When Germany lost its colonial empire after the Great War many Germans were unsure how to
understand this transition. They were the first Europeans to experience complete colonial loss
an event which came as Germany also wrestled with wartime collapse and foreign occupation. In
this book the author considers how Germans experienced this change from imperial power to
postcolonial nation. This work examines what the loss of the colonies meant to Germans and it
analyzes how colonialist categories took on new meanings in Germany's post-colonial period.
Poley explores a varied collection of materials that ranges from the stories of popular writer
Hanns Heinz Ewers to the novels essays speeches pamphlets posters and archival materials
of nationalist groups in the occupied Rhineland to show how decolonization affected Germans.
When the relationships between metropole and colony were suddenly severed Germans were
required to reassess many things: nation and empire race and power sexuality and gender
economics and culture.
