>> From the Library of Congress in Washington, DC. [ Silence ] >> Mary-Jane Deeb: Good afternoon and welcome to the African and Middle Eastern Division of the Library of Congress. I am Mary-Jane Deeb, Chief of the Division. And I would like to welcome you all here in our Reading Room for a wonderful program. As most of you already know, our division is made up of three sections: The African, The Near East and Hebraic sections. We are responsible for materials from 78 countries in the Near East, Central Asia, the Caucasus, as well as from the entire continent of Africa, North and Sub-Sahara; and our Hebraic and Judaic collections come from all over the world. We also serve these materials to patrons here in our Reading Room and organize programs, exhibits, conferences and other activities that highlight these collections and that inform our patrons about the countries and the cultures these publications come from. The librarians in this division, as well as, in a number of other Divisions are themselves published scholars with a knowledge of the languages and cultures of the countries for which they are responsible. The African section is very active, in acquiring and developing collections, briefing visitors from all the countries of the region and organizing programs, symposia, workshops and more. Last year the African section, in partnership with the Poetry and Literature Centre in the Africa Society of the National Summit on Africa, launched a new series called "Conversations with African Poets and Writers." We have had Professor Ali Mazrui come here. He is an Albert Schweitzer Professor in the Humanities at Binghamton University. Susan Kiguli, a wonderful Ugandan poetess and writer. We had the Poet Laureate of South Africa, Keorapetse Kgositsile. We had Donato Ndongo, one of the most important writers from the Republic of Guinea. We had Helon Habila, and award-winning Nigerian writer, who teaches at George Mason University. And just yesterday, we had a South African published author and writer, Mandlakayise Matyumza and he is also the Head of the Centre for the Book in South Africa and who talked about his writing in his own native Xhosa. The Library also has offices in the region to acquire materials on Africa, including a major office in Nairobi, but recently we have contracted with the Council for American Research Centers overseas research centers abroad to collect pictures from West Africa. The center is the West African Research Center, WARC, in Dakar, Senegal and I am bringing this up because our speaker today is from Senegal. And that center actually collects from 11 countries from West Africa, uses specialists in the region, indigenous speakers of the languages to collect materials for us. And so Dakar in Senegal is a very important alternative center, other center, for collecting materials apart from Nairobi. And today we have, from Dakar, Professor Magueye Kasse, visiting Fulbright Scholar at Howard University and Associate Professor of German Literature and Language, Cheikh Anta Diop University in Dakar, Senegal. He will be speaking about African and African-Americans in Germany the pluralistic and multifaceted presence of Africa in Germany. He has many accomplishments and Dr. Angel Batiste from AMED will be introducing him. Thank you. >> Dr. Angel Batiste: Good afternoon and welcome to the African Section or the African and Middle Eastern Division in the Library. Before introducing our speaker, I would like to say it has been, what four or five months now, Magueye, I received a call from Howard University, Dr. Cham, Chair of the African Studies and Research Program at Howard. And he mentioned to me that there was a visiting scholar, a visiting Fulbright Fellow in residence at the center and asked, could I assist them here at the Library of Congress Dr. Kasse came and saw me at the Library, and little did I realize that his query would be so challenging to me. When he came I thought, "Oh, this will be pretty easy, German colonial relations in Africa." After talking to Dr. Kasse for about 10 minutes, I realized we are not just talking about Africa; we're talking about Germans' relations with Africa and the African diaspora. In terms of identifying information resources, Dr. Kasse used almost every Reading Room in this Library. He used the library facilities at the Holocaust Museum, at the Moorland-Spingarn Center at Howard University, and via electronic tools we virtually went into the catalogs of European libraries, German libraries and some of your African library catalogs. So Dr. Kasse, I would like say, thank you for being here at the Library of Congress. You also allowed me to see gaps that we have in our collections Now, as an introduction, I would like to say that Dr. Kasse is a professor of German in the Department of Germanic Languages and Civilizations, the Faculty of Arts and Humanities at the University of Cheikh Anta Diop in Dakar, Senegal. In 2008, he served as General Commissioner of Dak'Art, the eighth African Contemporary Art Biennial in Dakar. And currently he is a visiting Fulbright Scholar in residence in the African Studies and Research Program at Howard University. Dr. Kasse's current research interests in the historical experiences of Africans, Afro-Germans, European-Africans and African-Americans examines many diverse topics including the German colonial presence in Africa, the black military experience in Germany, the life stories of Afro-Germans, Afro-American culture and performers in Germany, and the fate of African or Blacks in Nazi Germany concentration camps. I would like to note that in documenting the record of Germany's historic relations with Africa and its African diaspora communities, Dr. Kasse is recovering a valuable cultural and historical memory that is largely unknown. Before welcoming Dr. Kasse to the podium, I would like to thank him for a special gift donation that he provided to our Africana Collections. And this is a set of audio recordings or interviews of the personal accounts of African Holocaust survivors. Dr. Kasse. [ Applause ] >> Dr. Kasse: Good afternoon. Thank you very much for inviting me today to speak about something I really find very interesting and very important for us. Thank you to Angel for her support from the beginning. A researcher's dream of being selected in the Fulbright Program, it is a very good opportunity to come over and visit archives and libraries in the United States, especially Washington, DC, such as the Library of Congress, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the Moorland-Spingarn Research Center at Howard University, the National Archives, the German Historical Institute, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in New York, among others. In our various research activities and thanks to the invitations of the State Department and some universities in Washington DC in particular, I noted the abundance of archives and libraries dealing with our topic. In order to satisfactorily complete my research project initiated on the subject since 2000, it was essential for me to have the opportunity to come to Washington again to continue my investigations in a more in-depth and systematic manner. The Fulbright Grant I got was very helpful for me to complete my research and also my pedagogical background. Since the beginning of my research I have covered a sizable amount of material. I would like to thank all the people in the research centers I have visited for their kindness and professionalism. They are aware of the needs of scholars. We greatly appreciate their time and assistance. I want to further explore the Schomburg Research Center in New York in these coming days to get more familiarized with the commentaries on African prisons and its multiple facets in Germany. I would like to focus first on who we are, where we come from, and why we get an interest in searching and teaching about the German-African relations over the centuries. Let me summarize it. I'm a German scholar from Africa with an interdisciplinary background and interest. Many in Germany often wonder why Africans are interested in German language and culture. This particular question is not often asked to those Africans who learn and teach other languages and cultures such as English, Russian and Arabic, for example. To answer correctly this question, I have to go back to the situation of Africa in particular in Sub-Saharan Africa from the colonial period to nowadays. I want to emphasize the historical situation in which Africa was and is still involved, from the days of slavery through the European colonization and the economical, social and cultural problems this continent has had to endure. This image resulting from that history is most of the time, one of poverty, political problems referring most of the time to colonial periods, the threat-building and especially the kind of relations we have with former colonial metro police and especially Germany. Also the German colonial presence was very short from 1884 until the end of World War I and the Treaty of Versailles in 1918, 1919. Those problems result also from bad governments, economical strategies which do not allow systematic development, and most of the time are imposed by the international financial institutions with structural adjustment programs and their effects, creating cash economies that displace subsistence economics and produce artificial unemployment. From this legacy, Africa seems to be the lost continent out of history, unable to be part of the globalizing market and derive benefits from fair economic partnerships. This globalization also has to mean a positive integration of cultural values. The presence of Black people of African descent in Germany today is a result of various encounters at four levels. This can be localized by the end of World War I producing in Germany out of its former colonies a very special kind of Black immigration. On the second level, we have a larger African immigration because the Federal Republic of Germany in 1949 took a great place and projected itself as a very important political, economical and cultural partner for the newly-independent African countries. Immigration to Germany grew also because the Federal Republic of Germany wanted since 1950 to drive the European economy. Africans wanted to seize this opportunity, but were confronted with cultural and social barriers. Germany wanted to be seen as the opposite of the other Germany, the German Democratic Republic, a very open and liberal society trying to have the most of the African countries regular relations without any kind of rejection and somehow racism. However, publication and experiences from outsiders tell a different story. The Federal Republic of Germany and its industries needed the natural resources: Africa's and new markets. The presence of African students and scholars in this Germany was therefore justified and motivated by the policy and the ideological strategies based on the so-called economical miracle of the '70s which continues despite some social and economic realities to focus the interest of young Africans whose dream it was and always is to participate in this success, hoping that the memory of the past will prevent its repetition. They attempted to get to Germany in a very complicated context, in which African immigrants were faced with problems of being accepted and integrated in the German society. The economic crisis did not let this policy of open doors for Africans continue. And, this like in France, in Great Britain and Spain, led to many forms of restrictions for the immigrants. There are today between 300,000 and half a million Black people living in Germany. Many of whom are African immigrants or students married to German partners. This immigration completes in the Black images those populations comprised of descendents of children born to French colonial soldiers after World War I and African-American soldiers after World War II. In our time mobility of people and ideas throughout the whole world is essential. Therefore, I believe intercultural communication and dialogue are critical to accepting and integrating each other within our common cultural identity. The best known African poet and [inaudible] of the Ngritude movement of the '50s, the former president of Senegal, former inmate of Germany after the French defeat of 1940, in a camp for colonial subjects where he learnt German language and culture, who was very aware of the significance of German culture and learnt a lot from the Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's poetry, works and theoretical approach of worldly culture. Senghor tried in his broad theoretical approaches to conceptualize the need of global cultural dialog of African people, especially with the Federal Republic of Germany who wanted to contribute to the human development of our time. This is one reason why in our research and teaching we suggest the need to understand how Africa has evolved from the beginning of its encounter with Europe. On the other hand, we try to give the framework for understanding why Africans are mostly rejected in Germany, somehow in a very conflicting way, because of a certain kind of image built over centuries regarding first of all, the racial element and it is very important to try to know how this was continually central all along the centuries of cultural encounters between European and African civilizations. An important focus in my research is to explain how all that has come. Beside what we previously found under this matter in various publications it seemed relevant to come to the United States to pursue the research that now integrated an aspect I had not considered in my earlier work: the African-American experience of Germany. I have found out some parallels. Both Africans and African-American studies are indeed significant parallels that in relation to Germany and my aims are to demonstrate how and why negative images persist. I teach as a German of the Department of German Language and Civilization. This is not called a German department, because our students do not only learn the German language. From the first year to post-graduated level, the teaching provided is based on an interdisciplinary approach which includes literature, language, history, philosophy, sociology, anthropology, ethnology, art in all dimensions from movies to music and performing arts. Angel talked about Dak'Art, the Biennial Festival of Art, which General Commissioner I was, 2008. This biennial covers all the African continent and the African diaspora. It is also based on a participatory approach which encourages students to contribute to building up the general and interdisciplinary knowledge imparted to them. So our curriculum is objective-driven and as the former Head of the Department, Director of the Pedagogy and University Reform, in serving in the Cabinet of the University President for over 14 years, I successfully nurtured and supported students in achieving the highest academic accomplishment in that way. Our German studies both in teaching and research cover as earlier I mentioned it, the indispensable language skills acquisition, but also German literature and German civilization: Germany across the centuries, the two German States from 1949 to 1989 and of unified Germany. Like I already mentioned, and I would like to stress the point: because it is relevant to our coming to the United States, our German studies are intercultural. We build bridges between historians like I say, philosophers, linguists, development and economic experts and many others and we are strong believers in cross-fertilization. A great deal of my research and publications are about that precisely. I have taken part in large number of conferences, congresses, national and international, and I am a member of numerous international forums which includes the Society of Intercultural Germanistic in Germany, the International Association of German Studies and the Association of South African Germanists. In the same way I have actively participated in the setting up of the Association of Germanists in Sub-Saharan Africa, which brings together German scholars from French-speaking as well as English speaking Sub-Saharan Africa. It is based on all these activities and in the interest for African-German relationships in all their facets, that we understood the need to perform research on an area, which so far, has been little researched or inadequately in the interdisciplinary aspect highlighted, in particular the contribution of Black African to German civilization and culture, economically and culturally. The treatment of Africa, Africans and the African diaspora without excluding the African-American because of their African descent and Africans' image as such and as well. The results of my investigations prove that point, and it is new, interesting and lights up my research purpose in many ways. I want also to contribute to the existing body focusing on Africa and African diaspora relations with Germany. I am particularly interested in showing now how this relationship has developed and sometimes very positively in Germany influencing Germany in many ways through the arts like, for example, the reception of African arts in Germany from Carl Einstein, and his work on Negerplastik, to the jazz with various influences of this art in Berlin during the '20s and all over the Third Reich. I will also integrate interdisciplinary aspects in this research what I have found in the existing materials. This explains why over last few years my research focuses on the presence of Africans and other Blacks in Germany from the 18th century to the end of World War I, to this day. It should be noted that my PhD dissertation completed in 1980 investigated the image of Black people in German literature from 1870 to 1933. This image was shaped first by fear and various forms of rejection as responses to the unknown according to colors and their meanings in religious spheres. This has been produced down the centuries psychologically and racially motivated reactions long before German people ever saw Black people to whom they even denied their humanity. And in German language from the Middle Ages to the 18th century, the Black man was associated to the devil. I quote, "Der Schwarzer, der Maure, der Neger" which successively and particular during the slavery and the colonization means the one who needed to be educated to work. Immanuel Kant, the philosopher had justified this point of view in some of his theoretical works. For a long time many scholars thought that Germany had nothing to do with the slavery system. Even so late Germany had taken part in the European slavery system. At the official end of the slavery in 1848, the Africans found themselves in an era, the new Industrial Age in which Europe and America were striving to develop. The same prejudice could consider the fact that the USA were not part of the Berlin-Congo Conference of 1884, which decided to conquer Africa after the end of slavery, to pay more attention to the needs of exploitation of the human and natural resources of the African continent. It may be the first relation in three ways Germany, USA and Africa through the economical needs of Europe and America in which Africa [inaudible]. The identity of the African there who was there for ideologically, economically and psychologically targeted not only denied as a subject making his or her own history, to quote the German philosopher, Hegel, who wrote that Africa was enveloped in the deepest night, not being capable to participate in the running of the world. It is in Hegel 100 Lectures to the Philosophy. But it was also because of that and at the same time subject to various kinds of discrimination. Africa was seen also in Germany as to be conquered. Also this colonization was shorter than other European colonial powers. Compared to other major European colonial powers like France or Great Britain, Germany tried to appear as the best colonial power and the Treaty of Versailles of 1918-1919, was presented as a [inaudible] against Germany. This attitude will survive the Weimar Republic and allow Hitler to conduct a very ambiguous policy toward the African diaspora in Germany and use it as propaganda for his economical policy, his willpower to get the former German colonies in Africa and especially toward the racist South Africa. On one hand the Hitler regime continued because of its racial governance to reinforce negative stereotypes of Africans and the African diaspora. For example, the only issues of these were to be confined to some stereotyped part in racial movies or in circus or to some negative social rules. On the other hand and conversely, this propaganda also sought to buttress his dream for colonial [inaudible] like the promoting of a very special stereotyped kind of African arts in Germany which reinforced abovementioned rules. For example, the German Africa Show. And as a concept of good German colonization, in fact, it was over the long term the ambiguous policy of Hitler which could no longer be sustainable regarding to context of the anti-Semitic Nuremburg Laws for 1935, which were applied also to Black too. It seemed to me relevant to look as a legacy of the African image and its impact on the perception of Africans and African-Americans' lives and culture in Germany, their struggles for rights and their relation to Germany in a very productive way of understanding the Germans' history. That is somehow a way I see for example in the movie of our Senegalese filmmaker, Sembene Ousmane, Camp de Thiaroye, is the name of the movie. The Thiaroye massacre was the mutiny by and mass killing of French West Africa troops by French forces on November 31, 1944. The Thiaroye involved the former colonial troops. Involved were former prisoners of war who had been repatriated to West Africa in placed in a holding camp awaiting discharge. Among other points, Sembene shows a part with a Nazi helmet. This part is silent, proving his drama, stress, and shock because he [inaudible] an inmate and the survival of some concentration camp in Germany. He is very aware of the whole situation in which the Thiaroye were involved. Mostly he is the one who shows how deep the whole enterprise is, which tries to back up and erase the historical memory of African people in the various and tragic African and European encounters. In the intercultural way of understanding the meanings of an engagement like Sembene Ousmane did, we have to face those realities in a way that emphasizes the necessity of the only way mankind has to understand each other. In the same way I would like mention those Black people who belonged to the hall of fame of African-American culture and progressive thinking, very involved in the struggles of their time who deserve a special place in the history of cross-cultural encounters beginning with those of the 19th century like WE Du Bois and Alain Leroy Locke, who had studied in Berlin. Admiring German culture, both men saw a similarity between Black America and Germany in the struggles to achieve unity and power. There they deeply respected the German intellectual tradition, notably the work of Johann Gottfried Herder of the transcendence power of Volk and culture and the philosopher Gottlieb Fichte and his nationalistic addresses to the German nation. By the way it is interesting to compare Du Bois and Leipoldt's rationale and their views on German culture. In this matter, Johann Gottfried Herder's work appears more progressive regarding Africa than Gerter. Also both hated in their works Nationalism and Absolutism. And Herder went further to understand and fear the extreme to which the Volk [inaudible] and that Jews and Black men should enjoy full rights. In this work, in his work, ideas open the philosophy of the history of mankind. Among other works of Herder, he quoted, I quote, "Notwithstanding the varieties of the human form there is, but one and the same species of man throughout the whole Earth." End of the quotation. I want to also mention the work of the activist, Mary Church Terrell, I discovered her thank Angel, very involved in civil rights campaign in her relation to Germany through very important encounters which discusses interesting topics regarding the rights of people. In the gender approach like the International Congress of Women, held in Berlin in 1904, she was the only Black woman attending this conference among others. Talking about intercultural communications and culture dialog in the Afro-German relations would mean being aware of how difficult it is to make it real despite the cultural differences and somehow the legacy of historical facts which we should really understand and explain through education, know exactly who we are and where we come from. Let me quote for example the interesting work of Mary Church Terrell, at the time she was staying in Berlin... in her work, A Colored Woman in a White World, published 2005, "I talked with a young Colored man who was studying in Europe because he possessed exceptional talent. He seemed listless rather than lazy, and it pained me to hear from some of his friends that he was wasting his time. When I urged this young man to avail himself of the marvelous opportunities and advantages he enjoyed, he replies, 'What is the use of my trying to do anything extraordinary and worthwhile?' A man must have some kind of racial background to amount to anything. He must have a firm racial foundation on which to build. What have we accomplished as a race? Almost nothing, we are descent from slaves. How can you expect a people with such background as that to compete successfully with White people?" End of quotation. In the racial state the Black man has to overcome this bias it puts in him -- very contemporary. Terrell quests further a crucial question in the Black and White relation which continues to act negatively in the societies and especially in Germany. She wrote, "Now that Hitler has risen to power and had launched a savage attack against most non-White people and Jews, I wonder what my fate would have been if I had married my German friend. Where would I be today? Would I have been forced to leave Germany? If there had been any children, what would be their status now? I thank a beneficent providence that I was spared the painful ordeal through which I will have been obliged to pass if I had married Herr von D. I had made up my mind definitively that I would not marry a White man if I lived in the United States, and I feared I would not be happy as an exile in a foreign land." End of quotation. The golden '20s in Berlin focused remarkable figures like Josephine Baker, but also bad situations which continued during the '30s like among others the fate of a brilliant trumpet player, vocals, violin, piano, leader and dancer, Valaida Snow. Despite her immense talent, she found herself trapped in Denmark and she was sent to a concentration camp as a non-Aryan, where she remained incarcerated for almost two years sharing this situation with Jews. Let us bring a quotation from the book of Laurence Holder, Renaissance Women: Five Plays, 1979, a dialog between Valaida and a Jewish inmate in the camp. "Valaida: Why are you here? Erika: I am a Jew. Valaida: My God. Erika: God doesn't exist. Do people really believe in Him? Valaida: Oh, Honey, of course they do and help is on the way. Erika: I don't think it is going to save many people. Valaida: Just the rest of the world, but why are you still here? Erika: He is trying to wear me down. Valaida: Trying to wear you down? That doesn't make sense. Why not just kill you? Erika: Because then He denied his perverted pleasure. That is why. Valaida: Well, they're going to do that more. Snow is here. You know how to dance, honey? Erika: I can waltz, if my feet move at all. Valaida: Stand up. I'm going to move. Now, you stand next to me and do just what I do." End of quotation. Despite the fate of such entertainers during this period, jazz was a real human contribution to the understanding of people from various cultural backgrounds through the arts. This fact is relevant to our aims of explaining the history of the various encounters between Africa in general and Germany. However, it needs a real understanding of the real historical facts. So it is for example in studying the mentality of the German people during the Olympic Games of 1936 and their appreciation of blackness which lighted up the nonsense of Aryan superiority and racial philosophy of Hitler. Joe Louis and Max Schmeling, who became close friends despite the situation and their involvement in World War II through the art of Boxing, are interesting example. For over two decades, the topic of blackness Germany has drawn increasing interest among scholars. It is the first level of the presence of Africans in Germany. Since the Initiative of the Black Germans, 1986, a number of colloquia and symposia in Germany and Africa have addressed the issue considering. For example, the realization, the struggle, the identity problem most so-called African-Germans from African or African-American descents face in Germany and which leads them to speak for themselves in poetry, novels, entertainment and movies. Some published autobiographical pieces after visiting Africa, the land of their ancestor, or the US in search of their origins. The results were not always satisfying. The socialization models were and still are a relevant factor in the search of our identity. It finds somehow a catharsis way in writing like Hans-Jurgen Massaquoi's autobiography, Destined to Witness. Massaquoi describes his childhood and youth in Hamburg during the Nazi rise to power. His work provided a unique point of view as one of very few German-born mulattoes in all of Nazi Germany. Shunned, but not persecuted by the Nazis. The dichotomy remained a key theme throughout his whole life. Like the same ways of escaping horrible social situations in performing arts like the artist Josef Nassy, this little-known Black American artist of Jewish descent was caught up in Brussels on April 1942 on the grounds that he held a passport of an enemy nation. He was sent to Beverloo a Wehrmacht prison and transit camp. In November, he was transferred to Germany in a civilian prisoner of war camps Laufen and Tittmoning. He completed over 200 mesmerizing works during his incarceration. The collection in the shadow of the tower, for example, is one of over 100 powerful paintings and drawings depicting the oppressive nature of camp life. It conveys a sense of confinement, isolation and suffocation of spirit with an evident hope to return to normality. His portrayal of Black internees of concentration camps tries by this way to escape, support and testify on the situation of inmates, the essence of his painting, the subjects of his art, and despite the horrible situation in a concentration camp shows humanity, serenity and belief in brotherhood between the inmates. Poetry in the same way is also a form of resistance. Also some of the most gifted do not always find salvation being denied like the dramatic suicide of the late and wonderful, May Ayim, whose father came from Ghana and the mother from Germany, whose work received recognition it deserved from African-Germans after she passed away. Also in movies, like the interesting one of Mo Asumang, Roots Germania, telling the story of this African-German which started when she first heard the song that called for her murder, "This bullet is for you," from the Neo-Nazi band, White Aryan Rebels. The film discusses the migrants and racism theme. I will also like to mention John Kantara, for his wonderful documentaries regarding the life, the history and the situation of African-Germans, like Theodor Wonja Michael and his siblings who survived the horrors of the Third Reich and the Holocaust. Participating to this interest for the legacy and presence of Africans and people of various African descent, having produced a number of articles and presentations on the subject, including interviews with some of them, and especially African survivors of concentration camp before they passed away, I keep discovering a large range of materials in the archives like the minutes of the trials held by the USA after the World War II. The testimonies of Nazi persecutors, material covering a large and horrible time in which Black people, Africans and African-Americans alike were denied, rejected, mistreated, mutilated and murdered in concentration camps. Thanks to the German Office for Academic Exchanges, I had the opportunity to begin my research in the archives of Koblenz, Berlin and Neuengamme, and my investigation established the importance of the African presence in Germany during the 19th century. Also during the traveling exhibitions which shows Black among other so called exotic subjects which contributed towards a certain kind of absolute negative image of Black people. I also had access to the minutes of Parliamentary debates from the Weimar Republic to the Third Reich, and the Gestapo archives. I had visited the German archives in Koblenz and Berlin and found interesting trace of the treatment of Black people and Africans during the occupation of the left bank of the Rhine in 1999. The racist and xenophobic campaign that this presents a racist campaign carried out by the Weimar Republic, Hitler and the Third Reich. The sterilization of the so-called Rhineland Bastards, visitors from concentration camps where they held prisoners of war of African descents, who took part in the resistance movement in France, especially, but also former African colonial subjects and African-American prisoners of war, murdered as already indicated in those camps. Some of them were subjected to medical experimentations. It seems to me therefore relevant to find out and explain the connection between eugenics research applied to Africans in Germany and to African-Americans in the United States. I have found indeed interesting material in this respect including records of medical experiments made on Africans, Jew, Gypsies, ill people, social outcasts in the concentration camps. And I tried in my research to find out the meaning of these connections. I wanted to show how deep these connections were and how they pursued the same racial goals in both countries among the scientists before the National Socialism came to power. It is interesting in fact to mention these coincidences in Germany before and after World War I, in the USA at the same time the victimization of Africans and African-Americans, I mean, the eugenic control of African-Americans, in fact, birth control, the medical experimentation on Black Americans, "Medical Apartheid" like Harriet Washington calls the Tuskegee Syphilis Experimentations in the USA, and the experiences of the scientists and doctors of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity, Teaching and Eugenics in Berlin, involved in carrying out research according to the racial aims of the Nazi State. Dr. Wolfgang Abel was one of the scientists who joined the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute like Professor Dr. Otmar Freiherr von Verschuer or Josef Mengele and Eugen Fischer preparing race expert reports for the NSDAP, which demanded that the group of the Rhineland Bastards, a group of mixed-race children, not be allowed to propagate. 1913, Dr. Fischer's book, Die Rehobother Bastards und das Bastardierungsproblem beim Menschen -- the bastards of Rehoboth and the problem of miscegenation in man -- is published. Fischer writes about the people of mixed blood in German Southwest Africa, "We shall provide them with the minimum amount of protection they require for the survival as race inferior to ourselves. And we shall do this only as long as they are useful to us. After this, free competitions should prevail and in my opinion, this will lead to their decline and destructions." It was a continuation of Eugen Fischer's work in Southwest Africa where he began the sterilization of Black Herero and Namas women after the genocide of this Volk October 2, 1904, with human costs at the time 80%, 16,000 people was very high. It was really a genocide of these people, of this Volk. There are some similar attempts of building a master race at the same time in the USA and in Germany, and Hitler documents from Nazi war crimes show that Blacks, both African-American and African soldiers from Africa serving in the armies of colonial powers, were singled out for mistreatment once they were captured by the Nazis and subjected to medical experimentation, too. There are also abundant similarities made between the persecuted Jews and the Africans, which were continually produced and highlighted in German society during the Holocaust. My aim is in this direction to find out how these were ideologically, economically and not least, racially motivated. Another aspect in these similarities which could explain the racial policy of excluding Black people from any kind of positive cultural evolution is the exhibitions of living Black subjects at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century in Germany. Best known were the traveling shows, wandering circuses and exhibitions of Black men and women during which experimentations and studies were conducted to establish the inferiority of the Black man. They were made on the subjects like those made on Herero's head brought to Germany for their purposes after the genocide on 1904. This explains the relevance of our topic. Likewise I also focused on the case of the children of Black American GIs stationed in Germany after the defeat of the fascism in 1945. Those children born from love or sexual encounters between African-American soldiers and local women grew up in traumatic situations resulting from the absence of their father, their African or African-American father. Including the so-called Brown babies, during the occupation of Germany after the World War II, their fate recalled somehow in Germany the situation of the Rhineland Bastard after World War I during the Third Reich. It was no more comprehensible and acceptable to think about sterilization, but long debates in Parliament and in the society took place to know what to do with those children. The families were not willing to accept them because of the shame they carried. On the issue seemed to determine the fate of those children to send them to Africa or to find for them foster families in the USA among willing African-American families. The fate of the Brown babies in Germany as in the United States, their problem reported in the German and American newspapers and more recently 2011 in the German movie called Brown Babies to remind the essence of exclusion and rejection of these children of African-American descent. It is interesting to study on one hand the racism those GIs were exposed in their own country, in the United States Army, as normal citizens of a country in conflict with the racist state, forgetting for a while the discriminations they were subjected to. On the other hand, the same kind of discriminations they were exposed to in Germany as Black inmates in concentration camps. The way some of them were murdered and lynched and almost in the same context of rejection of blackness like in the USA nearly at the same time, which is reflected in the Nazi propaganda. These soldiers were Black, and that came with all negative and derogative traits attached to that by the dominant ideology of the time. It is very important for me to be aware of the many studies conducted on the same issue to try to summarize and analyze them from a new historical and intercultural perspective and to try to understand how many facts contribute to the negative Black images during the colonial and post-colonial German periods. This intercultural perspective means new ways of producing knowledge and transforming social relations. I shall conclude by saying how important it is today to analyze and understand the different ways of intercultural communication in the African Studies. With the help of research based on cultural aspects of so many encounters which are enhanced by the mobility in the new form of globalization of the world. We must understand very clearly how new problems just are the consequences of dramatically unsolved situations in which African and African-Americans are involved. To understand the other in his defense means accepting first the difference, biological, social and historical nature. The fact that some African-German women try to show new ways of practicing their difference in very interesting gender studies or that many critics try to integrate the struggle of African and German-African descent for their respect of their difference, which includes the real acceptance of the entire citizenship is a trend of our time. I thank you very much for your attention. [ Applause ] >> Dr. Angel Batiste: Thank you Dr. Kasse. We will have a 10-minute question and answer. And I would like to note that this program has been webcast, and for those participating in the Q&A session, you are giving your consent to being webcast. So we will have a short question and answer. No questions? [ Inaudible ] >> Dr. Kasse: Yeah. Okay, thank you very much for the question. >> Dr. Angel Batiste: Repeat the question. >> Dr. Kasse: Yeah. The question is, how do we respond to Hegel's thinking about Africa? I said in my presentation that our aim is to include in an interdisciplinary way, as a discipline, like philosophy, history and so on and so far. So we used to have in our teaching, and research too, to face those problems. A very close friend of mine has written a very nice book about Hegel and Africa, and I said to him, "You must add to that the mentality in Germany at the time of Hegel." Hegel had never visited Africa. He just read the relation from those from Great Britain even if they were German people, German scientists, who discovered Africa and wrote about Africa. And he wrote that Europe was in the civilization. [Inaudible] at the door of the civilization, but Africa is deep, in the deepest night of the evolution. It meant that Africa has nothing to do. And he went further and said that the slavery, like Kant, is -- "Well, we can understand why African people are reducing to slavery, because it is of the nature of the Africa people; they are too lazy, because of the climate." In the 17th, 18th century, there was a lot of discussion about the origin of Black people and the origin of the color of our skin. And they were trying to say that, if that is Africa, it just may have African people. And we try to understand how the image of the Black man has evolved from Middle Ages to Hegel. Everything associated with Black was negative. The symbol of punishment is black. Black is a color that with which you cannot identify ourselves. And I shall remember a very interesting book for children written at that time. It is called Der Struwwelpeter. It is mini-stories for children, for kids. In one of the stories, it is called "The History of the... Little Black Man." A little Black man was going his way, and three white little kids were laughing at him. Then came a grown-up who said, "Why are you laughing at this poor, little Black man? At this poor, little black man? Why are you laughing at this little, poor black man?" The kids continued to laugh at the little poor Black man a second time, a third time. It is interesting to know how this little poor Black man is defined, in German language it is [ Foreign Language], ein Kohle, Pech, Rabe, Schwarze, Maure five words to define a little Black man, [ Foreign Language ] ; ein Kohle, I do not know how you say it: [foreign language]. >> Audience: Coal. >> Dr. Kasse: Coal. Pech. If you have pech in German language, it means you have no chance. You are [foreign language]... >> Audience: You are unlucky. >> Dr. Kasse: You are unlucky. Thank you. Kohle, Pech. Rabe is a bird, black bird, who is known as stealing. Yes. Kohle, Pech, Rabe -- der Schwarze - I say is the Devil, Maure is another word to define the Black man. This little, poor Black man is defined in five items and the kids continue to laugh. The punishment to stop them laughing was to bring them in a black ink and dropped them in the ink so that they could get black. It is very interesting to analyze the mentality of a young German kid, how he grew up with this idea of blackness. What is blackness. So Hegel did continue this way despite the fact that Hegel, a very great philosopher, was and still is, but the fact is that. Have I answered your question? >> Dr. Angel Batiste: Any additional questions? >> Did you come across any surprising information while working here in the Library of Congress that you did not already know about the topic? >> Dr. Kasse: Yes. Yes, definitively. Not only here, with the help of Angel, but through some lectures here I had to go on the other side. In the Madison Building? >> Dr. Angel Batiste: Yes, the Madison, the motion picture building, newspapers... >> Dr. Kasse: Motion picture building, newspapers building and music division. And I met a very nice encounter with someone who is very lovely. He's performing at WTMW, Lady Applebaum, who bring me to someone very interesting for my research. He is white, comes from Germany, was a member of the Hitler Youth in the so-called special school [inaudible], I'm sorry, for children with many talents in music. Musikschule is a name in German, Musikschule. Very protected by the Nazis. This man was in this school. He knew, by the way Jews, in the neighborhood and he left the school to come over to the United States, and he performed with Miles Davis, Duke Ellington, Armstrong and the whole frame of jazz musicians of the '50s. And this guy tells me about his story as a musician, and he gave me footage of jazz played by Jew musician in concentration camp made by Himmler. It is a very interesting topic. I know the influence of jazz. If you read the book of Massaquoi, Destined to Witness, he is talking about the influence of jazz music at that time in Germany. And because the Nazis were very aware of the importance and the interest of jazz among the youth, Himmler, who captured Jewish musicians and brought them to a concentration camp, obliged them to play jazz music in a broadcast. It is a very nice connection. I never be aware of that before I come here. So like I say, I begun this research for some years ago, traveling in Germany, but I wanted to come here and to see especially in the Library of Congress and in the National Archives to follow the minutes of the trials held 1945. And the way people, the persecutors of the Black and the Jews, the way they were explaining what they have done during the Holocaust, it revealed a kind of mentality. Not only that, they were -- how you say it? The sentences were to death or to 30 years of jail. And the interesting thing is, the letters written by the neighbors to testify, to try to justify their behaviors during this period, from the church, from any kind of people dealing with that matter. I say if even if I was talking about the end of the Nazi era, 1945, it is not surprising that during those years nothing very deep was done in Germany to face the Nazism. I remember in the one book which brings very high debates... the man who wanted to follow Hitler is the name of the book. I translated, but it is not the correct translation. But the idea is, how did the German people follow Hitler? And I found here some nice interesting things also regarding Leni von Riefenstahl, who made a very nice movie, a very important movie, during the rise of the Nazi power, but not only that, the Olympic Games. The most beautiful pictures we have on the Olympic Games and to Jesse Owens, and we have it through Leni von Reifenstahl who, years after made a very nice book about Africans from Nubia. This kind of Black man very strong, very nice. You know sometimes you discover something and it is interesting in the research, you discover something and you go further. You get a next interest, the next thing, you know, it is amazing. I would like really to thank all the people here who were very helpful for that matter. >> Dr. Angel Batiste: Okay, thank you Dr. Kasse. [Applause] >> Dr. Kasse: And I am sorry for my very bad English. >> Dr. Angel Batiste: That concludes our program and we thank all of you for joining us today. I see a number of new faces here in the African Middle Eastern Reading Room. Please visit our website and join us for other programs. Thank you. >> Dr. Kasse: Thank you, Angel. [Laughter] >> Dr. Angel Batiste: That was great. >> Dr. Kasse: Thank you. >> That was fantastic. >> Dr. Kasse: Merci. [Inaudible] >> This has been a presentation of the Library of Congress.