2013/01/01 by Anne Adams · 1 citation
Social Sciences · #African history and culture studies
paper · doi:10.1163/9789401209892_015
openalex publication_date 2013/01/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2025/11/06
THEODOR WONJA MICHAEL is proud to be a Prussian. He is equally proud to be of Cameroonian nobility, indicated by his middle name, Wonja. Bom in Berlin in 1925, he was last of four children of a Cameroonian immigrant and his German wife, both of whom died, however, by time boy was eight years old. In spite of young Theodor's intellectual interests, especially in learning about Africa, as a black person growing up in Nazi Germany, he was not allowed to pursue academic study. Like so many other Afro-Germans of late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century, he sometimes earned his living 'on exhibit' in Germany's ethnic exhibitions, and later as a performer in German propaganda films set in Africa. Surviving Nazi era and World War Two, he was later able to earn a degree with double concentration in sociology and economics, followed by a postgraduate year at Institute of Overseas Studies in Paris. As a head of family, with a German wife and four children, Theodor Wonja Michael would eventually hold positions as editor of a weekly journalistic series about Africa, in late 1960s and early 1970s, and afterwards, for fifteen years, as African Development advisor for German government. After retirement from civil service, he spent many years on theatre stage.As following interview makes clear, however, for all of his career working as an Africa 'expert', Theodor Michael did not have benefit of any formal education about anything African. Rather, his interest in Africa emanates from his childhood memories, when his home was a hub of AfroGerman community activity in Berlin, which had its origins in last decade of nineteenth century, when young men, largely from German colo- nies, came to Germany for education and married German women. The elder Wonja Michael had hoped to repatriate to Cameroon with his family. Even though Theodor had begun, as a youth, to read books about Africa written by European explorers and researchers such as Leo Frobenius, it was writings of African intellectuals that had a life-changing influence on him. The Negritude writings, particularly, of Senghor, as well as works by Nkrumah and numerous others, formed a critical component of his intellectual development as a young adult Afro-European. So he speaks, in interview, about his independent study of Africa - this, in Germany from 1950s through 1980s. As a result, he amassed a collection of books, by Africans and Europeans, which numbered nearly 700 volumes. In addition to Frobenius, Senghor, and Nkrumah, they range from most imperial German colonial studies, travel narratives, etc., through social scientific and literary writings of Fanon, Kenyatta, Cesaire, Nyerere, Tutuola, Soyinka, Achebe, and numerous others. Some are in German; others are in their original French or English. They include, for example, Sembene's short stories, where Michael encountered Le Mandat [The Money Order], which remains one of his favourite literary pieces. They also include works by fourteen African statesmen, of whom nine would become heads of state. Through his readings from those combined, though eclectic, European and African sources, Theodor Michael came to be regarded as the walking encyclopedia of African information, as he jokingly acknowledges in interview.Soon after his seventieth birthday, Michael decided he wanted to dispose of collection in a manner that would maintain its integrity. After libraries such as at late Janheinz Jahn's university at Mainz showed little interest except for some few individual volumes, Michael found (younger) Bayreuth University, a rising institution in African studies in Germany, willing to take intact collection of this Afro-German septuagenarian, even though, as tiie cordial acquisitions librarian said, his library already owned many of books in collection.Lucky for me and my research in Afro-German cultural studies. …