The ‘Black Horror on the Rhine’ Intersections of Race, Nation, Gender and Class in 1920s Germany Iris Wigger The ‘Black Horror on the Rhine’ Iris Wigger The ‘Black Horror on the Rhine’ Intersections of Race, Nation, Gender and Class in 1920s Germany Iris Wigger Department of Social Sciences Loughborough University Loughborough, UK ISBN 978-0-230-34361-0 ISBN 978-1-137-31861-9 (eBook) DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-31861-9 Library of Congress Control Number: 2017944091 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017 The author(s) has/have asserted their right(s) to be identified as the author(s) of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. This work is subject to copyright. 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Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover credit: Stadtarchiv Mainz BPSF/8904 17 Printed on acid-free paper This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature The registered company is Macmillan Publishers Ltd. The registered company address is: The Campus, 4 Crinan Street, London, N1 9XW, United Kingdom For John Mattis–Johnnie, Ken and my whole family in Germany and England with all my love P a reface and cknowledgements This is a new, extensively revised, extended, and updated English edi- tion of my German monograph “Die ‘Schwarze Schmach am Rhein’ Rassistische Diskriminierung zwischen Geschlecht, Klasse, Nation und Rasse” (2007). I had planned this English monograph project for a long time fol- lowing the very positive reception of my German book and a number of shorter works I have written on the subject. I am very pleased to see it completed now, after it got sidelined for some time due to some other crucial commitments. This book examines the racist logic of the “Black Horror” discourse in depth and seeks to demonstrate from a historically sensitive perspec- tive the complex intersecting of the categories of race, gender, nation and class in the social construction of a “Black Shame on the Rhine.” It in this way engages with a rich corpus of archival and secondary sources and reflects on a quickly growing body of research on the subject mat- ter of colonial troops and their role, reception and representation in European societies. I would like to thank many colleagues, friends, my family and a num- ber of institutions whose support has helped me immensely during this research. First and foremost, I would like to thank my colleague and former Ph.D. supervisor Prof. Wulf D. Hund at the University of Hamburg. He had the initial idea to investigate the “Black Horror” campaign in depth from a sociological perspective and “sold” the topic to me as a vii viii PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS highly original and complex case study for a Ph.D. in the field of Racism Analysis. Our creative-critical dialogue about the subject, fuelled by his enthusiasm for and thorough engagement with my research, has been inspirational and has helped me to succeed in writing this monograph and in many other ways. I would like to thank the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung and the Institut für Europäische Geschichte (Institute for European History) in Mainz for supporting my research on the “Black Shame on the Rhine” with Ph.D. research scholarships. A warm thank you to all the librarians and Archive personnel of the archives and libraries I consulted in my data search for their very kind support of my research and to the editorial team at Palgrave for their hard work and constant support in the writing and production process of this book. The support of my family and friends has helped me greatly to enjoy and complete this research. I would like to thank my partner Kenneth Griffiths for his love, support of my work, his patience as well as many lively debates, and our little son John Mattis (Johnnie) for mak- ing our lives so happy by just being with us. And a big thank you to my colleagues and friends at Loughborough University and beyond, for their help with my research, friendship and good advice, especially to Line Nyhagen, Karen O’Reilly, Dave Elder-Vass, Karen Lumsden, Emily Keightley, James Stayner, Maggie O’Neill, John Scott, David E. Herbert and Alex Yendell. And finally, I thoroughly enjoyed presenting this book in a keynote at the ‘Power, Intimacy and the State: Mixed Families in Europe and Beyond’ conference at the University of Amsterdam this summer and would like to thank Betty de Hart, Lies Wesseling and Marga Altena and the Loving Day NL initiative for their kind invitation and my Amsterdam friend Marjolijn Ooms for making my day. Loughborough, UK Iris Wigger c ontents 1 Introduction 1 1.1 An “Outrageous Humiliation and Rape of a Highly Cultivated White Race by a Still Half-Barbaric Coloured.” Mapping the “Black Shame” Campaign 1 1.2 A “Propaganda Campaign of Enormous Dimensions”: The “Black Horror” in Scholarly Debates 12 1.3 A Treachery of the “Women’s World,” “The People” and “Race”: The “Black Shame” Discourse as a Conglomerate of Racist Discrimination 24 2 Women’s Bodies, Alien Bodies and the Racial Body of the German Volk: The Rhetorical Structure of the “Black Shame” Stereotype 45 2.1 A “Violation of the Laws of European Civilisation”: The “Black Horror” as International Campaign 45 2.1.1 Edmund D. Morel’s “Black Horror on the Rhine” 46 2.1.2 Francesco S. Nitti’s “Cannibals on Rhine and Ruhr” 61 2.1.3 Ray Beveridge’s “Black Disgrace” and “White Shame” 71 2.2 Spreading the “Völkish Spark” of German Solidarity: The National Dividend of the “Black Horror” 82 ix x CONTENTS 3 Race, Gender, Nation, Class: The Social Construction of the ‘Black Shame’ 113 3.1 “Black Shame” and “White Woman”: Women’s Bodies as Medium of Racist Discrimination 116 3.1.1 The Victimised Woman as Seismograph of National and Racial Threat 117 3.1.2 Honourless Women as Stigma of Imagined Collectives 134 3.2 The “Black Shame” as the Decline of the Occident. The Fiction of a Threatened White Race 151 3.2.1 “Savages” in the Heart of Europe. Race, Culture and the Legend of White Superiority 152 3.2.2 Miscegenation as Cultural Decline and Biological Danger: The Perceived Threat of Mulattisation and Syphilitisation 168 3.2.3 The Mobilisation of the White Community. The Mediation between Nation and Race 183 3.3 France’s Attack on the Cultured Nations: The Continuation of War with Racist Means 187 3.3.1 Black Horror—French Shame: France as Target of Racist Rhetoric 189 3.3.2 French “Negro Domination”: A Stigma of Cultural and Racial Degeneration 196 3.3.3 Excursus: “Childlike blacks” in the Service of Civilisation: The French Attempt to Justify the Deployment of Colonial Troops 206 3.4 For the Sake of the Fatherland: The Reconciliation of Class Society in the Community of the People 214 3.4.1 “Black Shame” as German Degradation: The Staged Attack on the Volkskörper 217 3.4.2 Turning Class Enemies into White National Comarades 223 4 Conclusions 307 Bibliography 331 List of Archival Abbreviations [Siglen] 333 CONTENTS xi List of Archival Sources/Collections 335 List of Printed Sources, Electronic Sources and Audiovisual Sources 345 List of Frequent Abbreviations 379 Index 381