Paper short abstract:

The paper analyses how, in three different moments in time, German-speaking African studies were integrated in or disintegrated from the European and international Africanist landscape. Through this, it identifies continuities, changes and blind spots that continue to shape German and European perspectives.

Paper long abstract:

German African studies were internationally integrated in the 1920s and 1930s. Scholars like Diedrich Westermann, Richard Thurnwald and Günther Wagner were highly visible in the international scene and well connected to their European colleagues. This changed after 1945, not least due to the complicity of German African studies with the fascist regime. In the early 1970s, a new generation of scholars started to re-internationalize and to again co-operate more strongly across disciplines, a trend that only came into full swing in the 1990s and has resulted in today's high degree of integration in international scholarly networks. The paper will use these different ways of integration to analyse what "African studies" meant in Germany at three different moments in time, describing continuities and changes in organisation, funding, writing and career paths of scholars. Its aim is to identify the radical changes the disciplines have undergone, but also continuities that, for better or worse, form elements of a distinctive perspective in German and European African studies. It should thus provide a basis for the panels' discussions on the chances and limits of European African studies in a multipolar world.