Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

African Students in East Germany 1949–1975 by Sara Pugach

2023; The MIT Press; Volume: 25; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1162/jcws_r_01179

1531-3298

Fungisai Musoni-Chikede,

German History and Society

African Students in East Germany is a transnational project that follows African students from Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, Togo, Zambia, and Guinea to the Communist-ruled German Democratic Republic (GDR) from 1949 to 1975. Although Cold War literature on African students in the Communist bloc has shed light on these students’ experiences, much of it is in journal articles. There are very few monographs on this subject, and Sara Pugach's book thus fills a gap. By focusing on the history of African students’ search for higher education after the Second World War, the book helps to shift Cold War discussions from the overstudied East-West tensions by centering African students as active participants who also shaped the Cold War conflict. Although the African–East German history Pugach recounts here consists of characters from different countries who had different agendas, she successfully ties the group together to create a moving story that gives agency to the Africans. This is not a story of what was done to Africans; it is a story of what Africans did during the Cold War, particularly to East Germans.The book develops two themes. The first investigates the slippage between (1) what Pugach calls the GDR's mythology of an anti-imperialist and non-racist nation with a genuine interest in supporting newly independent African countries and armed guerrilla movements fighting for independence and (2) African students’ lived experiences in the GDR that were characterized by a mixture of heartfelt welcome and “pronounced xenophobia, and vicious racism.” Pugach shows how the GDR's attempt to brand itself as free of racism was belied by the venomous racism that coexisted in the GDR with anti-racist declarations. Even though some East Germans developed romantic relationships with African students, others treated the Africans as overly sensitive children with poor working habits.The second theme is how the intersection of the Cold War and decolonization shaped African students’ lives in both Africa and the GDR. By positioning African students’ lives at this intersection, Pugach highlights the competing individual, national, and global circumstances that were both rewarding and life-threatening. Many of the African students viewed educational opportunities in East Germany as either a key to improving their social standing, a good excuse to get away from the guerrilla movements fighting colonialism, or an opportunity to flee from the political repression and violence they risked facing at home. But the newly independent African governments (and the guerrilla movements fighting for independence in areas still under colonial rule) hoped that the students would focus mainly on how to promote national concerns. Adding pressure on African students was the East German government's goal of using them to spread Marxist-Leninist ideological influences to their home countries, even though some African students wanted to stay in the GDR after graduation for better opportunities, for safety reasons (e.g., Cameroonian students), or for the sake of being near their new East German families and romantic partners. The threat of imprisonment by European colonial officials who feared their colonial subjects would be turned into Communists further complicated African students’ lives. For students from Ghana and Kenya, their plans to pursue higher education in the GDR were upended by the postcolonial political shifts, which reorganized the Cold War geography and induced newly independent African political parties to shift their Cold War allegiances.Covering the period 1949 to 1975, African Students in East Germany has five chapters. The first discusses how Africans became entangled in Cold War politics, and the second explains the challenges faced by African students en route to the GDR. Pugach devotes the remaining three chapters to a survey of the methods used in the selection of African students for scholarships (ch. 3), the involvement of African students in their home countries’ politics despite the GDR and home governments’ discouragement of such activities (ch. 4), and African students’ gendered and racialized experiences in the GDR (ch. 5).Pugach has done research in numerous repositories around the world, including the archives of the University of Leipzig and the Technical University of Dresden, the Political Archive of the German Federal Foreign Office, the Ghanaian Public Records and Archives Administration Department in Accra, the Kenyan National Archives, the United National Independence of the Zambia Archives, and The National Archives of the United Kingdom. At some of these archives, Pugach was able to examine African students’ curricula vitae, the students’ letters, reports on meetings with students, materials of African national student organizations, students’ projects, and official complaints from and about African students. Interviews with the children of Africans who once studied in the GDR, such as Jeannette Aryee-Boi, as well as with a handful of former East German students, add intriguing human voices to this project. Equally significant is the use of Behind the Iron Curtain, a novel by A. E. Ohiaeri, which, even though based on a fictional Nigerian student traveling to East Germany in the 1950s, matches the findings from archival materials.The book contributes to historiography on the Cold War in Africa, on decolonization, and on East German history, and it successfully uses the history of African students in the GDR to explore German struggles with racial issues after 1945, including debates after 1990 in united Germany over refugees, multiculturalism, and citizenship. In that respect, Pugach explains why African and Middle Eastern migrants continue to flock to Europe despite the private and public racist encounters. Pugach's book makes clear that current African and Middle East migrants, like their Cold War counterparts, view dealing with racism as “an acceptable tradeoff” (p. 2) that one pays in exchange for a better life. The book should also be of interest to gender studies scholars, particularly chapter 5, which details East Germans’ attitudes toward interracial romantic relationships and African women.One of the interesting things about Pugach's book is how much agency and power it ascribes to Africans, especially African students whom the East German government and university administrators wanted to feel welcome so they could establish strong Cold War ties and demonstrate the GDR's opposition to racism. The East German authorities discouraged African students from informing Western journalists about racist mistreatment in the GDR or from transferring to universities in West Germany, but in many instances African students had more agency than their East German counterparts did. For example, despite instructions to avoid getting involved in politics at home, Guinean students challenged East German officials and staged protests against President Ahmed Sékou Touré’s policies. Equally interesting is how the book situates African students’ presence and experiences in the GDR as part of a long history of Afro-German interactions that dates as far back as the thirteenth century and was closely connected to “the racist assumptions and beliefs of the Imperial, Weimar and Nazi eras carried over into the GDR, as much as state rhetoric tried to deny this fact” (p. 11).Even though the book is a valuable addition to the literature, Pugach should have devoted more space to African students’ experiences with “pronounced xenophobia, and vicious racism” (p. 11) in the GDR, a problem that was clearly of great magnitude. Similarly, she should have provided solid data in support of her contention that most of the African students in the GDR were not devout Marxist-Leninist supporters. Beyond the example of Jacques Latta and the claim by his daughter Jeannette that most of her father's friends were not committed to the ideology, we do not have much evidence to corroborate Pugach's view. These small criticisms aside, this is a well-written book that should be featured on reading lists for undergraduate and graduate courses pertaining to the Cold War, Africa, Germany, decolonization, and African-European interactions.