“THE WONDERS OF EUROPEAN CULTURE” – A SALVATION FOR “THE NAIVE CHILDREN”: MOTIF IN GERMAN COLONIAL LITERATURE

Abstract

This paper gives an overview of the most common motives in German colonial literature. Colonial literature is often understood to mean all literature from the colonial period. In this analysis, however, a distinction is made between pre-colonial, colonial and post-colonial works. Two works are analyzed in detail – Von Jenseits des Meeres by Theodor Storm, a novel from the precolonial period of Germany, and Tropenkoller by Frieda von Bülow, who is a typical representative of German colonial literature. The focus of this paper is to show how the colonised population is portrayed in a racist manner and entirely from a Eurocentric point of view.