Bayume Mohamed Husen

Bayume Mohamed Husen (born Mahjub bin Adam Mohamed; 22 February 1904 – 24 November 1944) was son of a former askari officer and served together with his father in WW I with German colonial troops. Later he worked as waiter on a German shipping line and was able to move to Germany in 1929. He married and founded a family in January 1933. Husen supported the German neo-colonialist movement and contributed to the Deutsche Afrika-Schau, a former Human Zoo used by its political propagandists. Husen worked as a waiter and in various minor jobs in language tutoring and in smaller roles in various Afrika-related German movie productions. 1941 he was imprisoned in the KZ Sachsenhausen, where he died 1944. His afro-German fate has been subject of a 2007 biography and a 2014 documentary film.

Background


Husen was born in Dar es Salaam, then part of German East Africa, as the son of an askari who held the rank of Effendi. Prior to World War I, he already had learned German and worked as a clerk at a textile factory in Lindi. When war broke out in 1914, both he and his father joined the Schutztruppe and participated in the East African campaign against Allied forces. Husen was wounded in the Battle of Mahiwa in October 1917 and hold as a POV by the British forces.

After the War, Hanse worked as „Boy“ (servant) on various cruising ships and started to travel as waiter with a Deutsche Ost-Afrika Linie ship in 1925. In 1929, he traveled to Berlin to collect outstanding pay for himself and his father, but his claims were being rejected by the Foreign Office (Germany) as too late. Husen stayed in Berlin and worked as a waiter. He used his Swahili in language courses for officicals and security personnel and as a low paid tutor in university classes, e.g. for famous scholar Diedrich Westermann.

He married a Sudeten German woman, Maria Schwandner on January 27, 1933, three days before Hitler came into power. The couple had a common son, Ahmed Adam Mohamed Husen, (1933-1938), and a common daughter, Annemarie (1936-1939). Husen had another son, Heinz Bodo Husen (1933-1945) from a parallel relationship with a German called Lotta Holzkamp, which however had been accepted in the common household and was raised by Schwandner.

Role in the German neo-colonialist movement
In 1934, Husen applied withour success for "Frontkämpfer-Abzeichen", the front-line veterans' Honour Cross. The German authorities were not willing to bestow the order upon "coloreds" in general, Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck seems to have explicitly ruled out the case of Husen in a letter to the foreign office. Husen nevertheless wore the badge and an askari uniform during his participation in rallies of the German neo-colonialist movement, which sought to reclaim Germany's lost colonies, he probably bought it from a Militaria dealer.

Whether he had received or lost German citizenship at all, is not clear. It was common practice in Weimar Germany to provide migrants from the former German colonies with a passport carrying a note „Deutscher Schutzbefohlener“ (German Protegee) which didn't give them full citizenship. After Hitlers raise to power, Black Germans from the former colonies often were deemed as being part of the state that had surpassed Germany as colonial power. As in the case of Hans Massaquoi, there was no discrimination of Black Germans comparable to the systematic hatred the Jewish minority faced.

Various assignements in Nazi Germany
1934 he shortly returned to Tanganyika during the production of the movie Die Reiter von Deutsch-Ostafrika, where he had a minor role. Husein lost however his main income as a waiter in the Haus Vaterland 1935 after being dismissed due to racist complaints of two coworkers and had ongoing conflicts with the university Seminar für Orientalische Sprachen, where he helped to teach Kisuaheli e.g. to police officers foreseen for service in regained German colonies.

In 1936, Husen joined the Deutsche Afrika-Schau, a sort of Human Zoo rallying for a regain of the former German colonies supported by the German foreign office. The foreign office wanted to protect Afro-Germans against foreign claims doubting Germany's ability to administrate colonies. Other parts of the Nazi Polycracy tried to use of foreign Colonial troops during the Occupation of the Rhineland or the Battle of France as a propaganda tool and insofar dismissed Germany's own legacy in the field. In 1940, the show was stopped.

After the British declaration of War against Germany 1939, Husen asked to be accepted in the Wehrmacht but admission was denied. From 1939 to 1941, Husen appeared in at least 23 German films, generally as an extra or in minor speaking roles. His last and most prominent role was that of Ramasan, the native guide of German colonial leader Carl Peters, in the 1941 film of the same name. He stopped working for the university in April 1941, allegedly after being mistreated by Martin Heepe. While on set, he engaged in an affair with a German woman and was reported to the authorities.

Emprisonment and death
Husen was arrested by the Gestapo on a charge of racial defilement and from then detained without a trial in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp where he died in 1944.

Legacy
A 2007 biography by Marianne Bechhaus-Gerst made Husen's life known to a wider German public, and the artist Gunter Demnig installed a "stolperstein" memorial stone for Husen in front of his former apartment in Berlin. His life is the subject of the 2014 documentary film Majubs Reise by Eva Knopf.

Selected filmography

 * 1934: Die Reiter von Deutsch-Ostafrika
 * 1937: Zu neuen Ufern
 * 1937: Schüsse in Kabine 7
 * 1938: Der unmögliche Herr Pitt
 * 1938: Fünf Millionen suchen einen Erben
 * 1938: Sergeant Berry
 * 1938: Verklungene Melodie
 * 1939: Männer müssen so sein
 * 1940: Stern von Rio
 * 1941: Pedro soll hängen
 * 1941: Carl Peters