Between 1884 and 1945, a body of literature concerned with German Cameroon emerged that has to date received little attention by either Cameroonian literary scholars – a consequence of the language barrier – or scholars in German literary history, presumably because engagement with colonial memory has been severely delayed. Even though Germany lost its colony of Cameroon in 1916 as a consequence of the First World War, literature shaped by fantasies of distant lands concerning this territory continued to flourish within Germany’s national literary field. How can we explain the amnesia surrounding this colonial literature today? The project redirects attention toward this largely forgotten body of literature, surveying the extant corpus with a view to collecting, digitising, and translating it into French and English. It thus takes a necessary step for this literature to be systematically archived, studied by scholars, and, above all, included in school and university curricula in both countries as part of a reciprocal process of reparation for the consequences of colonialism. What heuristic potential does this literature offer for thinking about our postcolonial context? Repairing colonialism means, firstly, identifying colonial violence within these texts and subjecting it to critical analysis; secondly, revisiting sites of historical injustice and seeking to understand them; thirdly, making it possible to hear the voices of the colonised who have been silenced by the colonial archive and restoring dispossessed endogenous knowledge; and, fourthly, fostering a transcultural memory grounded in respect for human dignity.
UNIV.-PROF. DR. ALBERT GOUAFFO
CURRICULUM VITAE
Albert Gouaffo studied German literature and culture and francophone African literature at the University of Yaoundé in Cameroon before continuing his studies in Germany at the University of Hanover. He received his doctorate at Saarland University in 1997, where the then also completed his habilitation in 2006. His doctoral dissertation examined the translation of francophone African literature into German and its critical reception, while his habilitation explored cultural transfers in a colonial context, focusing on Cameroon and Germany between 1884 and 1919. Since 1998, he has taught German literature and culture and intercultural communication at the University of Dschang in Cameroon. Since 2016, he has served as principal investigator (PI) for a number of transnational projects, including “Reverse History of Collection: Mapping Cameroonian Cultural Goods in German Museums 1884–1919”, funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG), as well as “Restitution of Dignity? Human Remains – Colonialism – Humanity” and “Epistemic Pluralities: Reconnecting Objects in and Beyond the Museums”, both funded by the Volkswagen Foundation. He also serves on several academic advisory boards, including that of the German Lost Art Foundation (Deutsches Zentrum Kulturgutverluste). In 2025, he was awarded the Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm Prize by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD).