Mtoro Bakari

Signature of Mtoro Bakari, 1906

Mtoro bin Mwinyi Bakari (* officially October 3, 1869 in Dunda (now Bagamoya District , Tanzania ); † July 14, 1927 in Berlin ) was an East African author and university lecturer for Kiswahili . His marriage to a German in 1904 attracted public attention and contributed to political discussions in the German Empire , which ultimately led to a ban on mixed marriages in the German colonies .

Life

Mtoro Bakari was born in the village of Dunda and grew up in the nearby coastal town of Bagamoyo . His name Mtoro bin Mwinyi Bakari roughly means Mtoro, son of the (land) owner Bakari . In Germany, following the European naming convention, he mostly used his father's name as his surname and called himself Mtoro Bakari for short . The son of a devout Muslim attended a Koran school for several years , where he studied Islamic sciences and learned Arabic . Bakari probably worked as a teacher himself afterwards. In 1888 the country became the German colony of German East Africa and Bagamoyo became their first capital. Bakari, who had failed economically with his own trade expedition into the interior, became a tax collector for the German colonial authorities in 1898. In the mid-1890s he married Mamboni binti Amiri Majiru, with whom he had a daughter.

Publication by Mtoro Bakari, 1901

In the 1890s, Mtoro Bakari, along with other Swahili, was approached by the linguist Carl Velten, who had lived in East Africa for a few years , to report on local life and African traditions. In June 1900 the linguist Bakari came to Berlin through Velten, where he worked as a civil servant lecturer for Swahili at the University of Berlin affiliated seminar for oriental languages from the winter semester 1900/01 . Bakari, who was "counted among the most educated and well-educated Swahili", not only gave language and conversation lessons there in the next few years, but also wrote his own cultural-historical treatises, which Carl Velten published.

In December 1903 Mtoro Bakari divorced his African wife according to Islamic law because he wanted to marry the German Bertha Hilske, factory worker and daughter of his landlady. Carl Velten and the director of the seminar Eduard Sachau spoke out vigorously against the marriage. While playing racial reasons and the allegation of a possible " bigamy " a role. However, since the East African colonial authorities declared at the request of the colonial department in the Foreign Office that there were no obstacles to marriage, the couple was able to get married on October 29, 1904 in Berlin-Charlottenburg . The relationship between Bakari and his superiors had been strained since then and the African was also exposed to racist verbal attacks from the student body, from which the seminar leaders did not protect Bakari despite asking for help. Therefore Bakari terminated his employment prematurely in May 1905. His name has not been mentioned in the publications of the seminar since then, although material developed by him was still used.

In August 1905 the unemployed Mtoro Bakari traveled to East Africa with his wife, but Bertha Bakari was refused entry on the instructions of Governor Gustav Adolf Graf von Götzen . Should they go ashore anyway, Mtoro Bakari faced 25 lashes. However, the couple left the ship in Dar es Salaam , which resulted in an influx of black people. The police then stepped in and Bertha Bakari was presented with an expulsion order the next day. The Bakaris had to return to Germany. At the end of October 1905, the couple was back in Berlin, where Bakari demanded compensation from the authorities for the injustice they had suffered. In January 1906 he turned to Kaiser Wilhelm II. In his letter he pointed out the illegality of the measures taken against him, described his tense economic situation and asked for a new position in the public service - be it in Germany or in East Africa. In February 1906, however, he received a negative decision from the colonial department in the Foreign Office. As a result, Mtoro Bakari besieged the entrance of the authority for weeks to speak to the responsible officer. In December 1906 he finally turned a new petition to the director of the colonial department Bernhard Dernburg , who in 1907 became the first state secretary of the new Reich Colonial Office :

“Because I entered into a legally valid marriage under German law, I was expelled from my home in German East Africa by the organs of the German government and made unemployed here in Germany. I therefore ask that Your Excellency would be kind enough to either transport me back to my homeland with my wife and let me live there, or to find a job here in Berlin where I can honestly earn my living ”.

To avoid public discussions, the Reich Colonial Office decided in the summer of 1907 to find a new job for Bakari. Before that, however, the authorities had him observed by a secret police officer. Bakari, however, rejected the position offered by the Imperial Colonial Office as a delivery boy for a colonial bookstore as inadequate.

In order to finance himself, Mtoro Bakari gave private language lessons from the end of 1905 and taught, mediated by the pastor and Africanist Carl Meinhof , students from various missionary societies . Until the winter semester of 1908/09, he also led colloquia on the subject of Islam . In the Berlin address book he was listed in 1908 as a lecturer and in 1909 as a missionary . Bernhard Struck and Carl Meinhof finally referred Bakari to the orientalist Carl Heinrich Becker from the newly founded Hamburg Colonial Institute . In his letter of recommendation to Becker, Meinhof praised Bakari's knowledge, his skills as a teacher, his tact and humor.

After receiving a job from Hamburg, Mtoro Bakari and his wife left Berlin in March 1909 and began working as a “language assistant” at the “Seminar for Colonial Languages” at the Hamburg Colonial Institute from the winter semester of 1909/10. In December 1913, after a dispute with a German lecturer, by whom he felt discriminated against , he had to leave the Hamburg institute. Then the couple moved back to Berlin.

Until the 1920s, Mtoro Bakari gave lectures on East Africa at schools and other institutions in numerous German cities to finance his living. Bakari was repeatedly exposed to discrimination because he was repeatedly mistaken for one of the French colonial soldiers who had been stationed in Germany since the Allied occupation of the Rhineland in 1919. That is why Bakari petitioned the German government in 1922 :

"The high government of the German Reich wanted to give the undersigned a protection certificate - or whatever such a document should be called - in humane kindness, which would give him accommodation - safe and undisturbed - and acceptance or support by presenting it to the authorities of a place there guaranteed ".

From 1914 on, the Bakaris lived at Neuköllner Lichtenrader Strasse 40. Bertha Bakari was last listed there as Mtoro's widow in the 1929 Berlin address book .

literature

• Ludger Wimmelbücker: Mtoro bin Mwinyi Bakari (c. 1869-1927). Swahili Lecturer and Author in Germany. Dar es Salaam, (Tanzania): Mkuki na Nyota, 2009 ISBN 978-9987-08-008-3
• Dictionary of African Biography. Vol. 1, Oxford et al. a .: Oxford University Press, 2012 ISBN 978-0-19-538207-5

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Ludger Wimmelbücker: Mtoro'm Mwinyi Bakari (c 1869-1927.). Dar es Salaam 2009, p. 5f., Where Barari also mentions other self-statements about the year of his birth.
2. ↑ Harald Sippel: "In the interest of Germanness and the white race". Treatment and legal effects of 'racial intermarriage' in the German colonies of German East Africa and German South West Africa. In: Jahrbuch für Africanisches Recht 9 (1995), pp. 123–159; In 1912 the Bakaris were cited as a negative example in a debate in the Reichstag : s. Negotiations of the Reichstag. Stenographic report. Vol. 285, p. 1729 (meeting of May 7, 1912).
3. ↑ Mtoro bin Mwinyi Bakari: Information about the land of Uzaramu along with customs and traditions of the Wazaramu. In: Carl Velten (ed.): Descriptions of the Swahili from the expeditions of Dr. Bumillers, Count von Götzens, and others. Göttingen 1901, pp. 225-276.
4. ↑ Ludger Wimmelbücker: Mtoro'm Mwinyi Bakari (c 1869-1927.). Swahili Lecturer and Author in Germany. Dar es Salaam (Tanzania) 2009, pp. 5–26.
5. ↑ ^{a b c d e f} Lora Wildenthal: German Women for Empire, 1884-1945. Durham NC 2001, pp. 111-120.
6. ↑ Ludger Wimmelbücker: Mtoro'm Mwinyi Bakari (c 1869-1927.). Swahili Lecturer and Author in Germany. Dar es Salaam (Tanzania) 2009, pp. 27-40.
7. ↑ Richard Niese: The Swahili Personal and Family Law. (A contribution to comparative law). Jur. Diss. University of Marburg, 1902, p. 9 (foreword).
8. ↑ Mtoro bin Mwinyi Bakari: My trip to Udoe to Uzigua as well as history about the wadoe and its customs and traditions. In: Carl Velten (ed.): Descriptions of the Swahili from the expeditions of Dr. Bumillers, Count von Götzens, and others. Göttingen 1901, pp. 138-197; Information about the land of Uzaramu including customs and traditions of the Wazaramu. In: Ob. Cit., Pp. 225-276; engl. as Mtoro bin Mwinyi Bakari: The Customs of the Swahili People. The 'Desturi za Waswahil' of Mtoro bin Mwinyi Bakari and Other Swahili. Berkeley CA: University of California Press, 1981.
9. ↑ ^{a b c d} Ludger Wimmelbücker: Mtoro bin Mwinyi Bakari (c. 1869-1927). Swahili Lecturer and Author in Germany. Dar es Salaam (Tanzania) 2009, pp. 41–63.
10. ↑ Mtoro, the 'jute' husband. In: German East African newspaper v. September 16, 1905, p. 3.
11. ^ Oscar Hintrager: South West Africa in German times. Munich 1955, p. 74.
12. ↑ cit. n. Golf Dornseif: Black and white marriage wishes in the legal jungle. (o. O. o. J.) ( PDF ( Memento of the original from October 6, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice . , accessed on August 10, 2014). 
13. ↑ Yearbook of the Hamburg Scientific Institutions XXVIII (1910), p. 44.
14. ↑ ^{a b} Ludger Wimmelbücker: Mtoro'm Mwinyi Bakari (c 1869-1927.). Swahili Lecturer and Author in Germany. Dar es Salaam (Tanzania) 2009, p. 64ff.
15. ↑ cit. n. Marianne Bechhaus-Gerst: Kiswahili-speaking Africans in Germany before 1945. In: Afrikanistische Arbeitspapiere (AAP) 55 (1998), pp. 155–172, here: p. 161.
16. ↑ Berlin address books 1915–1929.