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African prisoners made sound recordings in German camps in WW1: this is what they had to say
His recorded voice speaking in Wolof travelled back home in 2024, as a sound installation I created for the Théodore Monod African Art Museum in Dakar.
Chapter two listens to Mohamed Nur from Somalia. In 1910 he went to Germany to work as a teacher to the children of performers in a so-called Völkerschau (an ethnic show; sometimes called a human zoo, where 'primitive' cultures were displayed).
After refusing to perform on stage, he found himself stranded in Germany without a passport or money. He worked as a model for a German artist and later as a teacher of Somali at the University of Hamburg. Nur left a rich audiovisual trace in Germany, which speaks of the exploitation of men of colour in German academia as well as by artists. One of his songs comments on the poor treatment of travellers and gives a plea for more hospitality to strangers.
Stephan Bischoff, who grew up in a German mission station in Togo and was working in a shoe shop in Berlin when the war began, appears in the third chapter. His recordings criticise the practices of the Christian colonial evangelising mission. He recalls the destruction of an indigenous shrine in Ghana by German military in 1913.
Also in chapter three is Albert Kudjabo, who fought in the Belgian army before he was imprisoned in Germany. He mainly recorded drum language, a drummed code based on a tonal language from the Democratic Republic of the Congo that German linguists were keen to study. He speaks of the massive sociocultural changes that mining brought to his home region, which may have caused him to migrate.
Together these songs, stories and accounts speak of a practice of extracting knowledge in prisoner of war camps. But they offer insights and commentary far beyond the 'example sentences' that the recordings were meant to be.
Why do these sound archives matter?
As sources of colonial history, the majority of the collections in European sound archives are still untapped, despite the growing scholarly and artistic interest in them in the past decade. This interest is led by decolonial approaches to archives and knowledge production.
Sound collections diversify what's available as historical texts, they increase the variety of languages and genres that speak of the histories of colonisation. They present alternative accounts and interpretations of history to offer a more balanced view of the past.
• Anette Hoffmann: senior researcher at the Institute for African Studies and Egyptology, University of Cologne.
