Biracial in Nazi Germany
Written byJennifer Brea
Musengeshi Katata writing at the Congolese blog, Forum Realisance (Fr), reviews the film Neger, neger, Schornsteinfeger, an illustration of “racism and its social and ideological absurdity” based on the true story of the son of a German nurse and a Liberian diplomat who grew up in Nazi Germany to become a prominent “Afro-American journalist.”
Written byJennifer Brea
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I wonder how I missed this post about the childhood of former U.S. magazine editor (Ebony) Hans-Jürgen Massaquoi growing up under the NS regime of Nazi Germany and surviving the bombing of Berlin in 1945. Must have been the “French” that threw me off.
The film as far as I understand was a German production and aired on the German national TV network ZDF (German TV 2) in two-parts back in October 2006. The German-language website of the ZDF network has loads of information and multi-media material from the TV docu-drama. Here is the URL to the ZDF’s “Neger, Neger, Schronsteinfeger”:
http://www.zdf.de/ZDFde/inhalt/6/0,1872,3977606,00.html
Top German TV and film personalities starred in the film but the controversey and national debate about integration of minorities and marginalization of racial and ethnic groups did not materialize on a national level, not for long anyways. Germans have a serious problem with looking the past and the truth about the present square in the face. Always have had this problem. Ask the Jews.
Hans-Jürgen Massaquoi was still alive at the time of the airing of the ZDF special. Lives in Florida, U.S.A.