Hartmann, Wolfram ed.: Nuanced Considerations. Recent Voices in the Namibian-German Colonial History, Windhoek 2019
Description (excerpts from the preface by Wolfram Hartmann, page 8):
“The focus is on burning issues of German colonialism in Namibia: the war and the preceding 19th century, extermination, the camps, ‘forgotten’ ancestors, stolen bones, and many more. In short then, what is aimed at is to provide Namibians across the many divisive spectra with sophisticated information, information that should take the place of sentiment, and then transform moralistic, festering and destructive indignation that disempowers, into empowering, productive anger. Given the deep hurt and profound wounds cut by colonialism, emotional (gut) reactions are understandable. This applies not only to the sufferers of indescribable colonial injustice, but to the perpetrators as well. What makes it really difficult is that we are dealing with the fall-out of this history three to five, sometimes even six generations later. In some intriguing, paradoxical way, this history is a shared history, one history in one system, as experienced in many conversations and interactions (…).
(…) To many Namibians, the contents of this volume will be quite exacting. It contains information that will be uncomfortable for many on both sides of the Namibian mental and emotional divide. That, however is the nature of intellectual endeavour, the quintessential raison d’être of academic discourse; a discourse that aims at opening up intellectual space, at exploring new horizons, to make available paradigms, to challenge received wisdom, in particular to contest the cemented, rock-bottom historiographic patterns prevailing 30 years after the end of colonialism.”
Table of contents:
Contributors – v
Preface – 7
1. Wolfram Hartmann – 10
Introduction
2. Christine Hardung – 23
Commando and band – two forms of violence-based communities in late 18th and early 19th century southwestern Africa
3. Matthias Häussler – 41
Why OvaHerero accommodated the Germans?
On the ‘pacification’ of an acephalus society: co-operation and violence
4. Matthias Häussler – 61
On asymmetric warfare –
the case of OvaHerero in precolonial and early colonial times
5. Wolfram Hartmann – 79
Men and women in colonial Windhoek, 1890 to 1905
6. Andreas Eckl and Matthias Häussler with Jekura Kavari – 109
Oomambo wandje komuhoko wOvaHerero “Words to the OvaHerero nation”
The Extermination Order of Lothar von Throtha
7. Isabel v. Hull – 117
The military campaign in German South West Africa, 1904-1907 and the genocide of the OvaHerero and Nama
8. Matthias Häussler – 133
From destruction to extermination:
Genocidal escalation in Germany’s war against OvaHerero, 1904
9. Tilman Dedering – 157
Compounds, camps, colonialism
10. Jonas Kreienbaum – 172
“Extermination camps” in German South West Africa?
On the rôle of concentration camps during the Ovaherero and Nama wars 1904-1908
11. Matthias Häussler – 187
Between annihilation and clemency:
Concentration camp rule in German South West Africa, 1904-1908
12. Werner Hillebrecht – 205
Archival evidence of robbed human remains:
Problems, gaps, and reconstructions
13. Holger Stoecker and Andreas Winkelmann – 215
Skulls and skeletons from Namibia in Berlin
Results of the Charité Human Remains Project
14. Andreas Eckl – 237
The OvaHerero genocide of 1904:
Source-critical and methodological considerations
15. Birthe Kundrus – 265
Continuities, parallels, perceptions
Reflections on the ‘colonisation’ of National Socialism
16. Werner Hillebrecht – 282
‘Certain uncertainties’ or
Venturing progressively into colonial apologetics?
17. Jakob Zollmann – 303
From Windhuk to Auschwitz – old wine in new bottles?
Review article
18. Bibliography – 343