A Deterritorialized History: Investigating German Colonialism ...

German colonies. 67 Particular focus was given to advertising colonial products designed
for the German domestic market. 68 A clear indication of the propagandistic focus of the
museum was the layout, which included import and export rooms, life-size
representations of village life, Schutztruppe battle scenes, and an exhibition of missionary
activities. 69 The contemporary inclination towards colonial exotica meant that the
museum soon became a popular destination for Germans of all classes.
Other important colonial-themed structures included the 1891 Berlin tropical
greenhouses, the 1903 Africa-Haus of the DKG and the 1911 Kolonialhaus. The
Kolonialhaus featured minarets, Ottoman domes, lions, elephants and African warriors on
its façade. The building featured a wealth of exotic products and technologies, combined
with overtly pro-interventionist colonial propaganda. The buildings of the colonial
organizations in Dresden, Kassel, Leipzig and Wiesbaden similarly carried forward these
same expressions of Africa-in-Germany and Germany-in-Africa. The appropriation of
African motifs in German culture is interesting not just because of the creation of
difference between Africa and Germany, but also because of the harmonization of
elements of both in the cultural syncretism of the buildings. Reciprocally, the
construction of oppressive and patently alien German buildings in the colonies stressed
the solidity of German rule and power. In the colonies, churches, traders’ houses and
government buildings were built to impress indigenous peoples and to provide places of
redoubt. In both situations, such structures functioned as cultural symbols of
predominant social, economic and political themes in the metropole and the colony.
Other constructions also exhibited the same themes as the colonially-oriented
buildings. Temporary exhibitions were held throughout Germany that sought to contrast
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