Theodor Wonja Michael was one of the last black time witnesses of the Weimar Republic and of national socialism. The author, Journalist and actor died at the age of 94 years in Cologne, Germany.
His family is associated, for over 100 years, with Germany, however, felt Theodor Wonja Michael is always like a Foreigner in my own country. The father came from Cameroon to Germany, the mother was German. He was born in 1925 in Berlin. The Afro-German author and actor has experienced in his life many kinds of racism. 19. October Theodor Wonja Michael in Cologne, died.
People, like animals, issued
The parents of Theodor Wonja Michael
Michael’s father worked in Germany, including the so-called “international look”. The first major Show of this kind, of Hamburg, Carl Hagenbeck, in 1874, organized. He had the idea to show in a zoo, not only animals, but also people from the far colonies.
Already as a small Boy, accompanied Theodor Wonja Michael, his father, and had to skirt in the Bast as “typical Africans” to occur. It was for him and his siblings in a terrible time, he says in a DW Interview by 2017. Visitors handled him, touched his hair and his skin and smelled of him. For a time, Michael grew up with foster parents; a single parent and a black father you don’t want to leave the child. However, these substitute parents were the operator of a peoples look, and looked at the black children as a labour force. Theodor Wonja Michael was nine, his father in 1934. The mother had already died when he was a year old.
A “Foreign” in Berlin
Professional Page: it was in the presentation of Theodor Michael
As a child, Michael, with other children, played white friends had. The “national question” is not felt, he still came up only with the Nazis. “You didn’t need a Jewish star, you saw immediately, ah, a Foreign,” he says in a DW movie “Afro.Germany” by 2017.
That he youth was not allowed to Hitler, he felt was unjust and shameful. But he quickly realized that it could get worse. As long as he ducked and the mouth held, was tolerated the black guy in the great costume films of the Nazis, who glorified the colonial period – as an extra in the role of a “moor”. For the Film “Münchhausen” of 1942, the black actors came together for the last Time of all. “Since all of the could with one blow caught are,” Michael says in a DW Interview. In order to survive, could not he noticed. “Not even a red light on the road to go, but to do so, as if you are not there. I’m still amazed that worked,” he once said. Contact with white women, he was not allowed to have. “Since the sterilization, and an accusation of racial defilement would come.”
Theodor Wonja Michael, the discussion round to the DW movie Afro.Germany
“It has obviously changed a lot since then,” he said at a panel discussion for the Film Afro.Germany. The basic story but had remained the same: “”being Black” is still foreign in Germany. We are still struggling.” Countless times he was asked in his life, where he come from because. “I have to say to the people then always, I’m in Berlin, what causes natural irritation.”
Secret Agent Theodor Wonja Michael
Michael survived the Nazi period. However, after 1945, racism was not just disappeared overnight, but existed hidden more. His friends and colleagues wanted to leave as quickly as possible from the “terrible” Land in the United States. But the Americans fixed entry quotas. As Theodor Wonja Michael, in Berlin, was born, he fell under the German quota was already taken. Michael got to stay, made his Abitur, he studied and worked as a Journalist, as an actor and synchronous speaker.
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“Better you go back to Africa”
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“Better you go back to Africa”
Even the BND, the German intelligence service, was interested in him as a specialist for Africa. Long has he thought about whether he should work for the secret service. “I had a mother country, for Cameroon, there was not time for me yet,” he said in an Interview. “The mother country has treated me for as long as a spit chewing gum”. In the end, he agreed in 1971 to open in the consciousness, the doors for others, for the generations after him. Theodor Wonja Michael was established. In his 2013 autobiography. “Being German and black to be,” he writes, that he was the first black Federal officials in the higher service. As government Director, he went to stand in 1987 in the rest.
Part of the black Community
Until recently, Michael was active in the Black Community in Germany, and was proud of their achievements. He fought against the English to be questioned that Germany as a Nation of blond and blue-eyed white people to understand. The word “mulitikulturell” use it reluctantly. “The black German have no other culture than the Germans.” Even in old age he was still in discussion rounds on the Podium, in front of lectured and read to students from his autobiography. “I want the people to deal with the racism and you do too.”
The quotations are from the DW Interview with Thomas Spahn of June 2017, and from the DW-the movie “Afro.Germany”.
The autobiography of Theodor Wonja Michael: be English and Black. Memories of an Afro-German, is published in the dtv-Verlag, 2013.