Walther Dobbertin
Walther Alexander Dobbertin was a German photographer and publisher, mainly active in the former colony of German East Africa, in modern-day Tanzania. His photographic work, consisting of hundreds of images in black-and-white, provides a comprehensive portrayal of the colony's political, social, economic, and military aspects. His subjects ranged from landscapes and wildlife to portraits of indigenous people and German settlers. Notably, he documented the activities of the German Schutztruppe and the experiences of Askari soldiers.
Dobbertin is the only known photographer on the German side who documented the events before and during the fighting between German and British troops in the East African campaign of World War I. His images have been considered important resources for the history of East Africa and its documentation through photography.
Following his release as a prisoner of war, Dobbertin returned to Germany and ran a bookshop in a town south of Hamburg. In 1932, he self-published a photo book with glorifying portraits of German colonial soldiers. Further, he was a member of the Nazi Party's paramilitary wing SA. In 1945, his business licence was revoked by the British authorities in Germany. When his licence was restored, he continued his bookshop until shortly before his death.
In 21st-century post-colonial studies, scholars have emphasised that Dobbertin's photographs function not only as historical documentation but also as artefacts allowing new interpretations of the visual culture of German colonialism—framed for administrative and commercial audiences, shaped by colonial hierarchies, and later repurposed for inter-war and nationalist German contexts.
Life and career
Early life and career in German East Africa
Dobbertin was born on 28 August 1882 into a family of craftsmen in Berlin, the capital of the recently united German Reich. His ancestors came from Mecklenburg, where Dobbertin Abbey was located. He completed an apprenticeship as a photographer in Rostock and attended painting courses. In 1903, Dobbertin emigrated to German East Africa. After his arrival, he worked at Carl Vincenti's photo studio in Dar es Salaam, but some time later, Vincenti took Dobbertin to court, accusing him of having stolen photographic material.In 1906, Dobbertin opened his own studio in Dar es Salaam and subsequently operated shops selling books, photographic and artistic material in Tanga and Moshi, where he also had a photographic studio. In 1910, he published his images of African life and scenery in his own "art edition" in Dar es Salaam. During the following years, Dobbertin became one of the most active photographers in German East Africa, producing hundreds of photographs and picture postcards. After the outbreak of World War I in 1914, Dobbertin was enlisted into the colonial army, the so-called Schutztruppe. Until 1916, he continued to take photographs and also shot scenes for a documentary film that has been lost. Among other aspects, he expressed the stereotypical notion of the trustful relationship between German superiors and "the brave Askari soldiers". Based on his photographs of the war, Dobbertin is considered the only photographer on the German side who documented the events during the East African campaign of World War I.
Later life in Germany
In 1916, Dobbertin was taken as a prisoner of war by British forces as a member of the German army. At the end of the war, the Germans were expelled from East Africa and expropriated. Nevertheless, Dobbertin's wife Alwine managed to smuggle her husband's photographic plates out of the country. After his release from captivity, Dobbertin returned to Germany and moved to Wiedenhof, a neighbourhood of modern-day Jesteburg, south of Hamburg, where again he opened a bookshop.In 1932, Dobbertin self-published his book Lettow-Vorbeck's Soldiers that included 120 copperplate engravings of his photographs from World War I in East Africa. The book included glorifying portraits of the force commander in the German East Africa campaign, Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck, and other soldiers during the colonial era. Further, his photographs of East Africa were used as illustrations for a 1933 historical novel by the German writer Alfred Funke.
In Nazi Germany, Dobbertin was a member of the SA and district leader of the Reich Colonial Association. Because of these affiliations, his business licence was revoked in 1945 after World War II by the British authorities. After his licence was restored, he continued to work in his bookshop until 1960. Dobbertin died on 12 January 1961, shortly before a planned trip to Africa. Some time after his death, his widow sold his personal documents, photographic plates and photographs to the German Federal Archives.
Photographic work
Dobbertin's photographs of colonial life in German East Africa amount to hundreds of images of political, social, economic and military events, also including photographs of large game hunting and wildlife, natural scenery and the construction of railways. His photographs of Africans depict indigenous people and their everyday life under colonial rule. These include images of Askari soldiers of the German Schutztruppe as well as staged "exotic" pictures of African women. Other images show life in villages, including children on the banks of a river, launching dugout canoes, and fishing.Publications
Own publications and illustrations for others- Landschaftsbilder ''aus Deutsch-Ost-Afrika. Dar es Salaam: Kunstverlag Walther Dobbertin, 1910. OCLC number 838068870.
- Bilder aus dem Negerleben. Dar es Salaam: Kunstverlag Walther Dobbertin, 1910. OCLC number 838068839.
- Von deutscher Arbeit in Deutsch-Ostafrika, Harburg, 1920.
- Lettow-Vorbeck's Soldiers. A Book of German Fighting Spirit and Military Honor. Battery Press, Rockford, Ill., Nashville, 2005, ISBN 9780898393408.
- Alfred Funke, Schwarz-Weiß-Rot über Ostafrika''. Novel. With 126 photographs by Walther Dobbertin, Hanover 1933.
Reception
Photographs as visual documents for historical studies
In addition to written sources and artists' impressions, photographs from colonial Africa serve as documents for research into the history of the country and its inhabitants. In academic scholarship, disciplines such as visual anthropology, visual culture, as well as the history of photography are concerned with such photographs. As cultural anthropologist Christraud M. Geary has pointed out, their meanings are multiple and can be interpreted in open-ended ways. As historical documents, they bear witness to colonial rule, the domination of native people, and the extraction of natural resources.Starting at the end of the 19th century, photography and picture postcards became increasingly popular with visitors and residents of European colonies in Africa and elsewhere. Thanks to improved printing and relatively cheap postal services, these created new forms of communication and served commercial and political interests. Then and now, these images have shaped the public vision of important historical changes in the lives of Africans.
Compared to the documentary photographs taken by colonial officers and scientists, less authentic images of Africa and its peoples were often created by commercial photographers, who catered to the rapidly expanding European market for photographs and postcards from Africa. Commercial photo studios such as Dobbertin's produced appealing and sales-promoting photographs by carefully staging the sitters in certain poses and often with "typical" clothing and jewellery. Their manipulated portraits thus contributed to the stereotyping of Africa and Africans. In the context of postcolonial studies and critical whiteness studies, such representations have been labelled with the term "colonial gaze".
Colonial and political context
Recent curatorial projects and Tanzanian scholarship have examined the images’ continuing role in post-colonial memory and museum practice. Thus, in her study of African women as depicted in historical photographs from the Swahili coast, African art historian Prita Meier discussed Dobbertin's 1906 picture of an "Indigenous woman with jewelry, settler and boy" as a staged example for "the privileges enjoyed by white men in Africa." Dobbertin's surviving photographs also include portraits and images of partially nude African women. According to Christraud M. Geary such images are examples for the "racial classifications and debasing stereotypes" of Africans by colonial photographers.In news media, books and studies about German East Africa, Dobbertin's photographs have been used as historical documents. For example, German news media such as Der Spiegel and Deutsche Welle published Dobbertin's images to document military training, forced labour and other atrocities committed by German and other European colonial powers in World War I. These images served as visual documents for these "largely forgotten victims".
Dobbertin's photography is closely linked to the visual culture of German colonial rule in East Africa. Scholars have shown that his images, produced for both administrative and commercial audiences, reflected and reinforced colonial hierarchies through selective framing, staged scenes, and depictions of settler infrastructure and African labour. His wartime photographs – notably his sequence of images relating to the Schutztruppe and Askari soldiers – have been used both as documentary sources for the East African campaign of World War I and, at times, as material for nationalist celebration. Dobbertin himself self-published a photo book of the campaign in 1932, a book whose design and captions have been read as commemorative and glorifying German colonial rule. This book and the reuse of its images demonstrate how visual material from the colonial era have been framed for different political ends in interwar and Nazi Germany.