When Adolf Hitler and the Nazis came to power in , there were several thousand Black people living in Germany. The Nazi regime discriminated against them because the Nazis viewed Black people as racially inferior. During the Nazi era β , the Nazis used racial laws and policies to restrict the economic and social opportunities of Black people in Germany.
They also harassed, imprisoned, sterilized, and murdered an unknown number of Black people. Almost all of these sojourners were men. The German authorities wanted to limit the number of Black permanent residents in Germany and curtail the growth of any significant Black population there.
Despite these restrictions, Black men from the colonies and beyond often came to Germany to learn trades or engage in other work. They sought educational opportunities as apprentices and students. They also came to work as servants and sailors. A significant number came to Germany as paid performers in exploitative public exhibitions called human zoos.
The majority of Black visitors intended on staying in Germany for only a short time. A smaller number chose to remain. Additionally, some Black people who had not planned on staying in Germany were trapped there by the war. The outbreak of hostilities in limited international travel and migration within and beyond Europe. This was because Germany lost its colonies in the postwar peace settlements. They were stranded in Germany then known as the Weimar Republic , which no longer had any formal connection to its former colonies.
The daughter of a white German woman and a Black French soldier stands among white classmates, Munich, This image was included as a slide for lectures on genetics, ethnology, and race breeding at the State Academy for Race and Health in Dresden, Germany. During the Weimar Republic , Germany was home to a small, male-dominated Black community whose members had mostly migrated to Germany before World War I.
