La colonie allemande

A few years ago, someone asked us to write a short article or post on the history of German migration to Haiti. Personally, we are more interested in Haiti's Caribbean connections rather than Germany's connections with the Black Republic. Nonetheless, the history of Germans in Haiti began in the colonial era and culminated with an outsized economic influence of Germans on the trade, finances, and industrial operations on the eve of the US Occupation. In spite of their small numbers, the German colonie was of tremendous importance in pre-1915 Haiti. Although their impact was largely negative, Bernard Joseph's study of the German legacy in Haiti unveils rather interesting social, cultural, and intellectual connections that continue to shape Haiti. This brief post will summarize and highlight what stood out to us in reading Joseph's book.

Joseph's Histoire de la colonie allemande d'Haïti begins in the colonial era. German settlers were present at Bombardopolis and Mole Saint-Nicolas. Even after Haitian independence, Germans were offered Haitian citizenship in the 1805 Constitution of Dessalines. Subsequent waves of German migration to Haiti occurred in the 1830s and 1840s, largely from Hamburg and other Hanseatic towns. According to Joseph, these Germans were initially employed by French commercial houses. They married the daughters of their employers in a process that took after in the 1860s. Even before this wave, German commercial interests were already in the country during the 1820s. Haiti represented an opening to Latin America and the Caribbean for the Prussian Rhenane des Indes Occidentales (RWC). Prussian and other firms imported cloth, cotton, and textiles to Haiti in exchange for coffee, cacao, campeche wood, tobacco, and indigo to Prussia. Many of these German consignee merchants invited their relatives to Haiti and, over time, gradually replaced French employers. Examples cited by Joseph include the Schutt family in Cap-Haitien, Emile Nolting, Herman Munchmeyer, the Voigt, and the Wasembeck. The second half of the 19th century witnessed the establishment of most of the prominent German families in Haiti: Ahrendts, Reinbold, Donner, Hermann.

After the loi Dubois of 1860 facilitated the management of Haitian properties by foreigners married to local women, marriages between Germans and women of local bourgeoisie became more important. This willingness of some Germans to marry into local families and thereby own and manage Haitian property allowed them to circumvent laws prohibiting foreign ownership. Unsurprisingly, German investments in agriculture, industrial enterprises, and German exploitation of Haiti's political instability became a major factor until the US Occupation. Germans were involved in tobacco, railways, usines in centers for production, electricity, shipping, financing loans to Haitian governments, and eventually controlling 80% of Haitian commerce. While Plummer's Haiti and the Great Powers provides a more useful analysis of the negative impact of foreign economic domination of Haiti in the decades preceding 1915, Joseph's study illustrates the enormous impact of the German colonie. As a community, they established a club while educating their children in Germany or at local German schools. This identification with Germany persisted even in cases of mixed Germano-Haitians such as Werner Anton Jaegerhuber. At least one, Edouard Voigt, even served in the armed forces of Nazi Germany. Thus, despite their estimated population of around 200 individuals in 1910, their economic control, the convenience of German or claiming German nationality, and that nation's ability to bully Haiti in humiliating episodes such as the Luders Affair reveals the unfair relationship between the two peoples.

This naturally sparked hostility and nationalist pride among some Haitians. Oswald Durand's famous poem, the heroism of Admiral Killick, or Fernand Frangeul's musical compositions referring to the Tippenhauers and financial controversies testify to an opposition to the unequal state of relations between Haiti and Germany. Fernand Hibbert, a Haitian writer whose mother hailed from the Wiener family, also satirized German-Haitian relations through relationships between German males and Haitian women of the upper class. However, it was US pressure during the Occupation and World War I and World War II which finally weakened or, in some cases, eliminated German economic domination of Haiti. German-owned businesses were liquidated and Haiti's fate became tied to US hegemony of the Caribbean. US fears of German invasions of Haiti and American economic interests in the region necessitated the elimination or severe weakening of German or European influence in Haiti. 

So, what does one make of the German legacy in Haiti? Or Germano-Haitians? Their influence on Haitians like Fernand Hibbert, Carl Brouard, Jacques Roumain as well as other luminaries of Haitian thought or literature cannot be denied. Jaegerhuber, a Haitian of German origins, was also invested in the research of Haiti's folkloric or Vodou music. Perhaps German nationalism, Romanticist writers, and philosophical inquiry shaped Haitian intellectuals of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Scholars have pointed the affinity of Roumain for Heine. One could also argue Haitians of German origin, like Louis Gentil Tippenhauer, contributed to Haitian geography and science while others made important investments in infrastructure. The Widmaiers were important for radio as well as musical recordings in Haiti, too. Of course, the overall legacy of the German colony is undoubtedly tied to the highly unequal relations between an industrializing Germany and the underdeveloped island republic. Haiti suffered from foreign domination of its economy and resources while German attitudes reflected racial bias and exploitation. Their descendants in Haiti include wealthy, powerful families such as the Brandt, whose legacy reflects their privileged past as a group that built its wealth from Haiti's instability and misery.