapo prison on Alexanderplatz . Since there was no legal basis for a conviction - there was a marriage ban for blacks, but no sex ban with “Aryan women” - he was transferred to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp . Shortly afterwards, his wife filed for divorce, probably under pressure from the Nazi authorities. He survived for three years as a prisoner with the number 39604. On November 24, 1944, Husen died as a result of the horrific prison conditions.

Scientific reception and commemoration

In front of the former house at Brunnenstrasse 193 in Berlin, a “stumbling block” reminds of Husen.

The fate of Bayume Mohamed Husen was largely unknown in Germany until the 1990s. There was no public interest in the black victims of National Socialism. The book publication Treu in die Tod by Marianne Bechhaus-Gerst made Husen's life story known to a wider public in 2007. In September 2007, the Berlin artist Gunter Demnig laid a “ stumbling block ” in front of Husen's former home at Brunnenstrasse 193 in Berlin to commemorate the victim of the Nazis' racist policies. In 1999 the Bayume Lecture took place at the Humboldt University in Berlin , which opened with a lecture by the Kenyan historian Atieno Odhiambo. The event was not continued in the following years. In 2013 Eva Knopf made the documentary film Majub's Journey over Husen.

The tombstone with the inscription "Mohamed Husen" is on the war cemetery on Freiheitsweg in Berlin-Reinickendorf . On January 4, 1945, the ashes that allegedly came from him were buried at Reinickendorf 2 cemetery, but in 1978 the urn was reburied.

Nothing is known about the whereabouts of Husen's divorced wife. It is possible that she died in the heavy bombing raids in February 1945, in which houses 193 and 194 on Brunnenstrasse were destroyed and Bodo Husen was also killed.

Filmography (selection)

literature

  • Marianne Bechhaus-Gerst & Reinhard Klein-Arendt: Africans in Germany and Black Germans - past and present . Münster 2003, ISBN 978-3-8258-6824-6 .
  • Marianne Bechhaus-Gerst: Loyal until death. From German East Africa to Sachsenhausen. A life story. Links-Verlag, Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-86153-451-8 .
  • “Our victims don't count.” The Third World in World War II , recherche international, Cologne 2005 ISBN 3-935936-26-5 .
  • Kay Less : Between the stage and the barracks. Lexicon of persecuted theater, film and music artists from 1933 to 1945 . With a foreword by Paul Spiegel . Metropol, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-938690-10-9 , p. 185.

Web links

Commons : Bayume Mohamed Husen  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Marianne Bechhaus-Gerst: Faithful to death. From German East Africa to Sachsenhausen - a life story. Links-Verlag, Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-86153-451-8 , pp. 29-37.
  2. ↑ Bechhaus-Gerst (2007), p. 52 f.
  3. ↑ Bechhaus-Gerst (2007), p. 57.
  4. ↑ Bechhaus-Gerst (2007), p. 68.
  5. ↑ Bechhaus-Gerst (2007), p. 117 ff.
  6. ↑ Bechhaus-Gerst (2007), p. 139.
  7. ↑ Bechhaus-Gerst (2007), pp. 70, 152.
  8. ↑ Marianne Bechhaus-Gerst, Black Germans and Africans in the Nazi State. In: Marianne Bechhaus-Gerst & Reinhard Klein-Arendt, Africans in Germany and Black Germans - Past and Present, Münster 2003, pp. 187–196, 188–189.
  9. ↑ Bechhaus-Gerst (2007), p. 82 ff.
  10. ↑ Bechhaus-Gerst (2007), p. 102.
  11. ↑ Bechhaus-Gerst (2007), p. 96 ff.
  12. ↑ Bechhaus-Gerst (2007), p. 136.
  13. ↑ Bechhaus-Gerst (2007), pp. 114–115. A picture of the two protagonists in a production design
  14. ↑ Bechhaus-Gerst (2007), pp. 141–150.
  15. ↑ Jon Mendrala: A forgotten German , in: taz, September 14, 2007
  16. ^ Center of the Modern Orient (PDF; 953 kB), Free University of Berlin (p. 210).
  17. ↑ https://www.filmportal.de/film/majubs-reise_565a3a7e3269461682fff00adcf222f8
  18. ↑ Bastian Breiter: The way of the "loyal Askari" to the concentration camp. The life story of Mohamed Husen. In: Ulrich van der Heyden, Joachim Zeller (Hrsg.): Colonial metropolis Berlin. A search for clues. Berlin-Edition, Berlin 2002, ISBN 3-8148-0092-3 , p. 220.
  19. ↑ Bechhaus-Gerst, p. 154.
This version was added to the list of articles worth reading on February 27, 2010 .
personal data
SURNAME Husen, Bayume Mohamed
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Mahjub bin Adam Mohamed; Bayume bin Mohamed, Bayume Mohamed Hussein
BRIEF DESCRIPTION African-German askari, actor and Nazi victim
DATE OF BIRTH February 22, 1904
PLACE OF BIRTH Dar es Salaam , German East Africa, today Tanzania
DATE OF DEATH November 24, 1944
Place of death Sachsenhausen concentration camp