Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin - Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences - Institute of Asian and African Studies

Delphine Froment

The Kilimanjaro, a German mountain? Discourses and practices of imperialism in the German colonial period

During the 19th Century and since its European discovery in 1848, Kilimanjaro has been explored by several Germans. It was first ascended by the German Hans Meyer in 1889, and got definitively integrated into German East Africa in 1890. Thus, this East-African mountain became at the beginning of the 20th Century an emblem of the greatness of the German Empire – and this German past of Kilimanjaro, which was glorified until the Nazi period (that is to say long after the loss of the colonies in 1919), is still regularly featured in historiographical studies today. While studying and presenting the construction of a German imperial discourse on Kilimanjaro and the territorial appropriation of this mountain by the Germans, this communication offers to question and go beyond this idea of the rooftop of Africa as a “German mountain”: Kilimanjaro has also been explored and visited by other Western (above all British) or African travellers, who have also worked on the construction and dissemination of knowledge and representations about this mountain; the German administration in Kilimanjaro was also not going without some limits, and such administration could only be achieved with the support of the local populations; above all, since the beginning of the 20th century, Kilimanjaro began to attract more and more travellers, hunters and climbers from all over the Western world. Thus, by working on sources of travellers (published accounts, correspondences, photographs or paintings) and on various German administrative archives, this communication will observe the practices and representations being developed about Kilimanjaro during the German colonial period: if Kilimanjaro is claimed as a German mountain in discourses, what can we say, in fact, about its territorial and political appropriation? I intend, with this communication, to present the first milestones of a chapter of my PhD.

Ort: https://hu-berlin.zoom.us/j/61289326057?pwd=LzJNWEEzY01xQ0p0TDZJeE94VGJwdz09 

Meeting-ID: 612 8932 6057

Passwort: afrika