African Students in East Germany, 1949–1975 by Sara Pugach (review)

Reviewed by: African Students in East Germany, 1949–1975 by Sara Pugach Phillip Wagner African Students in East Germany, 1949–1975. By Sara Pugach. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2022. xviii + 256 pp. Hardcover 75. 00, paperback 29. 95, e-book 29. 95. Over the last decade, a number of scholars have begun to explore the transnational links of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) and other eastern European socialist countries in the era of decolonization and the Cold War. By bringing in the perspective of youth, students, and universities, Sarah Pugach's excellent study of African students in East Germany between 1945 and 1975 is a welcome contribution to the global history of East German and Eastern European socialism. Pugach, one of the leading scholars of modern African, European, and German history, demonstrates that the experiences of African students who came with scholarships to study in East Berlin, Leipzig, Dresden, and elsewhere reveal the ambivalences of East Germany's involvement in decolonization. One of the most important points of this study is that it shows that East Germany never was an anti-racist state. Even though the Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands Socialist Unity Party of Germany, SED, the GDR's ruling party, defined East Germany as a partner of Africa's struggle for independence, students from Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, and other African territories encountered multiple forms of everyday racism. The dynamics of rhetorical anti-racism and day-to-day racism stand at the center of Chapter 1, which chronicles the history of the first cohort of African students in East Germany in the early 1950s. Fashioning itself as an anti-imperialist force, the SED invited eleven Nigerian students from the orbit of the liberation movement to study in the GDR. However, Nigerian students regularly encountered prejudices despite East German anti-imperialism. End Page 325 Pugach also successfully accounts for how the shifting constellations of decolonization shaped the student exchange programs of African nations and ultimately the lives of African students in East Germany. Chapter 2 traces the wide range of political, economic, and ethnic factors that influenced how students from African countries such as Kenya and Zambia could reach the GDR and other Eastern European states. Focusing on the example of Ghana, Chapter 3 examines how the changing contexts of decolonization and Cold War informed student mobilities. Ghana first established educational links with East Germany against the wishes of the United Kingdom, its former colonizer. After the overthrow of Ghanaian prime minister Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana aligned itself more firmly with the US and channeled its students to Western countries. Arguably the most important contribution of Pugach's work is that it sheds light on the agency of African students in the GDR. Chapters 1, 3, and 4 reveal that African students did not simply submit to the ideological pressures of the SED but rather followed their own agendas. The first cohort of Nigerian students did not primarily aspire to a political education, even though the SED attempted to indoctrinate them. Rather, Nigerian students wanted to acquire technological and scientific know-how to develop their state after independence. Ghanaian students also did not take up political lessons but rather provoked the GDR government with Nkrumahist Pan-Africanism during the 1960s. In this period, African students often used their student clubs to protest domestic politics, much to the dismay of the SED. Gender—and, more indirectly, class—shaped how Africans engaged with GDR society. Chapters 1 and 5 reveal that fear of African male sexuality and depictions of African female disobedience dominated responses to African students. In particular, opposition to interracial sex became one of the dominant motives of East German racism. Whereas one of the assets of this book is how it juxtaposes official anti-racist rhetoric of the SED with the lived experience of African students, one wonders how African students engaged with East Germany beyond the university halls. How did they form connections to their East German peers? How did they engage with East German culture? Did experiences in urban and more rural areas differ from each other? What role did these everyday experiences play for African students after returning? The book touches on these questions but it is. . .