From Black to Schwarz explores the long and varied history of the exchanges between African America and Germany, with a particular focus on cultural interplay. Covering a wide range of media of expression—music, performance, film, scholarship, literature, visual arts, reviews—these essays trace and analyze a cultural interaction, collaboration, and mutual transformation that began in the eighteenth century, boomed during the Harlem Renaissance/Weimar Republic, survived the Third Reich’s “Degenerate Art” campaigns, and (with new media available to further exchanges), is still increasingly empowering and inspiring participants on both sides of the Atlantic.
ContentsAcknowledgementsIntroductionThe Africanist Presence in Nineteenth-Century German Writers - Hanna WallingerNew Negro Renaissance – ‘Neger-Renaissance’: Crossovers between African America and Germany during the Era of the Harlem Renaissance - A. B. Christa SchwarzThe Askari as New Negro: Alain Locke and German Colonial Art - Peter SchneckStaging the African American Conquest of Old Europe: Ernst Krenek’s Jonny spielt auf -Christian RogowskiBridging the Great Divides: Cultural Difference and Transnationalism at Frankfurt’s Jazzklasse - Jonathan WipplingerPictures of “US”? Blackness, Diaspora and the Afro-German Subject - Tina M. CamptBlack Bodies on White Snow: The Reconstruction of Germannessas White in Luis Trenker’s Der verlorene Sohn (The Prodigal Son)(1934) - Gundolf Graml(Re)writing Twentieth-Century Slavery: John A. Williams’ Clifford’s Blues as Neo-Slave Narrative - Christina OppelReading Clifford’s Blues and Blacks in Nazi Germany inPostNegritude Time - Mark A. ReidThe Rebirth of the Nation: Cinematic Discourses of Race and Reconstruction in Transnational Perspective - Angelica FennerRainer and Der weiße Neger: Fassbinder’s and Kaufmann’s On and Off Screen Affair as German Racial Allegory - Page R. LawsIn a Nation or a Diaspora? Gender, Sexuality and Afro-German Subject Formation - Michelle M. WrightWinold Reiss to Kara Walker: The Silhouette in Black American Art - Leesa RittelmannMixed Media, Mixed Identities: The Universal Aesthetics of Marc Brandenburg - Jürgen HeinrichsOn Ben Patterson - Valerie Cassel OliverPoetry, Jazz and the Politics of Aesthetics: Transcontinental Connections between German ’68ers and African American Culture - Melba Joyce BoydNotes on the Contributors
