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Hitler and the Negro
By J.
A. Rodgers
Adolph Hitler inspired no doubt by the valorous conduct
of the Negro in the last World War declares in Mein
Kampf that Negroes are “half-apes.”
This, however, is far from being the opinion of
pre-Hitler Germany if one is to judge by the various monuments
and pictures of Negroes in German museums and other public places.
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Foremost of these pictures and
monuments are those of St. Maurice (or St. Mautritus)
leading Catholic saint of Germany, who is invariably
depicted in Germany as a Negro of the finest type. St.
Maurice is the patron saint of the city of Cobourg and
he appears in the city’s coat-of-arms. His picture, by
Grunewald, hangs in the Alte-Pinokathek, Southern
Germany’s largest museum. (At least I saw it there as
late as 1934.) Another painting of St. Maurice by Hans
Baldung is, if I remember rightly, in the Dresden
Museum. There is also a monument of him in armor in the
Cathedral of Magdeburg. |
In almost every German art gallery are pictures by great
artist of “The Adoration of Magi,” one of who is invariably
depicted as a Negro. The most celebrated shrine in Germany is
that of the Black Virgin in Alt-Oetting, Baravaria. There and
there especially in Southern Germany and in what was once
Austria are shrines of Black Madonnas. The blackness of these,
be it noted is not due to age as the lace and some of the other
decorations of these statues are still nearly white. Only the
face is black.
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On the most important bridge over the
Spree at the south end of the Unter den Linden near the
Berlin Cathedral in the very center of the north side of
the bridge is a monument no less than eight feet high of
a Negro. In the park of the royal palace at San Souci,
Potsdam, favorite residence of the last Kaiser are
several statutes of Negroes, who were the favorites of
the Prussian rulers.
In the state pictures of Kaiser Wilhelm I,
between the years 1857 and 1870 appears a Negro as a
German officer. “This Henri Noel an unmixed Negro
brought by Rohls from Central Africa, whom Wilhelm I,
adopted as his own son. I have given further details in
“The 100 Amazing Facts About the Negro.”
Hitler is a native of Austria and
there, too, St. Maurice and the Black Virgin are highly
revered. In the Liechtenstein Museum in Vienna are the
portraits of Angelo Soliman and his daughter and
grandson, Baron Edward von Feuchtersleben. |
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Angelo Soliman was a Negro ex-slave
who became a tutor of royalty, and the friend and
companion of Joseph II, ruler of the Holy Roman Empire.
In the Vienna Museum is another piece of priceless Negro
art: that of the Venus of Willendorf,
oldest known representation of a human being
executed by a Negro artist, about 10,000 or 15,000 B. C.
Several other art treasures in which Negro figure
could be cited. It is interesting to know what Hitler
and his brown shirted reformers have done about these
Negro monuments, and how they reconcile them with their
statement that the Negro is a “half-ape,” and the
Negro professional man a monstrosity. Perhaps these
pictures and monuments have been removed or destroyed;
only the coming peace will tell. |
See Also: "Sigillum
Secretum (Secret
Seal):
On the Image of the Blackamoor in European
Heraldry" (a preliminary proposal for an iconographical
study) by Mario de Valdes y Cocom (www.pbs.org)
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On
J. A. Rogers' "Hitler and the Negro"
By Amin Sharif
The reader will find above a small article by
J. A. Rodgers entitled “Hitler and the Negro.” J. A. Roger
is, of course, known to every serious student of African and
African-American history through his many voluminous works such
as
From Superman to Man
and
One Hundred
Amazing Facts About the Negro. Born in Jamaica on September 6, 1883,
Rogers saw two World Wars, attended the coronation of Haile
Selassie, and traveled extensively throughout the world as a
journalist before he died in New York City of March 26, 1965.
In this article, as in all of his works,
Rogers is quick to point out the contradictory nature of white
racism as embodied in the philosophy of Adolph Hitler. One of
the most puzzling aspects of racism is that it holds to false
concepts against every tide of reason. Rogers maintains that
Hitler’s argument that Negroes “are half-apes” cannot be
collaborated by any evidence found in Germany or elsewhere. On
the contrary, there is evidence right beneath Hitler’s nose
that Negroes (Africans) made important contributions to Germany
history and culture.
On the surface, this article would seem to be
just another small and interesting piece of history. But it
stands at the very heart of every argument crafted for and
against racism. For, at its center, racism—especially white
racism—is the denial of the very humanity of the darker
people of the earth. On the other hand, the anti-racist argument
always begins with an affirmation of humanity. And it is as a
part of this process of “affirmation” that Rogers attacks
the racism of Hitler. Now that I have shown you the humanity of
the Negro, Rogers asks, what will you do? Shall you deny the
monuments, the paintings, and the artifacts that speak plainly
of the humanity of the Negro? Or will you accept these items as
valid arguments of my contribution to the world?
We know now that Hitler was unable to bring
himself to accept the humanity of the African or the Jew. The
result of Hitler’s denial was the horrific slaughter of six
million Jews and countless others. Today, we should not be
surprised that after all the arguments to the contrary that
there are still persons who harbor notions of the inferiority of
the darker people of the world. If we are to defeat these
notions, then we must do as Rogers and others have done. We must
affirm our humanity at every time and in every place. * *
* * * |
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Joel
Augustus Rogers
(c. 1883 - 6 September 1966)
By Siraj Ahmed |
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Historian and journalist, Joel Augustus
Rogers devoted fifty years of his life to revisionary
scholarship, in a pioneering attempt to recover the black
presence throughout history that had been excluded by white
historians. He is thought to have been born in 1883, although
the exact day is not known, in Negril, Jamaica. After serving in
the British Royal Army, he migrated to the United States in
1906, although he did not become a citizen until 1917. Despite
having no formal postsecondary education, he learned French,
German, Portuguese, and Spanish, and researched European and
African library and museum archives.
But Rogers' lack of proper scholarly
credentials increased the difficulty that, as an African
American, he already had in getting his work published, forcing
him to publish much of it himself. Furthermore, because his
research led him to radical conclusions, few of his scholarly
contemporaries recognized him, and later historians who
confirmed his claims have left him largely unacknowledged.
Rogers' publications included
One Hundred
Amazing Facts About the Negro (1934), which went to a
nineteenth edition;
The Real Facts About Ethiopia
(1936),
which grew out of his firsthand experience as a foreign
correspondent for the Pittsburgh Courier during Italy's
invasion of Ethiopia (1935-1936); the monumental three-volume
Sex
and Race (1941-1944), which documents miscegenation
throughout world history and which went to a ninth edition; the
two-volume
World's Great Men of Color (1946), which was
republished in 1972; and
Africa's Gift to America (1959),
which discusses the role of African Americans in the development
of the United States.
Rogers also wrote a series of
African-American history for the Pittsburgh Courier,
which reached tens of thousands of readers, and a weekly series
that was published in many African-American newspapers. He died
in New York.
References
Sandoval, Valerie. "The Bran of History: An
Historiographic Account of the Work of J.A. Rogers." Schomburg
Center for Research in Black Culture Journal 1, no. 4
(Spring 1978): 5-7, 16-19.
Turner, W.B. "J.A. Rogers: Portrait of an Afro-American
Historian." Black Scholar 6, no. 5 (January-February
1975): 32-39. * *
* * * Other Books by
J.A. Rogers
From Superman to Man
(1985)
Five Negro Presidents (1965)
Sex and Race: Why White and Black Mix in Spite of Opposition
(1972) * * *
* *
update 2 July 2008 |
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