Bayume Mohamed Husen was a Black German war veteran, who was arrested in 1941 for having a romantic relationship with a white German woman, an act the Nazis deemed racial defilement. He was imprisoned without trial and died in Sachsenhausen concentration camp in 1944.
Born in 1904 in Dar es Salaam, then part of German East Africa, Bayume Mohamed Husen was the son of a respected askari officer, a native soldier in Germany’s colonial forces. From an early age, Husen was immersed in German culture and language, a byproduct of his father’s military service and his own role as a wartime youth combatant.
Husen served with his father in World War I, fighting alongside German colonial troops in East Africa. After the war, he worked aboard German shipping lines and eventually made his way to Berlin in 1929 to collect unpaid military wages. His claim was denied, but he chose to remain in Germany, working as a waiter and language tutor. Fluent in Swahili and German, he provided Swahili instruction to university students and even collaborated with notable scholars.
In January 1933, Bayume married a white German woman, Maria Schwandner, just days before Hitler came to power. The couple had two children, and Husen also fathered another child with a German woman named Lotta Holzkamp. Despite the rising tide of racism, Husen tried to integrate and build a life for himself, taking roles in film, and working as a language tutor.
In 1936, Husen became involved with the Deutsche Afrika-Schau, a traveling exhibit of Afro-Germans meant to counter foreign criticism of Germany’s colonial ambitions. However, this show had a dehumanizing element, it functioned as a sort of human zoo, putting African people on display to satisfy propaganda needs.
Despite his loyalty and service, Husen was never fully accepted. When he applied for the Frontkämpfer-Abzeichen, an honor for front-line veterans, his application was denied due to his race.
With the onset of World War II, the already dangerous terrain for Afro-Germans became deadly. Husen’s role in German cinema expanded briefly, he appeared in over 20 films, typically playing minor African characters. His most notable role was in Carl Peters (1941), a film glorifying the brutal German colonialist. Ironically, while Husen’s talents and appearance were being exploited on-screen to further colonial myths, his off-screen life was unraveling.
In 1941, Husen became involved in a romantic affair with a German woman. Under the Nazi racial purity laws, such relationships between “Aryans” and non-Aryans were criminalized as “racial defilement.” His relationship, once discovered, was enough to mark him for persecution. He was arrested by the Gestapo and sent without trial to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, one of the Nazi regime’s most notorious labour and death camps.
Husen’s persecution was part of a wider Nazi campaign against Afro-Germans, many of whom were descendants of African soldiers stationed in the Rhineland after World War I. These children, born to German mothers and African fathers, were derogatorily labeled “Rhineland bastards” by the Nazis.
Seen as a threat to Aryan purity, these children were subject to forced sterilization under the Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring. A secret program was launched to identify and sterilize them quietly.
Husen, though not technically a “Rhineland Bastard,” was similarly targeted as part of the regime’s racial project.
Bayume Mohamed Husen died in Sachsenhausen in 1944, a victim of racial terror. His exact cause of death remains unclear, but his imprisonment was a direct result of his relationship with a white German woman.
Decades after his death, Husen’s life received renewed attention. In 2007, a biography chronicled his journey from colonial soldier to concentration camp victim. In 2014, a documentary further illuminated his tragic story, helping to cement his place in the historical memory of Nazi persecution.
Sources:
https://www.deutschlandfunk.de/tod-eines-treuen-askari-im-kz-sachsenhausen-100.html
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2014/nov/13/mohamed-husen-black-immigrant-actor-carved-career-1920s-german-cinema
