Films of Faith and Colonial Fantasy – Postcolonial Religious Memories in Inter-War Germany

Jensz, Felicity

Zusammenfassung

After the ‹loss› of the colonies at the end of the First World War, German missionary societies turned to the medium of film to spread information about religious work including work in the former German colonies. Between 1927 and 1960, over 65 missionary films were pro- duced by Catholic and Protestant missionary societies, many with an explicit connection to the former German colonies. The media of film has not been examined in terms of how this media contributed to postcolonial religious memory making. This article focuses on Protes- tant missionary films and their supporting documentation to argue that they were imbued with ‹imperial nostalgia›/‹imperialist nostalgia› (Lorcin/Rosaldo) and ‹colonial nostalgia› (Lorcin) as well as reference used by the popular colonial revisionist movement to make mo- ral claims for the return of the colonies and the role of German missionaries. In the cultural and political turmoil of the late 1920s, the connection to political and religious memory ma- king was blurred through the use of colonial and imperialistic nostalgia in missionary films.