Jens Ruppenthal. Kolonialismus als "Wissenschaft und Technik": Das Hamburgische Kolonialinstitut 1908 bis 1919. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2007. 273 S. EUR 56.00 (paper), ISBN 978-3-515-09004-9.
Reviewed by Lora Wildenthal (Department of History, Rice University)
Published on H-German (January, 2008)
The Hamburg Colonial Institute
In the years before the First World War, Germany had a number of institutions aimed at the "colonial sciences" and training of colonial officials. Germany thereby fit the pattern of other European colonial metropoles, which were also concerned in those years with improving training for colonial personnel. Several exist today in an altered form: for example, the Witzenhausen school for planters is now an institute for tropical agriculture. The subject of this book is the Hamburg Colonial Institute, which was the basis for today's University of Hamburg.
Jens Ruppenthal discusses the contexts of his subject clearly and thoroughly in the first and second parts of this four-part monograph. He draws judiciously on the existing historiography on science and colonialism and the first hundred pages of this book are a useful overview of this literature. In the middle of the book, he demonstrates that the Hamburg Colonial Institute was founded through the confluence of a number of factors, from colonial secretary Bernhard Dernburg's interest in practical and scientific colonial administration to Hamburg's ties to colonial firms and its ability to subsidize the Reich's costs with privately funded foundation. Two factions were found in Hamburg city politics, one of which wanted a purely practical and business-friendly colonial institute that would build on existing, widely accessible lecture offerings in the city, and the other which sought to bestow upon Hamburg a full-scale university Werner von Melle, who may be considered the university's founder, led the latter faction. The two rival agendas produced conflict, but as Ruppenthal shows, each could also serve as the other's alibi in difficult political moments. In light of these rival agendas, his surprising but insightful central question is: "How colonial was the Hamburg Colonial Institute" (p. 15)? This question relates to the institute's founding, the faculty and its research and teaching matter, and the extent to which the institute affected and was tied to the fate of the colonial empire. Like other German colonial institutions, the Hamburg Colonial Institute represented more hope for the future than reality, because there was not enough demand among businessmen or aspiring colonial officials to fill these institutions. Indeed, the Hamburg Colonial Institute had to become a university to further justify its existence. Therefore, the loss of the colonial empire in 1919 was not detrimental to the institution, but rather marked its entry into a new phase of institutional life.
Ruppenthal's primary source research--especially in the Hamburg University archive--comes to the fore in the latter half of part 2 and in parts 3 and 4. In these sections Ruppenthal provides a purely institutional history that pursues the story of the rival agendas and also a second, related rivalry between Hamburg and Berlin over which city was to dominate the colonial institutional scene. Ruppenthal critically assesses von Melle's autobiographical account and sticks closely to his archival sources throughout. Indeed, his sources seem to drive the story from part 2 onward. Parts 3 and 4 on the institute's staffing, organization, and curriculum descend at times to mere lists.
Ruppenthal has produced an authoritative account, a must read for anyone whose work involves the Hamburg Colonial Institute or the university. It is not a book for the non-specialist. It is extremely detailed and, as noted above, the second half is almost entirely an internal account of the institute. Furthermore, it will not change one's mind about larger questions or more general understandings of colonialism or German colonialism in particular. Rather, Ruppenthal's own original contributions are to be found in the uncovering and clear explication of the specific institutional story in Hamburg.
Women with colonial interests are completely absent from the book, although they were probably Hospitanten at the institute. It seems to me that considering their part in the story would be promising, as practically any episode of educational elitism and exclusion impacted women and was shaped by a complex of gender and other status-related aspirations of institutional leaders. This is a story of the creation of a full-scale, socially exclusive university out of the institute and its even more accessible predecessor, the General Lectures (Allgemeines Vorlesungswesen, which was open to people who had not earned an Abitur). Moreover, the institute existed exactly at the time when women were gaining admission to university.
Overall, this book is a carefully written, detailed description of the Hamburg Colonial Institute.
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Citation:
Lora Wildenthal. Review of Ruppenthal, Jens, Kolonialismus als "Wissenschaft und Technik": Das Hamburgische Kolonialinstitut 1908 bis 1919.
H-German, H-Net Reviews.
January, 2008.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=14084
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