Grasping for a Great New Future

Abstract

Chapter 4 examines fragmentation within the colonial lobbies in Germany and their efforts to unify the language of imperial internationalism by the Colonial German bloc in the interwar period during the lead-up to the Locarno Conferences of 1925. What follows is an analysis of the adaptation and reimagining of the three largest and most vocal of the German colonial societies in the Weimar period: the German Colonial Society, the Women’s League, and the Kolonial Reichsarbeitsgemeinschaft (Imperial Working Group on the Colonies, KoRAG). Each of these organizations made an effort at retooling itself to serve the needs of Colonial Germans in the Weimar era. Yet despite all their efforts, the DKG and other colonialist organizations in Germany never managed to unite the German colonial bloc. Former officials, missionaries, and German settlers in and from Africa opportunistically adapted their understandings of nationality in pursuit of their own self-interests. The most difficult challenges that the German colonial lobbies faced in the wake of the loss of the empire did not come from the German government or even from the League and the new mandatory powers, but rather from the cacophony of demands placed upon them by a diverse constituency.