The absence of a single African representative at the Berlin Conference of 1884–85, where European powers established rules for dividing the continent among themselves, provides the central premise of Daniel Kehlmann’s new novel, Afrika. Convened by German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck in the capital of the German Empire, the conference brought together European powers to determine the arrangements governing their territorial ambitions in Africa. The people whose lands and political futures were being discussed had no place at the negotiating table. More than a century later, that exclusion forms the basis of Kehlmann’s literary examination of colonial power, European self-interest and the cultural assumptions used to legitimise imperial domination.
In a review published in the German weekly newspaper Die Zeit, its cultural correspondent Ijoma Mangold examines how Kehlmann transforms this historical episode into a comic narrative about the moral contradictions of European society. The novel takes advantage of the historical distance between the colonial period and the present, when European imperialism has become a central subject of public debate about historical responsibility. Mangold argues that colonialism occupies a particular position in contemporary moral consciousness because it is sufficiently close to the present to remain relevant to current political and social identities, while being sufficiently distant for its underlying assumptions to be recognised as unacceptable.
Kehlmann’s principal literary device emerges from the contrast between the moral assumptions of the conference participants and those of contemporary readers. His characters appear largely unaware of the enormity of their actions, or deliberately avoid acknowledging what their ambitions entail. The attraction of territorial acquisition and economic exploitation is too powerful for them to examine their conduct honestly. To preserve an appearance of moral respectability, the European delegates offer declarations of their intention to end the slave trade, even as they negotiate the division of African territories without African participation.
The novel illustrates this hypocrisy through an episode involving Lieutenant Gerfried Pabke of the Royal Prussian Guards Music Corps, who is commissioned to compose an African dance for the conference festivities. Rather than undertaking serious research into African musical traditions, Pabke assumes that the music of indigenous communities in the Congo region must resemble Bulgarian folk music. He consequently produces a composition based on a Heiducken melody in seven-eight time, accompanied by drums and two gadulkas. The episode captures the cultural arrogance underlying colonial representation: Africans are denied political agency while even their cultural expressions are imagined and reproduced by Europeans according to their own assumptions.
The central character, Austrian legation councillor Strinetzky, provides another perspective on the political and cultural absurdities of the period. A mediocre official employed by the Austro-Hungarian Foreign Ministry, he considers himself more talented than he actually is and embodies the complacency and self-importance associated with the Habsburg imperial bureaucracy. Posted to the Austrian embassy in Berlin, he is sent to represent his country at the conference because the ambassador is unavailable owing to a private engagement. What should be an important diplomatic opportunity becomes complicated by his personal difficulties.
Strinetzky has diverted ministry funds to finance an affair with a demanding soubrette, a misuse of public money that has escaped the attention of the monarchy’s bureaucratic auditors. At the same time, he becomes embroiled in a dispute over honour with a Prussian officer who accuses him of refusing to drink with him. These personal entanglements run parallel to negotiations concerning the future of Africa. When senior diplomats ask whether Austria-Hungary intends to recognise the private Congo company as a sovereign free state, Strinetzky responds awkwardly with quotations from Virgil in Latin. His fellow delegates interpret his evasiveness as evidence of sophisticated diplomatic calculation.
Mangold identifies this juxtaposition of colonial exploitation and trivial European disputes as one of the novel’s principal sources of comedy. The historical negotiations involve the political and economic subordination of an entire continent, while Strinetzky remains preoccupied with his financial misconduct and questions of personal honour. His description of his predicament as a “Schlamassel”, or mess, becomes a revealing expression of the moral evasiveness shared by the social class to which he belongs. He recognises enough of his own dishonesty to avoid examining it closely, just as the European powers prefer not to confront the greed driving their colonial ambitions.
Kehlmann also uses the rivalry between Prussian and Habsburg identities to expose the construction of European cultural hierarchies. Still affected by their defeat against Prussia at Königgrätz, the Habsburgs compensate for their political weakness by presenting their administrative disorder and relaxed social conventions as a superior way of life. The novel thus reproduces, within Europe, a version of the cultural condescension Europeans direct towards African societies. The distinction between supposedly civilised and supposedly inferior cultures becomes a performance through which groups establish their identities and justify their positions. As one passage observes: “Austria-Hungary was not Prussia. One was even rather proud of that. For who would want to be Prussian?”
Bismarck himself appears as a volatile and frequently comic character, while Kehlmann’s treatment of the period draws on the atmosphere of Joseph Roth’s The Radetzky March. The author, born in Munich in 1975 but brought up partly in Austria, is particularly well placed to exploit the historical rivalry between the two Central European political traditions. Mangold also compares the novel with Kehlmann’s earlier work Tyll, in which the Swedish king Gustavus Adolphus was portrayed as a jovial but brutal figure. However, he argues that Afrika lacks the melancholic and tragic dimension that gave some of the characters in Tyll greater psychological complexity. Its protagonists remain largely products of their time, with little inclination to question their own conduct. The historical events carry the tragedy, while the characters themselves remain figures of satire.
Two characters provide exceptions to this pattern. Strinetzky’s wife, Rosa, is considerably more intelligent than her husband but has little opportunity to establish an independent position in the patriarchal society in which she lives. In Berlin, she maintains an affair with a history painter and even considers leaving her husband, although she finds the artist’s work insufficiently original. She is presented as the novel’s clearest example of someone who has not been entirely absorbed by the conventions of her age.
The other is Sabac el Cher, a Prussian officer of African origin and a historical figure. Born into slavery at the court of Ali Pasha in Cairo, he was given to Prince Albrecht of Prussia when he was about eight years old. Raised in Germany, he received a German education and studied the works of Kant and Fichte. His position in Prussian society exposes the cultural foundations of the period’s racism. One fellow officer praises him for sounding German despite being black, while his recitation of Goethe’s poetry is treated as evidence that even an African considered a “savage” can be refined through European culture.
Mangold observes that the racism represented in the novel is not yet primarily framed in biological terms but through cultural distinctions, allowing a degree of social mobility for those who demonstrate mastery of European intellectual traditions. Sabac’s acceptance therefore remains conditional on his ability to conform to the expectations of the society that has shaped him.
