With the end of the First World War Germany ceased to be a colonial power. Nevertheless it continued to produce films with exotic, colonial settings, such as Hans Schomburgk’s Eine Weisse unter Kannibalen (A White Girl amongst Cannibals). The film tells the story of a young white girl brought up by an African tribe who worship her as a deity. A brave young white explorer discovers the secret of the “white goddess”, falls in love with the girl and rescues her. Since it was impossible for Schomburgk to shoot the film on location in Africa he simply “restaged” Africa in Berlin, a fairly common practice at the time. To emphasize the authenticity of the film he intercut it with real footage from his expeditions to Africa before the outbreak of WWI. Hans Schomburgk had already travelled extensively in Africa before becoming known as one of the most prolific, early twentieth century “Africa-filmmakers” in German cinema. His adventures, discoveries and hunting stories were published in several books that were well known to a large reading public. After his first encounter with a film camera in 1908 he quickly realized that shooting films in Africa was a novelty that would sell at the box office. Today Schomburgk is remembered mainly for his non-fiction African travelogues and documentaries, such as Im Deutsche Sudan (In the German Sudan) or Mensch und Tier im Urwald (Man and Animal in the Jungle). To promote his image as a serious documentary filmmaker, in his books Schomburgk intentionally played down his lesser known fiction films, and Eine Weisse unter Kannibalen is the only one that seems to have survived.

Wolfgang Fuhrmann