Else von (Puttkamerei) Kamerunberg
2021-2023
in collaboration with Pascale Obolo
75'mins colour film, archive footage and dance
by Anguezomo Mba Bikoro
in collaboration with Pascale Obolo
by Anguezomo Mba Bikoro
in collaboration with Pascale Obolo
This film follows the intimate story of Elsa, one of the mixed race daughters of German colonial diplomat Jesko von Puttkamer.
An assessment of colonised legacies and spirits being exorcised by dancers, poets and griots in the will to dismantle the traces of German patriarchy. We witness the ritual to throw down the spirit of Bismarck and the monumental home of General Puttkamer who was one of the main figures of human trafficking of Black women, girls and female German colonial trainees, trafficking human remains and objects to Museums in Dresden and ethnography collections of Dahlem. He was also trialed for black brutality, land theft, money and identity fraud and enslavement in the colony. The sinister and painful testimony of one of his daughters Else is pictured in an overlooked archived footage by Peter Heller and how she is submitted to white violence, the continuing ghost of her father, in memory and as the muse in Heller's footage. The gaze of the director remains ignorant and discriminating towards her trauma and submits her to the rejection of her own German white siblings back in Germany.
The autobiographical book of General Puttkamer reveals passive descriptions of his children and the lives of the companions and wives he had sheltered or imprisoned in his dream house. He fictionalises the land of Kamerunberg as his paradise, destroys the sovereignty of local people through colonial brutality, and creates delusional versions of the narratives of people living on the land, rendering them insignificant, invisible and as his own property. He stands by the ruinations of his own castle within the soils of the Bismarck cemetary that have buried the secrets of German colonialists stationed in Buea, Cameroon. Black women would pursue domestic work in the property of Puttkamer to save their husbands and sons from brutal persecutions and were sold as 'gifts' to the German empire.
The film dismantle the historical and family violence by the mis-spelling and mis-pronounciation of his name by his great great great grandchildren. The scene then turns to the tribunal of 1907, a trial against Puttkamer, which was held at the Imperial Disciplinary Chamber in Potsdam for passport forgery and favoritism. He issued his lover Mrs. von Germar, suspected to be Erika Dehns (1898), a false passport under the name of Baroness von Eckardtstein (born Gracy Emily Maple). During the proceedings, an all black jury witnesses the testimony of the granddaughter of Else trying to reconcile with the ghost of Else's German father. The testimony is a song and the grand daughter must be able to exorcise Jesko as well as get his confession and forgiveness for abandoning his children in Buea and choreographing sexual cohersion, brutality and human trafficking of her community. The jury is given photographs of Puttkamer's plantations, decapitations (body parts), forged passport documents, little glass bottles of Else's tears, and home relics of his former residence. This trial fades into the dance of tears at the plantation cemetary, covered by the ashes from the smoke of the volcano Kamerunberg. Throughout the footage we hear whispers of the ghost of Else speaking, reading from her written memoirs, the pages from Puttkamer slowly erased by her voice as we get to hear her side of the story and those of her siblings and people left behind.
An assessment of colonised legacies and spirits being exorcised by dancers, poets and griots in the will to dismantle the traces of German patriarchy. We witness the ritual to throw down the spirit of Bismarck and the monumental home of General Puttkamer who was one of the main figures of human trafficking of Black women, girls and female German colonial trainees, trafficking human remains and objects to Museums in Dresden and ethnography collections of Dahlem. He was also trialed for black brutality, land theft, money and identity fraud and enslavement in the colony. The sinister and painful testimony of one of his daughters Else is pictured in an overlooked archived footage by Peter Heller and how she is submitted to white violence, the continuing ghost of her father, in memory and as the muse in Heller's footage. The gaze of the director remains ignorant and discriminating towards her trauma and submits her to the rejection of her own German white siblings back in Germany.
The autobiographical book of General Puttkamer reveals passive descriptions of his children and the lives of the companions and wives he had sheltered or imprisoned in his dream house. He fictionalises the land of Kamerunberg as his paradise, destroys the sovereignty of local people through colonial brutality, and creates delusional versions of the narratives of people living on the land, rendering them insignificant, invisible and as his own property. He stands by the ruinations of his own castle within the soils of the Bismarck cemetary that have buried the secrets of German colonialists stationed in Buea, Cameroon. Black women would pursue domestic work in the property of Puttkamer to save their husbands and sons from brutal persecutions and were sold as 'gifts' to the German empire.
The film dismantle the historical and family violence by the mis-spelling and mis-pronounciation of his name by his great great great grandchildren. The scene then turns to the tribunal of 1907, a trial against Puttkamer, which was held at the Imperial Disciplinary Chamber in Potsdam for passport forgery and favoritism. He issued his lover Mrs. von Germar, suspected to be Erika Dehns (1898), a false passport under the name of Baroness von Eckardtstein (born Gracy Emily Maple). During the proceedings, an all black jury witnesses the testimony of the granddaughter of Else trying to reconcile with the ghost of Else's German father. The testimony is a song and the grand daughter must be able to exorcise Jesko as well as get his confession and forgiveness for abandoning his children in Buea and choreographing sexual cohersion, brutality and human trafficking of her community. The jury is given photographs of Puttkamer's plantations, decapitations (body parts), forged passport documents, little glass bottles of Else's tears, and home relics of his former residence. This trial fades into the dance of tears at the plantation cemetary, covered by the ashes from the smoke of the volcano Kamerunberg. Throughout the footage we hear whispers of the ghost of Else speaking, reading from her written memoirs, the pages from Puttkamer slowly erased by her voice as we get to hear her side of the story and those of her siblings and people left behind.
photos courtesy of the artist 2021
State of Barackia: Landscapes of Liberation
Kunstquartier Bethanien, Berlin 2021
State of Barackia: Landscapes of Liberation
Kunstquartier Bethanien, Berlin 2021