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From Harlem to Hamburg: An Academic Examination

A joint project between Duke, UNC-Chapel Hill, N.C. Central University and N.C. State University examines the intersection of African-American and German cultures.

Hamburg-American line.jpeg
A joint project between Duke, UNC, NCCU and N.C. State will examine the relationship between Germany and African-American culture in the 20th century.

Duke is teaming with three other Triangle universities to present a semester-long project examining the intersections between the African-American and German cultures in the 20th century.

Called "From Harlem to Hamburg," the project taps expertise from Duke, UNC-Chapel Hill, N.C. State University and N.C. Central University. The project, funded by Duke's Humanities Writ Large initiative, kicks off Saturday, Jan. 18 with a concert featuring German-language songs based on translations of Harlem Renaissance poetry. Events later in the semester include a film series and academic symposium.

Here, N.C. State's Jonathan Wipplinger, a member of the steering committee, discusses the project.

Why study this connection between African-American and German cultures?

While quite a bit of attention has been paid to the relationship between African-Americans and France -- and Paris in particular -- the connection to Germany is less explored. But the exchange between German and African American cultures is one that stretches back for more than 200 years, going as far back at least as the American Revolutionary War, when African-Americans and Hessians fought side by side, with some African Americans even leaving America to take up residence in Germany. 

Our project focuses on the last 100 years or so of this relationship. During this period, Germans began reading African-American literature and poetry, listening to jazz and welcoming an increasing number of black artists and performers. Following World War II, Germany was occupied by the American military, and ever since African-Americansoldiers had a strong presence in Germany. We want to highlight in our events how complex and deep this relationship is.

The Jan. 18 concert will feature German language songs based on translated Harlem Renaissance poetry. What was it about that Harlem poetry that so resonated in Europe? And more broadly, what, artistically and culturally, was happening in the African-American world that caught the attention of folks in Germany?

After being defeated in World War I, Germans took great interest in anything coming from America and from African Americans in particular. They were fascinated, like so many other Europeans, by African-American jazz music, but this was not the only thing. In the early 1920s, Germans began writing about Harlem, which by that time had become home to hundreds of thousands of African-Americans, and the center of the "New Negro" movement or Harlem Renaissance. The Harlem Renaissance was a cultural movement in the broadest sense in that it encompassed art, literature, poetry, the visual arts and music.  Some of the most famous African-American artists and thinkers of the time were associated with it: W.E.B. Du Bois, Alain Leroy Locke, James Weldon Johnson, Aaron Douglas, Langston Hughes, and Countee Cullen.

In the simplest terms, such figures rejected the stereotyped and racist representation of blacks and black culture by whites, promoted and supported African-American artists and thought, and often placed importance on their relationship to Africa. These ideas were not limited to Harlem alone, however, and its ideas found resonance across America and across the Atlantic in Europe, where many of the figures associated with the Harlem Renaissance had lived or studied (Du Bois, Locke, Hughes for example). 

In Germany, the explosion of cultural production by African-American artists, though denigrated by many, could not be ignored, and throughout the 1920s German journalists and authors wrote about and translated works from African American artists like Langston Hughes and James Weldon Johnston.

What might someone attending an academic symposium on this topic be surprised to learn?

I think someone attending any one of the events will be surprised by how many different types connections between African American and German culture there have been over the past 100 years as well as how varied the reactions, on both sides of the exchange, have been.