April
5, 2002
Black
German Writer to Discuss Growing Up in Nazi Germany
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Hans J. Massaquoi
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In the first chapter
of his memoir, Destined to Witness: Growing Up Black in Nazi
Germany (William Morrow and Co., 1999), Hans J. Massaquoi
writes: "One beautiful summer morning in 1934, I arrived
at school to hear our third-grade teacher, Herr Grimmelshauser,
inform the class that Herr Wriede, our Schulleiter (principal),
had ordered the entire student body and faculty to assemble in
the schoolyard. There, dressed as he often was on special occasions
in his brown Nazi uniform, Herr Wriede announced that ‘the
biggest moment of [our] young lives' was imminent, that fate had
chosen us to be among the lucky ones privileged to behold ‘our
beloved Fuhrer Adolf Hitler' with our own eyes. It was a privilege
for which, he assured us, our yet-to-be-born children and children's
children would one day envy us. At the time I was eight years
old and it had not yet dawned on me that of the nearly six hundred
boys assembled in the schoolyard, the only pupil Herr Wriede was
not addressing was me." Massaquoi, former managing editor
of Ebony, will discuss his coming of age as a black child in Nazi
Germany Wednesday, April 10, at 7:30 pm in Mary Woolley Hall's
New York Room.
The son of a Liberian
father from a prominent family and a German nurse, Massaquoi was
born in 1926 in Hamburg, Germany. At the time, his grandfather,
Momolu Massaquoi, was the Liberian consul general there. When
his father and grandfather returned to Liberia in 1929, Hans's
mother chose to raise her son in Germany, because she worried
that the tropical climate would affect his fragile health.
Like other boys his
age, young Hans wanted nothing more than to join the Hitlerjugend
(Hitler Youth Movement). "The Nazis put on the best show
of all the political parties. There were parades, fireworks and
uniforms — these were the devices by which Hitler won over
young people to his ideas. Hitler always boasted that despite
parents' political persuasion, Germany's youth belonged to him,"
Massaquoi has said. Crushed when he learned that the movement
was not open to him, the boy found that as a black child
he was even barred from playgrounds under the laws of Nazi Germany.
In addition, under the discriminatory racial laws, the talented
student was prohibited from attending secondary school or any
of Germany's universities. Instead, Massaquoi served a three-year
apprenticeship as a machinist and worked in that capacity throughout
World
War II.
Massaquoi immigrated
to the United States in 1950 and served in the 82nd Airborne Division
during the Korean conflict. After being honorably discharged,
Massaquoi entered college to study journalism under the G.I. Bill.
He graduated from the University of Illinois at Urbana in 1956
and pursued graduate studies at Northwestern University. In 1958,
he joined Jet magazine as an associate editor, and within one
year, was transferred to Ebony, where he rose to the position
of managing editor and became a senior member of the magazine's
editorial board. He retired from Ebony in 1997 and remains a contributing
editor.
Massaquoi's lecture
is sponsored by MHC's German studies department, African American
and African studies departments, and Offices of the Dean of the
College and Dean of Faculty; the German studies departments at
Smith and Amherst Colleges; and the school of social sciences
at Hampshire College.
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