Hans-Jürgen Massaquoi was a German author and journalist who grew up in Germany during the Nazi regime. In his first autobiography, Destined to Witness: Growing up Black in Nazi Germany, published in 1999, Massaquoi details his childhood in Hamburg as the son of a single white German mother.
During the Nazi regime, as the only Black child in his neighborhood, Massaquoi details how he wanted to join the Nazi party when his school had a competition to get the most children into the Hitler Jugend. He wanted to participate because all of his peers were joining, but he was denied membership because he was Black and his teacher excluded him from the competition.
Massaquoi describes being compared to Joe Louis and Jesse Owens during the 1936 Berlin Olympics, both of whom were Americans, because he was Black. He tells of how he started to identify with these American athletes and root for them because his peers would call him “Joe” or “Jesse.” Even though he was German and initially rooted for Joe Louis’ competitor, the German boxer Max Schmeling, these comments from his peers encouraged him to identify with the Americans. When Massaquoi discovered that Schmeling had made racist comments, his support for the American athlete grew. Schmeling’s racist comments made him root for the American in that match, rather than the German.
In 1950, at the age of 24, Massaquoi emigrated to the United States and served in the US military. He later acquired citizenship and pursued a journalism degree, becoming the managing editor of Ebony, a major African-American magazine. Massaquoi would publish the aforementioned biography in both English and German. The German title, Neger, Neger, Schornsteinfeger: Meine Kindheit in Deutschland (“Negro, Negro, Chimney Sweep”: My Childhood in Germany), came from a taunt he’d heard in his childhood. While this autobiography only focuses on his time in Germany, his second autobiography, Hänschen klein, ging allein: Mein Weg in die Neue Welt (Little Hans Goes Alone: My Way in the New World), published in German in 2004, details his life and accomplishments in the US, as well as his fraught relationship with his German family and identity.
– Jordan Meininger (University of Missouri)
Source:
Hans-Jürgen Massaquoi via Wikimedia
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