Venus von Samoa: Rasse und Sexualität im deutschen Südpazifik

Photo by Thomas Andrew, taken in Apia, Samoa, around 1893.

The German Empire embarked upon its colonial project just as sexological research was becoming ever more prominent in German culture and scholarship.This essay, written in German, focuses on the German colonization of Samoa as it looks for an overlap between the colonialist and sexological discourses. Sources include Karl May’s novel Am stillen Ozean, articles in the German-language newspaper of Apia, Die samoanische Zeitung, and postcards of South Sea beauties and scholarly studies of exotically tattooed men.

“Venus von Samoa: Rasse und Sexualität im deutschen Südpazifik,” in Kolonialismus als Kultur : Literatur, Medien, Wissenschaft in der deutschen Gründerzeit des Fremden, ed. Alexander Honold and Oliver Simons (Tübingen: A. Francke Verlag, 2002) 192-220.