Cameroon game
The Cameroon Game (full name Das Kamerun-Spiel or King Bell and His People ) is a racist card game from the German colonial era published in 1885 by Moritz Ruhl Verlag from Leipzig .
description
The game is based on a rather simple game concept and is designed as a family game. At the beginning each player receives one of the portrait cards on which stylized members of the Duala are depicted. The remaining cards are auctioned off and paid for with the “tokens”, which were also distributed in the same number beforehand, so that the box office again contains an amount. Now each player draws one of the event cards, which is read out. Any actions are arbitrarily assigned to the respective Duala for which the player receives play money tokens from the cashier or has to pay into it. One card says, for example: "John Prisso - is sentenced to death for inciting the tribesmen to rebel against the Germans, but later pardoned for banishment and payment of 10 tokens", with which the card is either eliminated from the game or the cardholder pays 10 tokens got to.
With cards on which texts such as “Njeka (Prisso's wife) - performs a song in the Negro language and receives 2 stamps for the pleasure the Europeans present” or “King Bell - has had an extensive trade in palm oil for a long time "Elephant teeth, maintained exclusively with the German factories and receives 3 tokens for this", the player received additional tokens.
In order to end the game and determine the winner, all portrait cards were collected, shuffled and redistributed except for one. They show eight pairs and cards were then drawn and discarded according to the principle of Black Peter until only one player held the last card in his hand. He was then “of the Cameroon Negroes” who “retained the greatest loyalty and perseverance in his peaceful attitudes towards the Germans” and received the remaining cash as the winner.
background
The game was released for the Christmas business in 1885, after Cameroon was internationally recognized as a German colony at the Congo Conference in the same year . The richly featured game referred to the journey of the gunboat SMS Möwe on to Douala . There the local chiefs King Bell and Akwa had signed a protection contract and thus ceded their sovereign rights. It was advertised as a family game with the fact that sixteen “finely executed Negro portraits in color print on cardboard and just as many name and event cards” were found in the game material. The winner won on a relatively simple gameplay.
The game is characterized by award and punishment actions that later appeared in many games, so that Hillrichs calls it "black monopoly ". The Duala as indigenous people of Cameroon are portrayed either as obedient supporters of the Germans or as malicious agitators and thieves. Their traditional ritual acts should appear in such a way that they either serve the amusement of the colonial rulers or are insidious witchcraft .
The game can be described as a special form of colonialist mobilization, in which German families could playfully practice colonialism as a leisure time entertainment and at the same time the alleged moral misposition of the indigenous people as a people of merchants who are devoted to drink and who are prone to quarrels, betrayal and rioting in German living rooms be transported. Hugo Zöller had written at the time that the "vanity, laziness and greed" of blacks could only be controlled through the hard use of carrots and sticks .
The Cameroon game was one of the first of many to follow on the theme of the colonial world. Often it was a matter of pure games of chance such as Cameroonian Skat . The German Colonial Newspaper wrote several times about games of "our closer, dark-colored compatriots". These were mostly simple children's games or games of chance with play materials such as cowrie shells or beans.
According to Hillrichs, the game manifested prejudices and justified their own claims to power, conquest, submission and domination over the supposedly “barbaric regions”. He states a partial self- infantilization of the colonial rulers, although in the game even the blacks are infantilized. This fits in with the rather naive European expectation of being able to secure one's own food and supply by exploiting colonial mineral resources and other natural resources.
Picture gallery
Playing cards with the portraits
King Bell
King Bell's wife
Mr. Jackson
Mr. Jackson's wife
Manga Bell
Mundjua
John Prisso
Njeka
Cassaba
Tom
Charles Smart
Mosassa
Letongo
Munga
Esuka
Gombi
Event cards (selection)
Original text: - receives an extraordinary recognition and reward of 10 stamps for the loyalty and devotion that has been continuously demonstrated to the Germans under the most unfavorable circumstances, which is so rare among the Negro people .
Original text: - supported the German soldiers in the fight against the rebellious negroes in the most sincere way, which is recognized by the payment of 8 stamps .
Originaltext: did the Germans on their expeditions into the interior of the country excellent guide services, for which a reward with six brands takes place
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d e f Hans Helmut Hillrichs: Wood monkeys, "Nickneger", black pearls - And the (distorted) images live forever in Gisela Graichen , Horst Founder : German Colonies - Dream and Trauma , Ullstein Buchverlag, 2nd edition 2005 , ISBN 978-3-550-07637-4 , pp. 455-461
- ↑ a b c Nana Badenberg: Spiel um Kamerun , in: Alexander Honold , Klaus R. Scherpe (ed.): Mit Deutschland um die Welt , Metzler-Verlag Stuttgart, 2004, ISBN 3-476-02045-2 , p. 86 -94