In the documentary Our Good German, filmmaker Peter Heller remembers Rudolf Douala Manga Bell. Shortly after the Berlin Congo Conference on the division of Africa – 140 years ago – an enlightened king from Douala on the coast of Cameroon sent his young son to Aalen, a small town in what was then the Kingdom of Württemberg: the prince was to receive a German upbringing and education. For the first time, the people of Aalen met a “black man”, whom they admired and treated with kindness.
And the prince from Africa trusted them and settled into a world that was completely unknown to him: the petty bourgeoisie of the German imperial era. But later, as king in Cameroon, he resisted a resettlement project by the German colonial power and was accused, sentenced and hanged for it. Over 100 years later, his descendant Jean-Pierre Félix-Eyoum, a retired special education teacher from Munich, is fighting for his rehabilitation, against oblivion and German bureaucracy.
The film will be shown at the 51st International Film Festival in Wuerzburg in the presence of Peter Heller and Jean-Pierre Félix-Eyoum. In addition to the film, there will be an exhibition presenting authentic contemporary images from Douala and Aalen, showing the voyage of discovery of today’s Cameroonian national hero Rudolf Douala Manga Bell to the Wilhelmine Empire, and confronting the viewer with Germany’s colonial history.
The film will be shown on Friday, January 31 at 7:15 pm in Cinema 3 and on Sunday, February 2 at 1:45 pm in Keller Z87, where the exhibition can also be viewed.