Henriette Kraze’s Heim Neuland (1908) and the Idealized Nonviolent Colonial Community

Abstract:This article explores how Friederike Henriette Kraze’s relatively unknown novel Heim Neuland (1908) depicts an idealized community of German colonialists claiming Heimat in Namibia (German South-West Africa) who are dedicated to peaceful coexistence with the indigenous population. Kraze’s novel links the colonial project to the larger national aim of establishing Germany as a global industrial power. Simultaneously, Kraze presents the colonial setting as a space that offers settler women new freedoms. What distinguishes Kraze’s writing from that of her contemporaries is a focus on the importance of nonviolence for the success of German colonialism. Kraze’s writing is infused with racist rhetoric, but she also defines the use of unjustified violence and cruelty as reasons for exclusion from the colonial community. This is a vision that appears in sharp contrast to the German mercilessness that caused the Herero and Nama genocide, which occurred following the writing of Heim Neuland in January 1905 and prior to its publication in 1908.