In “The Good German,” Christian Bommarius tells the story of Manga Bell, the son of a Cameroonian ruler who studied in Germany during the time of German colonial rule and was murdered.
“In the inglorious German colonial history, the chapter on Cameroon may be one of the darkest. The colony, which had been scammed under questionable circumstances, was turned into an inferno for the enslaved population in a lucrative collaboration between Wilhelmine colonial officials and respectable merchants. A son of the former king was nevertheless allowed to study law in Germany. However, when Prince Manga Bell made use of what he had learned and filed a lawsuit in the courts against German atrocities in his homeland, he was accused of high treason at the beginning of World War I and hanged in a flash.” Book description of the publisher
With his concisely researched case study, Christian Bommarius not only succeeds in tracing the history of Manga Bell and thus that of an infamous judicial murder. At the same time, the author creates a well-founded overview of German colonialism and sketches a depressing panorama of racism, greed, and cruel despotism.
Christian Bommarius 2015: The Good German. The assassination of Manga Bell in Cameroon in 1914. Berlin: Berenberg.
If you don’t have a bookstore worth supporting near you, you can also buy the book from the alternative non-profit online bookstore links-lesen.de, which supports political projects with the profits. The link to the book is: http: //www.links-lesen.de/article/978-3-937834-77-1