The Jahn Library comprises a unique collection of literary works in over ninety languages, including the former colonial languages and numerous African languages. Some of the collected books are also interesting as objects, e.g. as first editions of important works or as book copies with handwritten dedications by authors, but also in terms of what their design reveals about the respective publication context. The Jahn Library is one of the university library’s special collections and represents one of the Johannes Gutenberg University Collections. Furthermore, it is closely associated with the Department of Anthropology and African Studies.
The Jahn Library originated as the private collection of Janheinz Jahn (1918-1973), whose interest in African literature was awakened in 1951 during a lecture by the Senegalese poet and statesman Léopold Sédar Senghor in Frankfurt/Main. Through his work as a translator, publisher, bibliographer, author and freelance journalist, Jahn contributed significantly to the public perception of African literature in Germany, but also worldwide. The Jahn Library is used by students and researchers at the JGU Mainz as well as by international visiting scholars; and it is also available to the wider public.
In addition to the seminar courses on African literature regularly offered at the department, the Jahn Library organises international Janheinz Jahn Symposia, readings with writers from Africa, as well as other events (such as exhibitions, workshops, lectures, library tours) at irregular intervals.
In 2025, the Jahn Library for African Literature will be 50 years old. We would like to celebrate this with a Jahn Symposium on 24 and 25 November without making the Jahn Library itself the exclusive focus of attention.
The Jahn Library is a great asset for the department, the JGU Mainz, the city of Mainz and even for Germany. However, it is at least as important and wonderful that in recent years, libraries with a focus on African literature have also been founded in major cities in Africa as well as in other cities in Germany. These libraries are the focus of the 12th International Jahn Symposium and will be celebrated together with the Jahn Library.
Libraries are not “just” places where books are housed or made accessible to the public, but also places of encounter and identity formation. They are the setting for events where literature (in the broadest sense) is performed and participated. They are places of learning where further education and workshops – or simply some space to read or study – are offered, and sometimes they even provide space for the creation of new literature, when they invite people to take up writing residencies or are used individually for writing.
During the symposium, the guests will introduce their respective libraries to one other. They will talk about the motivation behind the founding of their libraries as well as the history of the libraries to date, about the contexts and focal points of the various collections of African literature, and about their diverse activities, both in social media and with event programmes and other offers on site. They will share the impressive successes that their libraries have celebrated so far (the very existence of each individual library is a success story!), but also the challenges they have faced and the problems they have been confronted with.
The invited representatives of the libraries are people who have been involved, in one way or another, in the founding of libraries with African literature or who are currently managing them. Like Janheinz Jahn, these people – like their predecessors or colleagues – started collecting African literature as private individuals with different motivations and in different contexts and eventually made these collections accessible to a wider public in the form of a library, with great personal and financial commitment and, in most cases, on a part-time basis and not as employees of national or university libraries.
Libraries represented (in alphabetic order): 1949books (Abidjan) with Edwige Dro, the African Poetry Library Kampala with Gloria Kiconco, the African Poetry Library Nairobi with Billy Kahora, the Afrothèque (Dakar) with Papa Malick Barros, the Jahn Library for African Literatures (Mainz) with Anja Oed, the Library of Africa and the African Diaspora (Accra) with Sylvia Arthur and Seth Avusuglo, the Natubelenge Children’s Library (Lusaka) with Mainess Chilumbwa and Nachizo Manza, the Black Children’s Library (Bremen) with Sheeko Ismail as well as the Theodor Wonja Michael Library (Cologne) with Glenda Obermuller.
Den Abschluss des Symposiums bildet eine öffentliche Lesung mit Edwige Dro, Gloria Kiconco und Billy Kahora, die alle auch als Bibliotheks-Akteur:innen am Symposium teilnehmen und 1949books in Abidjan bzw. die African Poetry Libraries in Kampala (Uganda) und Nairobi (Kenia) vertreten. Die Lesung findet im Rahmen des ifeas-Institutskolloquiums im WiSe 2025/26 statt. Im Anschluss lädt die Jahn-Bibliothek zu einem feierlichen Umtrunk ein.
Janheinz Jahn not only collected African literature, but also works by Black writers from Europe, North America, the Caribbean and South America. Today, the focus of the collection is on literature by writers from Africa (especially south of the Sahara) or with an African migration background. This also includes works by authors from the so-called New African Diaspora or by authors in Europe, North America and other parts of the world who are described as ‘Afropolitan’. Relevant academic literature is also collected.
In principle, literary works are collected in all languages used by writers from Africa: the former colonial languages as well as numerous African languages. From today’s perspective, this seems self-evident; in the 1950s and 1960s, the academic conception of African literature – regardless of the language in which it was written and thus also in distinction from European national literatures – as a relevant category in its own right was a novelty.
The collection of the Jahn Library for African Literature can be searched via the University Library catalogues. The shelf marks are historically interesting because they reflect Jahn’s conception of African and, originally, ‘neo-African’ literature.
Shelf marks
JC1 Cross-continental
JC2 Africa
JC3 America
JE Cross-regional critical sources
JE1 Cross-continental
JE2 Africa
JE3 America
JF1 General critical sources
JF2 Anthologies
JF3 Critical sources on individual writers
JF4 Literary works by individual writers
Literature in West African languages has the call number JF followed by an abbreviation of the respective language (JF BAM – JF YOR, see overview under African-Language Literatures), e.g. JF YOR for literature written in Yorùbá, associated secondary literature and translations of literary texts from Yorùbá or into Yorùbá:
JF YOR1 General critical sources
JF YOR2 Anthologies
JF YOR3 Critical sources on individual writers
JF YOR4 Literary works by individual writers
JF YOR5 Translations of literary works by individual writers from the Yorùbá
JF YOR6 Translations of literary works by individual writers into Yorùbá
JG1 General critical sources
JG2 Anthologies
JG3 Critical sources on individual writers
JG4 Literary works by individual writers
Literature in Central African languages has the call number JG followed by an abbreviation of the respective language (JG GBA – JG LUB, see overview), e.g. JG KON for literature written in Congo or Kikongo, associated secondary literature and translations of literary texts from Congo/Kikongo or into Congo/Kikongo:
JG KON1 General critical sources
JG KON2 Anthologies
JG KON3 Critical sources on individual writers
JG KON4 Literary works by individual writers
JG KON5 Translations of literary works by individual writers from the Kongo/Kikongo
JG KON6 Translations of primary literature by individual authors into Kongo/Kikongo
JH1 General critical sources
JH2 Anthologies
JH3 Critical sources on individual writers
JH4 Literary works by individual writers
Literature in East African languages has the call number JH followed by an abbreviation of the respective language (JH ACH – JH VID, see overview), e.g. JH SWA for literature written in Swahili or Kiswahili, associated secondary literature and translations of literary texts from Swahili/Kiswahili or into Swahili/Kiswahili:
JH SWA1 General critical sources
JH SWA2 Anthologies
JH SWA3 Critical sources on individual writers
JH SWA4 Literary works by individual writers
JH SWA5 Translations of literary works by individual writers from Swahili/Kiswahili
JH SWA6 Translations of literary works by individual writers into Swahili/Kiswahili
JK1 General critical sources
JK2 Anthologies
JK3 Critical sources on individual writers
JK4 Literary works by individual writers
Literature in South African languages has the call number JK followed by an abbreviation of the respective language (JK AFR – JK ZUL, see overview), e.g. JK ZUL for literature written in Zulu, associated secondary literature and translations of literary texts from Zulu or into Zulu:
JK ZUL1 General critical sources
JK ZUL2 Anthologies
JK ZUL3 Critical sources on individual writers
JK ZUL4 Literary works by individual writers
JK ZUL5 Translations of literary works by individual writers from the Zulu
JK ZUL6 Translations of literary works by individual writers into Zulu
JL1 General critical sources
JL2 Anthologies
JL3 Critical sources on individual writers
JL4 Literary works by individual writers
JM1 General critical sources
JM2 Anthologies
JM3 Critical sources on individual writers
JM4 Literary works by individual writers
JN1 General critical sources
JN2 Anthologies
JN3 Critical sources on individual writers
JN4 Literary works by individual writers
JO1 General critical sources
JO2 Anthologies
JO3 Critical sources on individual writers
JO4 Literary works by individual writers
JP1 General critical sources
JP2 Anthologies
JP3 Critical sources on individual writers
JP4 Literary works by individual writers
JR1 General critical sources
JR2 Anthologies
JR3 Critical sources on individual writers
JR4 Literary works by individual writers
The Jahn Library also collects comics and graphic novels by writers and artists from Africa. The department regularly offers seminar courses on this topic.
From A as in Acholi to Z as in Zulu
The collection of books related to creative writing in African languages is, first of all, structured regionally: JF (West Africa), JG (Central Africa), JH (East Africa) und JK (Southern Africa). Furthermore, each language has a code derived, in most cases, from the initial letters of one of its designations.
The holdings in each language are further subdivided into general critical sources on creative writing in that language (1), anthologies in that language (2), critical sources on individual writers of that language (3), and literary works by individual writers in that language (4). Additionally, there are translations of literary works by individual writers from that language (5) and translations of literary works by individual writers into that language (6), e.g.:
JF YOR1 General critical sources
JF YOR2 Anthologies
JF YOR3 Critical sources on individual writers
JF YOR4 Literary works by individual writers
JF YOR5 Translations of literary works by individual writers from the Yorùbá
JF YOR6 Translations of literary works by individual writers into Yorùbá
Literary works in African languages are organised alphabetically according to the initial letters of writers’ names, as are critical sources on individual writers and translations of literary works by individual writers. Titles in categories 1 and 2 are numbered consecutively, titles in categories 3, 4 , 5 and 6 are numbered consecutively within the individual author shelf marks.
Alphabetical list of African languages and their shelf marks in the Jahn Library
Janheinz Jahn as translator
In view of Jahn’s cross-linguistic understanding of African literatures and the actual diversity of languages used by writers from Africa when composing their works, translations are of crucial importance. Translations are therefore an important part of the Jahn Library’s collection.
Janheinz Jahn himself also acted not only as a mediator of literature from Africa in Germany – and thus as a translator in a broader sense – but also quite literally as a translator of literary works. An early result of this work is the anthology Schwarzer Orpheus, which includes poems by Black writers from the Global South and North translated into German by Jahn. The publication of this anthology in 1954 marked the beginning of a wider reception of African literature in Germany. In 1970, Jahn was awarded the Translator’s Prize of the German Academy for Language and Poetry.
Translations into German or world languages
Jahn’s own translations of African or ‘neo-African’ literature were primarily concerned with making the respective works and their authors internationally known and accessible in Germany.
To this day, attempts are being made to collect German translations of works by writers from Africa as completely as possible. In addition, where available, English translations of Francophone and Lusophone titles are collected; to a much lesser extent, French translations of Anglophone titles, etc. Individual translations into other European or Asian languages in the Jahn Library are mostly donations.
World literature translated into African languages, as well as from African languages
In addition, translations of creative writing in African languages into German, English, French or other African languages, which have appeared increasingly in recent years, are also collected, as well as translations of world literature into African languages. Occasionally, literary works in African languages are published as bilingual editions.
‘A tradition of its own, not founded in Europe’: Jahn’s Neo African Literature: A History of Black Writing
In line with his notion of ‘neo-African’ literature, which is now considered outdated (and problematic), Janheinz Jahn collected not only African literature, but also works by Black writers from other parts of the world. These books are still part of the Jahn Library today, although this part of the collection is no longer being systematically expanded.
Jahn set out the considerations underlying his original collection principle in Neo-African Literature: A History of Black Writing (1969), among others. He first problematised the categorisation of literatures according to languages – a “handy method of classification which”, as he elaborated, “was justifiable enough until the beginning of [the twentieth] century” when “[l]iterature was national literature, the nation from a literary point of view was identical with the area where the language was used” (1969: 16). In the twentieth century, North American literature was the first to break away from Europe: writers no longer “defer[red] to European judgment” but
gradually discovered that their literature had tradition of its own. When an overseas literature breaks away from Europe, it gains its independence through finding such a tradition, whether based on specific experiences in history or on a non-European spiritual heritage; and it will still be independent even if it goes on using a European language. (Jahn 1969: 18)
‘Modern’, but also ‘African’: Jahn’s search for the common denominator of ‘neo-African’ literature
Jahn argued that even works by writers from Africa and the African diaspora could not necessarily be categorized according to the language in which they were created. Literature, he postulated, could be
only be classified by style and by the attitudes revealed: more precisely, by studying the individual works, analysing their styles and attitudes and grouping them accordingly, then fitting them into a tradition of similar styles and attitudes.
This was the only way to classify “literary works into groups relevant in terms of literary studies” (1969: 21-22).
Jahn (1969:22) was convinced that one of these groups relevant in terms of literary studies – across all language boundaries and also across national and regional borders, but taking into account the aforementioned stylistic and thought structures – was what he referred to as ‘neo-African literature’, which was ‘modern’ (i.e. influenced by Europe) on the one hand, but also bore witness to ‘African roots’ on the other:
Neo-African literature … is the heir of two traditions: traditional African literature and Western literature. A work which shows no European influences … belongs to traditional African literature, not neo-African. … Conversely, a work which reveals no African stylistic features or patterns of expression belongs to Western, not neo-African literature, even if written by an African. (1966: 16)
Even at that time, however, Jahn (1969: 22) himself already conceded that “[a]lthough theoretically simple, the distinction is hard to make in practice, for it assumes that the styles, patterns of expression and attitudes produced by Africa’s traditions are well known. But they are not”.
What remains? African literature across all linguistic boundaries
The notion of a neo-African literature may be outdated and problematic from today’s perspective – Jahn himself only spoke of African literature a few years later in the Bibliography of Creative African Writing (1971), which he published together with Claus Peter Dressler, and the Who’s Who in African Literature (1972), which he published together with Ulla Schild and Almut Nordmann. However, it was the prerequisite for Jahn’s pioneering conception of an independent African literature. The fact that he was able to see African literature in this way was probably thanks to L.S. Senghor, who had read poems written not only in French but also in Wolof during the lecture that Jahn attended in 1951. The ‘kinship relationship’ to Africa expressed in Jahn’s notion of a neo-African literature or culture played an important identity-forming role for writers and intellectuals of the so-called African diaspora at the time. Last but not least, Jahn’s work helped connect Black from all over the world with one another (cf. Jahn 1954).
References
- Jahn, Janheinz, 1954b: “Verblüffende Wirkung eines Lyrikbandes: 600 Briefe an die N[…] aller Kontinente”. Die Welt, November 25.
- Jahn, Janheinz, 1958: Muntu: Umrisse der neoafrikanischen Kultur. Düsseldorf: Eugen Diederichs.
- Jahn, Janheinz, 1969: Neo-African Literature: A History of Black Writing. New York: Grove.
- Jahn, Janheinz, 1966: Geschichte der neoafrikanischen Literatur: Eine Einführung. Düsseldorf: Eugen Diederichs.
- Jahn, Janheinz and Claus Peter Dressler, 1971: Bibliography of Creative African Writing. Nendeln, Liechtenstein: Kraus Reprint.
- Jahn, Janheinz, Ulla Schild and Almut Nordmann, 1972: Who’s Who in African Literature. Biographies, Works, Commentaries . Tübingen: Horst Erdmann.
Many of the books in the Jahn Library are not only valuable and interesting as texts, but also as objects. Some of the books contain handwritten dedications from authors with whom Jahn was in contact as a translator or literary agent.
As part of a project funded by the Ernst Wilhelm Müller Foundation (11/2021-03/2023), historical audio tapes of the German Africa journalist Gerd Meuer (1941-2017) were digitized.
Gerd Meuer was one of Germany’s leading Africa journalists in the 20th century. His reporting covered political events and general developments in Africa, major cultural events, but also events related to African literature in Germany. Gerd Meuer was also involved in the organization and implementation of such events in cooperation with various cultural institutions, e.g. as co-initiator, contact mediator, moderator, and translator.
In addition to journalistic articles published in magazines and newspapers, Meuer’s work for a number of national and international broadcasters – including ARD, Deutsche Welle, SRG, ORG, Radio France, BBC, Radio Nederland, several African radio stations, Radio Pacifica, National Public Radio (USA) – also produced numerous audio documents in the form of audio tapes. In 1999, Meuer left most of his extensive collection of his own scripts, newspapers, audio tapes, photos, and numerous other documents to the department. This was followed by initial measures to sort, record and digitize selected materials. The audio tapes in particular were digitized as part of the “African writers and musicians in original sound” project.
The 500 or so tapes include recordings of (or broadcasts on) political and cultural events in various African countries, some of which are historically extremely significant from today’s perspective, such as FESTAC ’77 in Lagos.
Most other tapes are recordings (or broadcasts) of events in Germany in which a number of the most internationally renowned African writers of the time took part, especially readings or author talks, e.g. as part of literature festivals or so-called “International Literature Days” in cities such as Berlin, Erlangen, Bayreuth, and Staufen, but also as part of the Janheinz Jahn Symposia in Mainz, the book fair in Frankfurt, and events at the Goethe Institutes in Lagos, Nairobi, and Abidjan.
Visiting scholars from all over the world may use the Jahn Library free of charge for their research, either individually or as part of funded research stays or fellowships. Neither the Jahn Library nor department have funds to finance research stays by visiting scholars at the JGU Mainz. However, researchers and doctoral candidates from Germany and abroad have the opportunity to apply for fellowships for research stays from various funding organizations and foundations.
Every semester, the department offers seminar courses on African literature and/or comics and graphic novels. These can be taken by students enrolled in one of the department’s degree programmes – the B.A. Cultural Ethnologie, the B.A. Afrikanische Sprachen, Medien und Kommunikation (ASMEK), and the M.A. Ethnologie des Globalen – but also in various degree programmes at other departments, e.g. the interdisciplinary M.A. Welt, Literatur, Medien.
As part of seminar courses on African literatures, guided tours and other events take place in the Jahn Library, e.g. the so-called Biblio-Speed-Dating or Book Slams. The Jahn Library also offers guided tours or talks in the context of departmental activities or activities of the JGU Mainz more generally.
Students have the opportunity to help organize current event projects such as exhibitions, Janheinz Jahn Symposia, and readings. The Jahn Library’s exhibition showcase in one of the department’s hallways is also regularly designed by students. There are reels on the department’s Instagram page in which students present the showcases designed by themselves.
Future prospects for young people: Shujaaz
Migration in comics & graphic novels: Samia. Der Traum von Olympia
African Futurism in Nigeria: Roye Okupe’s E.X.O.
12th Janheinz Jahn Symposium, November 24-25, 2025
In 2025, the Jahn Library for African Literature will be 50 years old. We would like to celebrate this with a Jahn Symposium on 24 and 25 November without making the Jahn Library itself the exclusive focus of attention.
The Jahn Library is a great asset for the department, the JGU Mainz, the city of Mainz and even for Germany. However, it is at least as important and wonderful that in recent years libraries with a focus on African literature have also been founded in major cities in Africa as well as in other cities in Germany. These libraries are the focus of the 12th International Jahn Symposium and will be celebrated together with the Jahn Library.
Libraries are not “just” places where books are housed or made accessible to the public, but also places of encounter and identity formation. They are the setting for events where literature (in the broadest sense) is performed and participated. They are places of learning where further education and workshops – or simply some space to read or study – are offered, and sometimes they even provide space for the creation of new literature, when they invite people to take up writing residencies or are used individually for writing.
During the symposium, the guests will introduce their respective libraries to one other. They will talk about the motivation behind the founding of their libraries as well as the history of the libraries to date, about the contexts and focal points of the various collections of African literature, and about their diverse activities, both in social media and with event programmes and other offers on site. They will share the impressive successes that their libraries have celebrated so far (the very existence of each individual library is a success story!), but also the challenges they have faced and the problems they have been confronted with.
The invited representatives of the libraries are people who have been involved, in one way or another, in the founding of libraries with African literature or who are currently managing them. Like Janheinz Jahn, these people – like their predecessors or colleagues – started collecting African literature as private individuals with different motivations and in different contexts and eventually made these collections accessible to a wider public in the form of a library, with great personal and financial commitment and, in most cases, on a part-time basis and not as employees of national or university libraries.
Libraries represented at the symposium (in alphabetical order): 1949 (Abidjan) with Edwige Dro, the African Poetry Library Kampala with Gloria Kiconco, the African Poetry Library Nairobi with Billy Kahora, the Afrothèque (Dakar) with Papa Malick Barros, the Jahn Library for African Literature (Mainz) with Anja Oed, the Library of Africa and the African Diaspora (Accra) with Sylvia Arthur and Seth Avusuglo, the Natubelenge Children’s Library (Lusaka) with Mainess Chilumbwa and Nachizo Manza, the Black Children’s Library (Bremen) with Sheeko Ismail, as well as the Theodor Wonja Michael Library (Cologne) with Glenda Obermuller.
Den Abschluss des Symposiums bildet eine öffentliche Lesung mit Edwige Dro, Gloria Kiconco und Billy Kahora, die alle auch als Bibliotheks-Akteur:innen am Symposium teilnehmen und 1949books bzw. die African Poetry Libraries in Kampala (Uganda) und Nairobi (Kenia) vertreten. Die Lesung findet im Rahmen des ifeas-Institutskolloquiums im WiSe 2025/26 statt. Im Anschluss lädt die Jahn-Bibliothek zu einem feierlichen Umtrunk ein.
11th Janheinz Jahn Symposium, July 5, 2018
The 11th JJS was extraordinary in several ways. Like the very first JJS in 1975, it was held in honour of Janheinz Jahn, who would have turned one hundred years old in 2018. All lectures were given by participants in a seminar course on African comics and graphic novels at the department, as well as students from Goethe University Frankfurt and the University of Bayreuth.
In the evening, Rwandan artist Rupert Bazambanza spoke on the topic of “Graphic novels about the genocide against the Tutsi as commemoration work”, read from his graphic novel Smile Through the Tears and answered questions from the audience.
The symposium was held in conjunction with the exhibition “Sichtwechsel: Comic-Helden in und aus Afrika”, which was curated in collaboration with a student project group and shown at the Schule des Sehens on the JGU Mainz campus from June 12 to July 23, 2018.
10th Janheinz Jahn Symposium, November 20-21, 2014
The genre of the Bildungsroman has proven to be extremely versatile since its beginnings and has also been researched for some time in connection with postcolonial and African literatures. The 10th JJS was based on the idea that a systematic, comparative reading of African novels as Bildungsromane enables a new perspective both on the novels themselves and on the genre of the Bildungsroman as such and – in addition to a theoretical framework for the comparison of very different works of African literature from different historical, social, national and linguistic contexts – offers global points of reference and possibilities for comparison with regard to Africa-specific changes and peculiarities of the genre.
It seemed particularly productive to be able to place many current trends in African literature in a theoretical and historical literary context without already being committed to a negative perspective, which is often perceived by critics as fundamentally problematic in current discussions of African literature in the context of trauma or dystopia research, for example, because it can contribute to consolidating or reproducing a stereotypical, negative image of Africa. An examination of works by writers from Africa as Bildungsromane allows the ubiquitous literary thematization of violence and trauma at the beginning of the 21st century in connection with tyranny, apartheid, civil war, genocide, flight, but also HIV/AIDS and extreme poverty and violence in everyday life to be contextualized very productively in terms of literary theory. An important aspect here is that the main interest of the genre is, by definition, youth or the maturation process of the protagonist and thus ultimately the future, whereby the educational history of the young individual always includes an examination of the values and norms of the past on the one hand and, on the other, always has symbolic or allegorical implications for the vision and revision of the future of a society or nation beyond the individual development of the main character. Franco Moretti (2000), for example, sees a connection between the symbolic centrality of “youth” in the 18th and 19th centuries as a time of radical social change towards modernity and the emergence of the Bildungsroman as a major narrative form, which, as Apollo Amoko (2009) argues, can certainly be transferred to the African context: The African Bildungsroman also emerged in the context of fundamental social upheavals and is concerned with the maturation process or “education” of young protagonist:s in unstable, insecure times. While the educational process in African Bildungsromane of the 20th century is often concerned with the negotiation of modern African identity in the context of decolonization or in the field of tension between “African tradition” and “Western modernity”, the focus in more recent Bildungsromane has shifted towards a critical examination of post-colonial history and social aberrations or national crises. The respective literary form and variation of the genre reflects and reacts to the most diverse social trends and developments, from gender discourses to the dystopian characteristics of many contemporary works.
A reading of African novels as Bildungsromane also allows a new look at the educational mission to which many African authors still feel committed today. The Bildungsroman as a genre that not only tells an individual educational story and thematizes education as such in different ways, but also claims to want to serve the education of the reader, directly accommodates the self-image of these authors with its symbolic or allegorical potential, as it always deals with topics of greater social and political significance, whatever this may mean in concrete terms in the different historical and social contexts.
The aim of the symposium was to bring together scholars from different disciplines and countries who deal with various aspects of the postcolonial or African Bildungsroman. Among the international participants were colleagues from Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, the Republic of Congo, South Africa, and the USA. In addition to the interdisciplinary exchange and networking of research on the African Bildungsroman from different fields such as African Studies, African Languages and Linguistics, Swahili Studies, British Studies, Romance Studies, Media Studies, Comparative Literature and Cultural Anthropology, the focus was also on the question of what constitutes the African Bildungsroman and where there are parallels to the postcolonial Bildungsroman.
9th Janheinz Jahn Symposium, January 9-12, 2008
Translation from the announcement:
African crime fiction represents a comparatively new literary genre and an even newer topic in the critical study of African literatures. On the surface, crime fiction is concerned with the detection of crimes (petty as well as large scale), with corruption or political conspiracies. Its capacity for bloodcurdling mystery accounts for part of its popularity. Just as much, however, African crime fiction is concerned with a whole lot of other aspects, such as questions of authority and power within a postcolonial context against potential projections of a (neo-)imperial West; with working up the past of African nations and grappling with order and disorder in postcolonial societies; and with the renegotiation of gender and race relationships. Many authors have thus broadened the theme of investigation to address issues of community, beliefs and identity constructions across geographic and national boundaries. Others have broadened the genre by inventing recognizable sub-categories which relate to the social, political and historical formations of their specific African postcolonies. Dealing with such ‘serious’ issues in a complex manner has long been regarded as the prerogative of African literary works aimed at elite readerships. Today, however, crime fiction has become one of the most active and ambitious sites of literary investigation. Contemporary African authors deliberately employ the immense popularity of the genre to reach readers from all walks of life. To borrow from an essay on multicultural detective narratives, African crime fiction ingeniously represents “murder with a message” (Adrienne Johnson Gosselin, “Multicultural fiction: murder with a message”. Multicultural Detective Fiction: Murder from the ‘Other’ Side. Ed. Adrienne Johnson Gosselin. New York Garland, 1999, 3-14).
Apart from very sporadic and regionally limited exceptions, African crime fiction has only recently begun to be recognized as a rewarding field of scholarly enquiry. We would like to suggest that African crime fiction represents an especially promising new field in the study of African literatures. For reasons that remain to be examined, popular genres more generally and African crime fiction in particular seem to have an astonishing capacity to absorb and appropriate current thematic concerns more immediately than other genres – and to do so in a highly engaging manner. A comparative investigation of African crime fiction therefore not only helps to identify burning social and political issues but also provides clues as to how they are construed by African writers and intellectuals. Drawing on globally recognized narrative formulae, African authors adapt and, in the process, subvert the various (sub-)genres of crime fiction to engage with and negotiate local concerns central to contemporary life in different social-political, cultural, and historical contexts.
Organization: Anja Oed (JGU Mainz) and Christine Matzke (HU Berlin). Funded by the Volkswagen Foundation.
Oed, Anja and Christine Matzke (eds.): Life is a Thriller: Investigating African Crime Fiction. Cologne: Köppe, 2012.
With contributions by Matthew J. Christensen, Geoffrey V. Davis, Susanne Gehrmann, James Gibbs, Mikhail D. Gromov, Karola Hoffmann, Said Khamis, Matthias Krings, Manfred Loimeier, Christine Matzke, Katja Meintel, Anja Oed, Ranka Primorac, Uta Reuster-Jahn, Alina Rinkanya and Doris Wieser as well as interviews with Angela Makholwa, Meshack Masondo, Deon Meyer and Ben R. Mtobwa.
8th Janheinz Jahn Symposium, November 17-20, 2004
Translation from the announcement:
The symposium will explore the production, mediation, and reception of creative writing in African languages. It thus proposes to move beyond merely pondering and confirming the existence and vitality of written literary expression in these languages. In the past, the issue of the language of African literatures per se has absorbed so much critical attention and energy that the study of African-language literary texts themselves as well as their socio-political and historical contexts was either neglected or marginalized. This symposium is meant to enable writers and scholars working on creative writing in a wide variety of African languages to come together and both present and discuss their research on and visions for African-language literatures. As Alain Ricard and C.F. Swanepoel (1997: 1) have argued, “the prodigious and welcome development of African linguistic studies should not obliterate the need for African philological studies – of course, not in the vein of previous [i.e., 19th]-century philology, trying to prove nebulous and absurd racial theories. We need a new philology, collecting, publishing, and, now especially, interpreting African texts with a clear understanding of the historical context of production, as well as with the mastery of the language medium”.
We do not want to advocate African languages as the only, or the only legitimate, item for African literary expression. We certainly do not want to suggest that all African writers should use African languages to create literary works. However, as Ricard and Swanepoel (ibid.) have pointed out, literature “written in African languages too often suffers from a lack of comparative criticism – for obvious reasons of linguistic competence – but often for less obvious and stronger reasons of cultural arrogance and political resignation, posing as postcolonial theory”. We believe that it is time to recognize that creative writing in African languages forms an integral, vital, innovative and exciting part of African literatures and, accordingly, deserves as much informed critical attention as African creative writing in English, French, or Portuguese. By focusing on the production, mediation, and reception of African-language literatures, we hope to create a forum for new, comparative critical perspectives on these literatures.
In what follows, we shall begin by briefly reviewing the issue of the language of African literatures that has occupied so much space in critical discussions of literary production in Africa. Drawing on Karin Barber’s work, we shall continue by examining the reception of African literatures in the West, which has led to various misconceptions about creative writing in African languages, some of which still prevail in critical discourses on African literatures today. Finally, we shall discuss the relevance of exploring the production, mediation and reception of creative writing in African languages.
African literatures and the issue of language
One of the most central and also one of the most heated debates in critical discourses on African literatures in the second half of the twentieth century was concerned with the issue in which language African writers should express themselves. On the one hand, were they not, as some writers and critics felt, forced to write in English, French or Portuguese, as there was no literary tradition or even any writing at all in their own languages? Were they not obliged, as many argued, to use the languages of the (former) colonial powers to have any chance of being published and read at all? Was it not natural for them to express themselves in the languages in which they had been taught at school and studied abroad? Was it not preferable or even desirable to write in English or French to reach a wider national and international readership and thus be able to contribute to the great tradition of world literature, to be rewarded by international recognition and acclaim? But was it, on the other hand, politically correct or even just acceptable to use the languages of the former colonial master’s degrees, or should African writers compose their literary work in ‘their own’, indigenous African languages? Was it possible, as writers such as Chinua Achebe (1975: 62) suggested, to appropriate the languages of the former colonial powers and make them “carry the weight of [the writer’s] African experience”? Could the various strategies of appropriation be regarded as subversive and liberating acts of cultural emancipation, as suggested by Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths and Helen Tiffin in The Empire Writes Back (1989)? Or was it necessary to “return to” African languages in order to “decolonise the mind” and “move the centre” as Ngugi wa Thiong’o put it in his two influential collections of essays, Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature (1981) and Moving the Centre: The Struggle for Cultural Freedom (1993)? Whom were African writers writing for? Was African literature merely a commodity produced for the western academic machinery and general consumption in the West, dependent on the money, aesthetic opinion and political interests of the West? These were, in short, some of the questions raised regarding the issue of language and African creative writing. How they were answered by different writers and critics at different times depended very much on theoretical trends arising from certain intellectual and political contexts.
Language and the reception of African literatures in the West
As early as 1966, Janheinz Jahn’s widely influential Geschichte der neoafrikanischen Literatur already devoted several chapters to individual literary traditions in languages such as Swahili, Hausa, Sotho, Xhosa and Zulu. Nevertheless, many critics of African literatures still take it for granted that the majority of African literary production would be in English or French. In a brilliant and groundbreaking article on “African-Language Literature and Postcolonial Criticism”, Karin Barber (1995) examines the development of the reception of African creative writing in the West, from the era of ‘Commonwealth’-criticism in the 1960s to the era of postcolonial criticism in the 1980s and 1990s. As she argues, western-oriented discourses on African literatures tended to marginalize African-language literatures while foregrounding creative writing in the former colonial languages, disregarding the fact that a great and steadily increasing part of literary production in Africa was actually taking place in African languages.
While literary criticism in the 1960s celebrated African oral traditions in the so-called vernacular languages it was assumed that modern writers would prefer to write in one of the former colonial languages. At the same time, it was made clear that they had hardly any other choice if they wanted more than just a few readers. In a seemingly radical reversal of the assumptions of Commonwealth-criticism, postcolonial criticism problematized the languages of the former colonial powers as instruments of imperial domination: “The ingenious model of Commonwealth literature, where the newcomer gladly offers contributions to a welcoming Great Tradition, is shown to mask strong power relations between the center and the periphery … Indigenous languages and literatures were devalued and displaced, and the colonial subject culturally and linguistically dispossessed, leading to deep loss of self-esteem and cultural confidence” (Barber 1995: 4). Nonetheless, as Barber points out, what postcolonial criticism shares with Commonwealth criticism is “its effacement of modern indigenous-language expression in colonized countries. Indeed, it goes further than Commonwealth criticism, replacing a well-meaning confusion with a definite theoretical lock-out. If Commonwealth criticism felt that African writers had no alternative but to choose to write in English, post-colonial criticism eliminates virtually all hint of a choice: the discourses of empire were apparently all-encompassing and inescapable” (ibid.). The postcolonial criticism of the 1980s and 1990s has thus “promoted a binarized, generalized model of the world which has had the effect of eliminating African-language expression from view. This model has produced an impoverished and distorted picture of ‘the colonial experience’ and the place of languages in that experience. It has maintained a center-periphery polarity which both exaggerates and simplifies the effects of the colonial imposition of European languages” (Barber 1995: 3).
Furthermore, both Commonwealth and postcolonial criticism have tended to uphold a fundamental distinction between ‘traditional’, oral forms of poetic expression – commonly referred to as orature – which are generally associated with African languages, and modern literature, written in the (former) colonial languages and influenced by western traditions of creative writing. Creative writing in African languages – if its existence was acknowledged at all – has not only been regarded as marginal but also as transitional phenomenon, as poetic expression of a nostalgic belief in the values of the past, a model without much hope of a future in a modern, dynamic, forward-looking world. Creative writing in African languages has, therefore, sometimes seemed little deserving of support, especially since – beyond the political function it was conceded in its immediate indigenous-language contexts – it was, mostly without deeper knowledge, assumed to be of doubtful literary or aesthetic quality. But, as Barber (1995:12) has succinctly argued, the “paradigm that conflates, on the one hand, indigenous-language expression with the oral, the traditional, and the precolonial, and, on the other hand, europhone expression with writing, modernity and colonial/postcoloniality” does not hold “under the glare” of the facts that “the African past was not exclusively ‘oral’; ‘oral’ literature nowadays does not deal with an exclusively ‘traditional’ world of experience; and modern written literature is not exclusively in European languages. Contemporary African-language written literature, gaining additional resonance and extension from its location in huge, heterogenous, popular cultures, is fully as capable of confronting contemporary ‘postcolonial’ experience as European-language literature”. The ignorance of the contemporaneity, the aesthetic qualities and the innovative aspects of creative writing in African languages and its significance in and relevance to modern life and culture may be comprehensible considering the challenges of the interdisciplinary approach essential to its analysis and interpretation. These, beyond mere linguistic competence – which often represents the greatest barrier – require a more than superficial knowledge and understanding of the various cultural, historical, social and political contexts and processes in which it is produced, mediated and received. By focusing on the production, mediation and reception of creative writing in African languages, the planned symposium is meant to take discourse on African-language literatures to a new level of critical awareness.
Exploring the production, mediation, and reception of creative writing in African languages
Alain Ricard (2002: 1) recently observed that the interest in “African language writing is often viewed with suspicion by scholars working on Europhone texts. It is as if they felt threatened by an even purer approach to Africa. Flora Veit-Wild (1997: 554) analyzed very clearly this kind of attitude stemming from a militant, protective attitude of scholars coming to the rescue of Africa and confusing humanitarian and humanistic perspectives. I do not come to the rescue of African literatures and Flora Veit-Wild is right to point out the dangers present in this idealization of the “other”. It is Ricard’s intention to call for the redressing of “the crooked timber of African literary scholarship, inebriated with Europhonia, to the extent of neglecting African written literary expression” (ibid.). While not wanting to slight or even demonize African creative writing in English, French or Portuguese in any way, we agree with Ricard that it is high time to move beyond exclusionist approaches to African literatures. Neither creative writing in the former colonial languages nor creative writing in indigenous African languages is inherently better or worse, recommendable or damnable. The various forms of contemporary literary expression co-exist, many aspects of their art overlap and interact with each other, and both deserve to be taken seriously as works of art, as reconfigurations – to use Ricoeur’s term – of social and cultural experience. It is high time to acknowledge that creative writing in African languages is by no means a marginal phenomenon. As Bernth Lindfors (1990: vii) points out, “there were about fifty of these African written literatures in existence by the middle decades of the twentieth century, several of them in unique scripts”. In the 1980s, Ulla Schild (1988:16) was already able to assert: “After all, 40% of African literature is written in African languages, no quantité négligeable“. Finally, Barber’s evidence demonstrates that by the end of the twentieth century, “African-language written literature dealing with contemporary experience often dwarfs literary production in English” (1995: 12).
There exist various book-length studies of creative writing in African languages (e.g., Gérard 1971 and 1981; Andrzejewski, Pilaszewicz and Tyloch 1985, Ngandu Nkashama 1992; Ricard 1995). For the most part, the interest and emphasis of these pioneering studies has been historical. Their critical achievement was to have made possible a general introduction to the diverse and powerful realities of African-language literatures, some of which boast traditions spanning several centuries. These studies represent the necessary basis and starting-point for any further comparative exploration of creative writing in African languages, and more of them will still be needed as new critical perspectives are developed. It will be equally and increasingly important, however, to explore the present of African-language literatures, their presence, significance and relevance in contemporary African societies. To this effect, it will be crucial to investigate all aspects of the production, mediation and reception of creative writing in African languages.
Part of the challenge of this endeavor is that creative writing in African languages and the conditions under which it is created, mediated and received are as diverse as the languages in which it is produced; that, where critical discourses on African-language literatures have developed, these are often isolated both in relation to critical discourses on African literatures more generally and in relation to critical discourses on other African-language literatures; and that, consequently, there is no ready-made, clear-cut methodological approach or theoretical framework available as yet. While some traditions of literary expression in African languages have cultivated their own literary aesthetics and traditions, other African-language literatures are only just emerging and taking on increasing importance. The different panels of the planned symposium are designed to do justice to the heterogeneity of creative writing in African languages, to the diversity of concerns and issues arising in relation to its production, mediation and reception, and thus to stimulate comparative dialogue.
Organization: Anja Oed (JGU Mainz) and Uta Reuster-Jahn (JGU Mainz). Funded by the Volkswagen Foundation.
Oed, Anja and Uta Reuster-Jahn (eds.): Beyond the Language Issue: The Production, Mediation and Reception of Creative Writing in African Languages. Cologne: Köppe, 2008.
With contributions by Abdalla Uba Adamu, Walter Bgoya, Memory Chirere, Lutz Diegner, Ernest N. Emenyonu, Thomas Geider, Christine Glanz, Mikhail D. Gromov, Akínwùmí Ìsòlá, Dinah K. Itumeleng, Euphrase Kezilahabi, Daniel P. Kunene, Crispin Maalu-Bungi, Francis Moto, Kiba-Mwenyu, Jean Chrysostome Nkejabahizi, Anja Oed, Jeff Opland, B. Akíntúndé Oyètádé, Alena Rettová, Uta Reuster-Jahn, Alain Ricard, Alina N. Rinkanya, Farouk Topan, Maurice Vambe and Flora Veit-Wild.
7th JJS (1995)
Popular Culture in Africa
In honor of Ernst Wilhelm Müller. Organized by Ulla Schild and Anna Maria Brandstetter. Without publication.
6th JJS (1992)
Autobiographical Genres in Africa
Riesz, János and Ulla Schild (eds.): Genres autobiographiques en Afrique – Autobiographical Genres in Africa, Reimer.
5th JJS (1987)
On Stage: Theatre in Africa
Schild, Ulla (ed.): On Stage, Edition Re.
4th JJS (1982)
The Woman in Africa as Writer and Literary Character
Schild, Ulla (ed.): Jaw-Bones and Umbilical Cords, Reimer. Based on the 3rd & 4th JJS 3. & 4TH JJS.
3rd JJS (1979)
Opposition & Exile: Aspects of African Literature
Schild, Ulla (ed.): Jaw-Bones and Umbilical Cords, Reimer. Based on the 3rd & 4th JJS 3. & 4TH JJS.
2nd JJS (1977)
The Literature of East Africa
Schild, Ulla (ed.): The East African Experience. Essays on English and Swahili Literature Reimer.
1st JJS (1975)
The Social Significance of Modern African Literature: In Memory of Janheinz Jahn
Lindfors, Bernth and Ulla Schild (eds.): Neo-African Literature and Culture: Essays in Memory of Janheinz Jahn, Heymann.
African Literature Alive in Mainz: Gloria Kiconco & Billy Kahora
November 25, 2025
As part of the 12th JJS
Reading and talk with Rupert Bazambanza
July 5, 2018
As part of the 11th JJS
Scenic reading from Aya de Yopougon by M. Abouet & C. Oubrerie
June 12, 2018
With students of Cultural Anthropology & World Literature as part of the opening of “Sichtwechsel: Comic-Helden in und aus Afrika”
Children, civil war & education: Reading & discussion with Emmanuel Dongala
November 20, 2014
As part of the 10th JJS on the African Bildungsroman
Reading with Namwali Serpell
November 15, 2011
Reading with Patrice Nganang
April 10, 2010
As part of the VAD conference
Reading with Angela Makholwa, Meshack Masondo & Ben Mtobwa
January 9, 2008
As part of the 9th JJS on African crime fiction
Reading with Deon Meyer
January 11, 2008
As part of the 9th JJS
African love poetry
October 27, 2006
Reading with Gaby Böhne from the anthology Antilopenmond (ed. Peter Ripken and Véronique Tadjo, 2002). As part of the celebration of the department’s 60th anniversary
Crime novels from Angola, Botswana, Kenya, Mali & Nigeria: Reading with Nick Benjamin
November 24, 2005
Reading with Barbara Mesquita, the translator of Pepetela’sJaime Bunda
October 20, 2005
Creative Writing in African Languages: A Polyglot Reading
November 20, 2004
With Clara Momanyi, Daniel Kunene, Memory Chirere, Akínwùmí Ìsòlá, Chege Githiora, Peter Muiruri, Fekade Azeze, Euphrase Kezilahabi, Kiba-Mwenyu, Wangui wa Goro, Francis Moto & Farouk Topan. As part of the 8th JJS
Literary concert with Lamine Konté
July 23, 2004
As part of the “Black Orpheus” workshop
Reading
April 25, 2002
With Tanella Boni, Mariama Ndoye, Nagognimé Dembélé, Florent Couao-Zotti & Boubacar Boris Diop
Africanissimo, in conjunction with an exhibition of the same title
April and May 2000
Lesego Rampolokeng, April 10, 2000
Scenic reading of Wole Soyinka’s Death and the King’s Horseman, May 16, 2000, with students
Bra Zinga’ Mattera, May 29, 2000
Mike Nicol, May 30, 2000
Treasures from the Jahn Library’s collection are on display here. Alternatively, students have the opportunity to present their work.
Future prospects for young people: Shujaaz
Migration in comics & graphic novels: Samia. Der Traum von Olympia
African Futurism in Nigeria: Roye Okupe’s E.X.O.
The exhibition invited visitors to an encounter with comic book heroes in and from Africa, who offer diverse perspectives on a whole range of topics. Some comics and graphic novels, as well as their protagonists, were deliberately created, by the authors, to counteract colonial or stereotypical ideas of Africa, for example by focusing on urban heroes or superheroes.
Additionally, the exhibition featured comics and graphic novels with other thematic focuses. Historical comic book heroes from the USA and Europe in Africa challenge today’s readers to take a critical look at racism. African comic book heroes in or on their way to Europe convey different perspectives on migration. Further comic book heroes represented in the exhibition – often employed in the service of education – were the protagonists of fairy tales and crime fiction, heroes of everyday life and world history, national heroes as well as (anti-)heroes of post-colonial history.
Programme of supporting events:
June 12, 2018, vernissage with greetings, thematic introduction and scenic reading
July 5, 2018, 11th Janheinz Jahn Symposium “Africa in Comics and Comics in Africa”
July 5, 2018, Rupert Bazambanza: Graphic novels about the genocide against the Tutsi as commemoration work
July 23, 2018, Black Orpheus meets comic arts. Festive symposium to mark the 100th anniversary of Janheinz Jahn’s birthday
July 23, 2018, Bourahima Zongo: Comics as an educational medium in Africa
Visual impressions of the exhibition
Yoruba Poetry. Traditional Yoruba poems, collected and translated by Bakare Gbadamosi and Ulli Beier. With eight serigraphs and ten vignettes by Susanne Wenger (Ibadan: Ministry of Education, 1959)
The anthology relates serigraphs by the Austrian artist Susanne Wenger (1916-2009), who lived in Nigeria for almost 60 years, to orally transmitted Yorùbá poems(oríkì). Through oríkì, the Yorùbá bring to life the characteristics of individuals and entire families, of deities and kings as well as animals and plants. Oríkì are often not easy to understand and are full of allusions to historical events. One or two verses usually form their own sections of meaning, which are constantly recombined and can take on further meaning depending on the context. The elephant evoked here in the picture is regarded as the epitome of power and royal dignity.
The Yorùbá use oríkì to celebrate identity: addressing someone with their oríkì means recognizing and appreciating their personal characteristics and bringing them to life, but also reminding them of the privileges and responsibilities associated with them. This is why oríkì often have a high emotional value. The Yorùbá use oríkì to evoke the special characteristics of individual people, but also of entire families, deities and kings as well as animals, plants and even food. Oríkì are often not easy to understand and are full of allusions to historical events or anecdotes. One or two verses usually form their own sections of meaning, which are constantly recombined and can take on additional meaning depending on the context.
In their simplest form, oríkì are, somewhat casually, a kind of nickname that refers to certain characteristics of a person, often in connection with specific life situations, and is then used instead of the first name. When I myself was traveling in southwestern Nigeria for the first time as part of my doctoral research, I was immediately given the nickname Àjọkẹ́, which literally means “we take care of (you) together”. Every time someone pronounced this name, it also repeated a warm-hearted promise that referred to my situation as a stranger in society, which in many ways depended on the hospitality of the local people. People receive their first oríkì right after birth. The older, better known and more influential someone becomes, the more oríkì he or she accumulates over the course of a lifetime. When the oríkì of a particularly famous person are presented, the recital often ends with the artist saying that he or she could go on speaking until tomorrow to suggest how much more there is to say about this person.
The number of oríkì dedicated to the elephant as the largest land mammal is correspondingly large. The poems compiled in the anthology present only a small selection of these oríkì, which praise the size and strength of the elephant with unusual and impressive images and make clear the respect it inspires in people:
Elephant, a ghost in the bush
Elephant that brings death
He swallows a whole palm fruit
together with the thorns.
He tramples the grass
with his mortar legs
Wherever he steps,
no more grass grows.
He shakes a man like a rag
and hangs him in the tree.
With a single hand
he pulls two palm trees to the ground.
If he had two hands
he would tear the sky in two.
An elephant is no burden for an old man –
not even for a young one.
(The German translation from the English used in the exhibition was by Ulla Schild; this is a retranslation into English)
But Oríkì also brings to life the external features and special characteristics of other animals, such as the various antelope species, the wild boar, the leopard, the python, the hyena or the African buffalo.
Similar to Greek or Roman mythology, the religion of the Yorùbá also has a number of deities, the so-called Òrìṣà, around whom numerous stories of love, power, envy and intrigue are entwined. Of course, these are also sung about in Oríkì, but are often fragmentary and full of cryptic allusions and therefore usually very difficult to understand. The best-known deities include Ọbàtálá, the god of creation, Ògún, the god of iron and hunting, Ṣàngó, the god of thunder and lightning, Èṣù, god of crossroads and doors, a kind of trickster god and messenger of the gods, but also goddesses such as Yemọja, the goddess of the sea and motherhood, Ọ̀ṣun, the goddess of a river of the same name and of fertility, and Ọya, goddess of wind and storm, the river Niger and also of fertility. Ọya is ascribed a strength and destructive power that is otherwise perceived as masculine. This is one of the reasons why she is associated with the African buffalo; there are also stories according to which she was able to transform herself into a buffalo before marrying her god husband Ṣàngó.
Susanne Wenger’s serigraphs are not to be understood as illustrations of specific poems in the anthology, but rather depict scenes from stories about the gods. Together with her husband Ulli Beier, the artist moved to Nigeria in 1950, where she remained for almost six decades until the end of her life, even after separating from her husband. She was involved in establishing the influential Òṣogbo Art School. She also became an important priestess of the goddess Ọ̀ṣun, who is particularly revered in the south-western Nigerian city of Òṣogbo, and dedicated herself to the creation and maintenance of the sacred grove of Ọ̀ṣun, a sculpture park that was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2005. Incidentally, Susanne Wenger’s oríkì was “Àdùnní Olóríṣà”; “Àdùnní” literally means “someone who is sweet to possess or cherish”, while “Olóríṣà” is the term for the devotee or follower of a deity. Her death was announced with the words “Erín wọ̀, Àjànàkú sùn bí òkè”, which means “The elephant has fallen, Àjànàkú [an Oríkì nickname for the elephant] sleeps like a hill” (i.e., just as you cannot move a hill, the fallen elephant will not get up again). These words are only used at the death of kings and particularly important personalities, which in turn refers to the elephant’s high reputation.
In the collection of the Jahn Library for African Literatures, the anthology as a collection of written orature is rather unusual and thus something very special. However, the Jahn Library has a large collection of contemporary written literature in over eighty different African languages. This includes a large number of novels written in Yorùbá, plays and poetry collections, children’s books and even comics, as well as translations from Yorùbá and into Yorùbá. A whole series of literary works written in Yorùbá have also been made into films in Nigeria.
Superdetective Akin’s latest case: Sherlock Holmes’ Nigerian colleague investigates in the Yorùbá language
At first glance, this work-looking book may seem rather inconspicuous but in actual fact, it represents a small treasure. It is a detective novel by the Nigerian writer Kọ́lá Akínlàdé (b. 1924), published in 1976 under the title Owó Ẹ̀jẹ̀ [Eng.: Blood Money] in Yorùbá, one of Nigeria’s most important spokespersons, in which a superdetective solves the murder of a young migrant. Like many literary works published locally in Africa since the last century, the novel has long been out of print and is not often found even in libraries – even in Nigeria itself, although the novel was successfully filmed there ten years ago and is considered a classic of modern Yorùbá literature. Kọ́lá Akínlàdé, who has published a total of nine detective novels in addition to other works, is the most important Yorùbá writer of this genre. Like many other books, this work found its way into the Jahn Library for African Literatures at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) in a very special way and beyond the usual library ordering procedures: the head of the library bought it from a street vendor in Ibadan in 1999 during her doctoral field research in Nigeria.
Owó Ẹ̀jè is the fourth novel about a superdetective named Akin Olúṣínà. (Crime novel from the Jahn Library, photo: Thomas Hartmann, Mainz University Library) It is set in the 1970s in the Ondo area of southwest Nigeria. After Súlè, a young migrant in his twenties who worked as a cocoa farmer among the Yorùbá, is poisoned, the local police investigate. At the request of the murdered man’s fiancée, they are significantly assisted by the superdetective. Gradually, several suspects are identified and interrogated, including notorious criminals as well as respectable members of society. In a dramatic scene at the end of the novel, the master detective, who in his private investigations is a decisive step ahead of the police, who are still groping in the dark, summons all the remaining suspects to the police station. While the innocent among those present are quickly exonerated, the superdetective impressively manages not only to convict the perpetrator, but also to solve other unsolved cases along the way. Súlè’s murderer is, of all people, his wealthy, fatherly Yorùbá mentor Bàbá Wálé, who had, in false generously, given him land to grow cocoa in return for occasional work, without documenting this in a contract and all the time intending to reap the rewards of Súlè’s years of hard work himself.
With his detective novel, the writer Akínlàdé adapts a global genre, which he instrumentalizes in order to deal with specific, locally relevant themes of contemporary Yorùbá society shaped by the colonial era. These include new opportunities for women in a Western-influenced world, but also the challenges that arise for them as a result. Ethnically motivated discrimination and exploitation as well as the difficulty of distinguishing between reality and appearance are also cleverly linked to the murder case and placed in a current social context. The overall positive portrayal of the police serves to correct widespread reservations and is intended to strengthen the reader’s trust in modern institutions of state power. The author’s vision of successful modernity is most clearly embodied by the figure of the master detective himself. His superiority and ultimately the secret of his success are essentially due to his cultural competence and flexibility, which allow him to function optimally in modern Yorùbá society. The confrontation with cultural change and the challenges that this brings with it in people’s everyday lives is not staged as a battle between “tradition” or “Yorùbá culture” on the one hand and “modernity” or “Western culture” on the other. Rather, it is about engaging with modernity in a dynamic process and in a locally relevant way – neither in opposition to traditional culture nor in deliberate differentiation from the West, but through the skillful, strategic integration of elements from both worlds.
Akínlàdé’s detective novel is typical of the linguistic diversity of the Jahn Library for African Literatures, whose collection goes back to the journalist, translator and literary mediator Janheinz Jahn (1918-1973). Jahn was one of the very first researchers to understand literature from Africa as a tradition in its own right, regardless of the language in which it was written, and not as an overseas department of European philologies; from the very beginning, it was natural for him that African writers wrote their works not only in the colonial languages but also in local languages. His first encounter with African literature at a spokesperson’s lecture by the poet and later Senegalese President Léopold Sédar Senghor (1906-2001) in December 1951 may already have established this understanding, as Senghor recited poems in French on this occasion, but also in Wolof, one of the most important languages of his own homeland. The Jahn Library now has a unique collection of literary works in over eighty languages, including the former colonial languages as well as a very large number of African languages.
Literature
- Akínlàdé, Kọ́lá, 1976: Owó Ẹ̀jẹ̀. Ibadan.
- Oed, Anja, 2012: “‘The world has changed’: modernity in Kọ́lá Akínlàdé’s detective novel Owó Ẹ̀jẹ̀”. In: Anja Oed and Christine Matzke (eds.): Life is a Thriller. Cologne, 113-127.
- Oed, Anja, 2006: “Literaturen in afrikanischen Sprachen und die Jahn-Bibliothek für afrikanische Literaturen”. In: Anna-Maria Brandstetter and Carola Lentz (eds.): 60 years of the Institute for Cultural Anthropology and African Studies. A birthday book . Cologne, 163-177.
- Ògúnṣínà, Bísí, 1992: The Development of the Yoruba Novel, 1930-1975. Ilorin.
The Jahn Library is regularly represented in the changing exhibitions of the Johannes Gutenberg University Collections in the AMA Lounge, as well as with guided tours and talks, e.g. on the occasion of the Day of Collections.
Further exhibition projects of the university collections:
Ziemlich beste Freunde: Die Sammlungen der Johannes Gutenberg-Universität zu Gast in Mainzer Museen
Unusual exhibits await visitors from spring to early autumn in the permanent exhibitions of the Landesmuseum Mainz, the Natural History Museum and the Bischöfliches Dom- und Diözesanmuseum: The Johannes Gutenberg University Collections are visiting! Selected objects from the university’s diverse collections – which are used for research and teaching at various departments, document the historical development of the humanities, arts, and sciences, and have very different aesthetic, cultural and idealistic values – enter into an exciting dialogue with the museum exhibits. The university collections run through the museums like a trail. For example, an Indian bronze contrasts with medieval depictions of the Virgin Mary, a mask from Cameroon stands opposite the model of an elephant, and mathematical models correspond with modern arts in the permanent exhibition display cases as well as in guest showcases in the university’s red and white colors. Different worlds, histories, disciplines, eras, styles and materials come together. In a playful way, the exhibits from the university collections and the museums become unexpected neighbours, opening up surprising perspectives and shedding new light on their original contexts. They challenge visitors to re-examine them and to uncover similarities between the ostensibly very different collections, revealing connections across subjects and cultures and stimulating new associations and recognitions. In this way, the disparate pairs of objects enrich each other – just like best friends do …
Curator: Dr. Vera Hierholzer, Coordinator of the Johannes Gutenberg University Collections
Wertsachen: Die Sammlungen der Universität Mainz
The exhibition presents objects from the Johannes Gutenberg University Collections, many of which are of great value for research and teaching, but also have cultural and aesthetic value. For the first time, it provides an insight into the cellars and attics, offices and depots where the many thousands of collection items are stored. And it shows the people behind the objects: the scholars researching the collections, using them to impart knowledge, maintaining and expanding them.
Curator: Dr. Vera Hierholzer, Coordinator of the Johannes Gutenberg University Collections
Photography: Thomas Hartmann
Collecting Culture: Africa in Archives and Libraries in the Rhine-Main Region, 2006
The Jahn Library took part in an exhibition entitled “Collecting Culture: Africa in Archives and Libraries in the Rhine-Main Region”, which was on display at the VAD Conference from July 25 to August 28, 2006 in the Johann Christian-Senckenberg University Library in Frankfurt/Main.
Translation from the announcement:
The Rhine-Main region has a high concentration of research institutions, libraries, collections, and archives related to Africa that is unique in Germany. Their development reflects the changing views that Europe has had of its neighbouring continent to the south, reaching back to the early days of European encounters with the African continent.
The exhibition “Collecting Culture” (25.7. – 28.8.2006) aims to present the Africa collections of these institutions, starting with their founding personalities. The currents of European intellectual history and the political developments of the past are reflected in the collections like sediments of knowledge. THe underlying views of Africa have changed over time, leading to a change in research questions and thus also in the composition of the collections: The perspective has changed, for instance, from the rescue of the supposedly “authentic” to the documentation of the hybrid and everyday life.
For the first time, a wide variety of items (drawings, photographs, books, music, ethnographic objects) from four collections – the Frobenius Institute and the University Library (both in Frankfurt/Main), as well as the African Music Archives and the Jahn Library for African Literatures (both in Mainz) – will be presented together to a broad public in the rooms of the Johann Christian Senckenberg University Library, Frankfurt/Main, on the occasion of the 2006 VAD Conference in Frankfurt.
Geschichte und Geschichten: Die Literaturen Afrikas, May 2000
Presentation of a traveling exhibition of the Afrikanissimo initiative
Organization: Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Literatur aus Afrika, Asien und Lateinamerika e.V.
Concept and text: Thomas Brückner
With accompanying brochure by Thomas Brückner (1998)
Programme of supporting events:
- April 10: Event with Lesego Rampolokeng (South Africa)
- May 16: Scenic reading of Wole Soyinka’s Death and the King’s Horseman
- May 29: Reading with Don ‘Bra Zinga’ Mattera (South Africa)
- May 30: Mike Nicol (South Africa)
The history of the Jahn Library – and beyond that, the history of African literature in Germany – is closely linked with Janheinz Jahn and Ulla Schild, to whose enthusiasm for contemporary African literature, enquiring minds, and passion for collecting the Jahn Library owes a large part of its unique collection.
After his formative encounter with Léopold Sédar Senghor in 1951, Janheinz Jahn began to record the literature of Black writers from all over the world bibliographically, but also to compile it in a private collection. For several years, he was assisted in this by Claus Peter Dressler, a professional librarian.
After Jahn’s death in 1975, his private library was turned into the “Janheinz Jahn Library for African Literature”, as it was originally called. With Ulla Schild as its first head, it became an internationally renowned research facility.
After Jahn’s death in October 1973, E.W. Müller and Gerhard Grohs, as professors at the “Department of Cultural Anthropology”, as the department was then called, successfully applied – at the suggestion of Ulla Schild – for the acquisition of Jahn’s private library, including an accompanying catalogue. In December 1974, the German Research Foundation (DFG) approved the purchase of the so-called “Library Janheinz Jahn” with special funds from the Stifterverband für die Deutsche Wissenschaft. The decisive factor was that there had been a professorship for African philology at the department since 1972, which was seen as an important prerequisite for the continuation and maintenance of Jahn’s collection in view of its cross-linguistic orientation.
At the beginning of 1975, the “Janheinz Jahn Library for Modern African Literature”, named after Janheinz Jahn, was opened as a publicly accessible library at the department. As required by the German Research Foundation in connection with the grant, a new position was created at the department for the curation and expansion of the library, which was filled by Ulla Schild, Janheinz Jahn’s long-time colleague and partner. After her death, the position was initially substituted by PD Dr. Thomas Brückner and PD Dr. Thomas Geider and then filled by Dr. Anja Oed in 2002.
The collection of the Jahn Library has been continuously expanded since 1975 and, following Jahn’s collecting principle, across languages. Since 2002, the library has been called the “Jahn Library for African Literature”.
References
- Lindfors, Bernth and Ulla Schild (eds.), 1976: Neo-African Literature and Culture. Essays in Memory of Janheinz Jahn . (Mainz Africa Studies, 1). Wiesbaden: B. Heymann.
- Müller, Ernst Wilhelm, 2006: “Reminiscences of a person affected”. In: Anna-Maria Brandstetter and Carola Lentz (eds.): 60 years of the Institute for Cultural Anthropology and African Studies. A birthday book . (Mainzer Beiträge zur Afrikaforschung, 14). Cologne: Rüdiger Köppe, 63-85.
- Oed, Anja, 2006: “Literaturen in afrikanischen Sprachen und die Jahn-Bibliothek für afrikanische Literaturen”. In: Anna-Maria Brandstetter and Carola Lentz (eds.): 60 years of the Institute for Cultural Anthropology and African Studies. A birthday book . (Mainzer Beiträge zur Afrikaforschung, 14). Cologne: Rüdiger Köppe, 163-177.
Youthful enthusiasm for foreign languages and literatures
Janheinz Jahn was born on July 23, 1918 in Frankfurt/Main into a well-off family. His interest in foreign languages and literatures was awakened early on through his travels abroad. Even before becoming a university student of dramaturgy as well as German, Italian and Arabic philology he had already mastered five European languages. After World War II, which had prematurely ended his university studies, Jahn decided not to complete his degree programme. Instead, he began to work as a freelance journalist, and he also made his own literary attempts.
Memorable encounter: Janheinz Jahn’s first meeting with Léopold Sédar Senghor
On December 1, 1951, Jahn finally had the memorable encounter that would shape the rest of his life: At the invitation of the Franco-German Society in Frankfurt, Léopold Sédar Senghor, later Senegalese president and laureate of the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade (1968), gave a lecture on “La nouvelle poésie n[…] de langue française”, which Jahn attended.
Although Senghor did not recite his own poems on this occasion, it was through him that Jahn first heard poems written in French by poets such as Aimé Césaire, Léon Damas, Birago Diop, and Paul Niger. He was enthusiastic and decided to collect more of these poems, to study them and, if possible, to translate them into German.
Jahn’s ‘intellectual voyage of discovery by airmail’
For Jahn, the next few years were a “journey of intellectual discovery by airmail”, as he himself once put it. He sent over 600 letters to find out the addresses of other poets and to discuss both the selection of texts and his translations with them.
Black Orpheus and the beginning of the reception of African literature in Germany
The result of these efforts over several years was the poetry anthology Schwarzer Orpheus: Moderne Dichtung afrikanischer Völker beider Hemisphären, edited and translated by Janheinz Jahn and published by Carl Hanser Verlag in 1954. With the publication of Schwarzer Orpheus, modern poetry from Africa and the African diaspora was made accessible to a wider German readership for the first time, in an era when the existence of written African literature was still largely unknown in Germany.
Schwarzer Orpheus was initially a publishing adventure by Herbert G. Göpfert, then head of the literary department at Carl Hanser Verlag and later Professor of Book and Edition Studies (Buchwissenschaft) at the University of Munich, who was, among other things, endeavouring to publish contemporary world literature: literary innovations, but also works that had previously received too little attention, were to be made known in Germany. Jahn’s Schwarzer Orpheus, which comprises 161 poems by 82 authors, went through several editions over the years, became a bestseller and achieved a kind of cult status. An expanded version was published in 1964.
The title of the poetry anthology quotes Jean-Paul Sartre’s famous foreword to Senghor’sAnthology de la nouvelle poésie nègre et malgache de langue française (1948), “Orphée Noir”, in which Sartre compares the poets’ search for a Black identity and for lyrical means of expressing it with Orpheus’s descent into the underworld.
Jahn as a mediator of African literature
After the publication of Black Orpheus, Jahn continued to devote himself passionately to promoting African literature in Germany. Over the years, he developed a friendly relationship with many poets and writers, most specifically L.S. Senghor. This is evidenced by the handwritten dedications with which some of the authors signed their works for Jahn.
In addition to other anthologies, he made a name for himself internationally with influential, albeit from today’s perspective in some respects controversial, works on literature as well as cultural philosophy (Muntu: Umrisse der neoafrikanischen Kultur, 1958 and Geschichte der neoafrikanischen Literatur: Eine Einführung, 1966) and compiled the first bibliographies and reference works on literature from Africa and the African diaspora.
Janheinz Jahn’s enthusiasm for contemporary African literature and his passion for collecting, to which the Jahn Library owes much of its unique collection, were important pioneering achievements.
References
- Geider, Thomas, 2006: “Janheinz Jahn als Vermittler afrikanischer Literatur in den deutschen Sprachraum und die Weltliteratur”. In: Anna-Maria Brandstetter and Carola Lentz (eds.): 60 years of the Institute for Cultural Anthropology and African Studies. A birthday book . (Mainzer Beiträge zur Afrikaforschung, 14) Cologne: Rüdiger Köppe, 141-161.
- Jahn, Janheinz, 1954: Schwarzer Orpheus. Moderne Dichtung afrikanischer Völker beider Hemisphären . Munich: Carl Hanser.
- Jahn, Janheinz, 1954: “Verblüffende Wirkung eines Lyrikbandes: 600 Briefe an die N[…] aller Kontinente”. Die Welt, 25. November.
- Jahn, Janheinz, 1958: Muntu: Umrisse der neoafrikanischen Kultur. Düsseldorf: Eugen Diederichs.
- Jahn, Janheinz, 1965: Die neoafrikanische Literatur: Gesamtbibliographie von den Anfängen bis zur Gegenwart. Düsseldorf: Eugen Diederichs.
- Jahn, Janheinz, 1966: Geschichte der neoafrikanischen Literatur: Eine Einführung. Düsseldorf: Eugen Diederichs.
- Jahn, Janheinz, 1968: “Meine erste Begegnung mit Senghor”. Darmstädter Echo, 20. September.
- Jahn, Janheinz and Claus Peter Dressler, 1971: Bibliography of Creative African Writing. Nendeln, Liechtenstein: Kraus Reprint.
- Jahn, Janheinz, Ulla Schild and Almut Nordmann, 1972: Who’s Who in African Literature. Biographies, Works, Commentaries . Tübingen: Horst Erdmann.
- Lindfors, Bernth, 1976: “The works of Janheinz Jahn”. In: Bernth Lindfors and Ulla Schild (eds.): Neo-African Literature and Culture. Essays in Memory of Janheinz Jahn . (Mainz Africa Studies, 1). Wiesbaden: B. Heymann, 10-23.
- Ricard, Alain, 2008: “Creative writing in African languages: writers, scholars, translators”. In: Anja Oed and Uta Reuster-Jahn (eds.): Beyond the Language Issue: The Production, Mediation and Reception of Creative Writing in African Languages. Cologne: Rüdiger Köppe, 145-151.
- Sartre, Jean-Paul, 1948: “Orphée noir”. In: Senghor, Léopold Sédar Senghor (ed.): Anthologie de la nouvelle poésie n[…] et malgache de langue française. Paris: Presses Universitaire de France, X-XLIV.
- Schild, Ulla, 1974: “A bibliography of the works of Janheinz Jahn”. Research in African Literatures 5, 2, 196-205.
- Schild, Ulla, 1976: “A bibliography of the works of Janheinz Jahn”. In: Bernth Lindfors and Ulla Schild (eds.): Neo-African Literature and Culture. Essays in Memory of Janheinz Jahn . (Mainz Africa Studies, 1). Wiesbaden: B. Heymann, 24-31.
- Schwarz, Anja (with Flora Veit-Wild), 2008: “Passionate and controversial: Janheinz Jahn as a mediator of cultures among Europe, Africa, and America”. In: Ineke Phaf-Rheinberger and Tiago de Oliveira Pinto (eds.): AfricAmericas. Itineraries, Dialogues, and Sounds. Frankfurt am Main: Vervuert, 27-35.
- Seiler-Dietrich, Almut, 2003: “Janheinz Jahn und die neoafrikanische Literatur”. In: Flora Veit-Wild (Hg.): Not just myths and fairy tales. African Literature as a Challenge . Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier, 94-113.
- Senghor, Léopold Sédar Senghor (ed.), 1948: Anthologie de la nouvelle poésie n[…] et malgache de langue française. Paris: Presses Universitaire de France.
Ulla Schild and African literature
Ulla Schild was born in Berlin on November 17, 1938 and spent most of her childhood in Strasbourg (Alsace) and, after the end of the war, in Oberkirch (Black Forest). In 1951, she moved with her parents to Karlsruhe, where she graduated from high school in 1957. In 1958, she began studying German and British Studies at the University of Heidelberg, hearing Africa-related lectures on the side and finally, after ten semesters, enrolled on a program of study in Cultural Anthropology, specializing in “modern African literature” (Schild 1981). In 1972, Ulla Schild completed her master’s degree in Cultural Anthropology in Heidelberg.
Ulla Schild and Janheinz Jahn
Ulla Schild had met Janheinz Jahn, who infected her with his enthusiasm for “neo-African” literature, in Heidelberg in the mid-1960s. This encounter “determined the further course of her life” (translation of quote from Riesz 1999: 306) and prompted her to write over 100 newspaper articles and reviews about (neo)African literature as a freelance journalist from 1968 onwards – (Czernik and Olivares Canas 1999). As Janheinz Jahn personal assistant and life partner, Ulla Schild worked closely with him. Among other things, she co-published the Who’s Who in African Literature with Jahn and Almut Nordmann in 1972.
Ulla Schild as head of the “Janheinz Jahn Library for Modern African Literature”
After Jahn’s death in October 1973, Ulla Schild suggested the acquisition of Jahn’s private library to Ernst Wilhelm Müller, professor at the “Department of Cultural Anthropology” at the JGU Mainz. Müller and his colleague Gerhard Grohs, also a professor at the department, then successfully applied to purchase the library. In January 1975, the “Janheinz Jahn Library for Modern African Literature” was established. Ulla Schild became a lecturer at the department in a position set up specifically for the curation and expansion of the library.
In 1980, Ulla Schild obtained a doctorate supervised by E.W. Müller, with a dissertation on “Literatures in Papua New Guinea”. A small collection of literature from Oceania (including relevant critical sources) reflects this research interest to this day.
Initiated by Ulla Schild, the first of the international Janheinz Jahn Symposia took place on April 7-8, 1975, in memory of Janheinz Jahn. The following year, some of the lectures held during the symposium were published under the title Neo-African Literature and Culture: Essays in Memory of Janheinz Jahn (1976). The volume was edited by Bernth Lindfors and Ulla Schild. In total, Ulla Schild was involved in the organisation of seven Janheinz Jahn Symposia.
Ulla Schild died in Mainz on February 22, 1998 after a serious illness. Anna-Maria Brandstetter, former student and colleague of Ulla Schild for many years and a member of staff at ifeas until 2024, paid tribute to Ulla Schild’s work in an obituary with the following words:
Under her administration, the Janheinz Jahn Library developed into a well-known international research institution which hosted many DAAD and Humboldt fellows primarily from Africa. She intensely took care of their needs and scholarly work and generously and freely fostered their future scientific careers. Over the years, the International Janheinz Jahn Symposia that she organized became an appreciated platform for scholars of various fields, literati, and artists alike who readily joined her for a triennial mutual exchange in an uninterrupted flow of ideas all focussed on African literature and culture. It is fair to say that this way Ulla Schild achieved a lot for the international visibility of her University at Mainz, the town of Gutenberg where modern printing was invented, the condition for the spreadout of literature. … [S]tudents especially valued her teaching. She had the gift to stir immediate interest for African literature with students of both social anthropology and the comparative literatures. (Brandstetter 1998b)
János Riesz, long-time holder of the Chair of Romance Literature and Comparative Literature with a special focus on African literature at the University of Bayreuth, noted, also in an obituary:
Ulla Schild will live on in the memories of many in a different way, everyone will remember different things about her, different words, different stories to tell and report” (Riesz 1999: 306).
Particularly in the difficult phase following Janheinz Jahn’s death, Ulla Schild deserves credit for keeping interest in African literature alive: through her initiative to publish anthologies, special issues of journals, congress proceedings, works from Senegal to South Africa, from Nigeria to Kenya, and beyond Africa from Madagascar to Papua New Guinea. And it was always concerned not only with scientific progress, with increasing the state of knowledge about African literature, but also with mediation (translation of a quote in Riesz 1999: 307).
References
- Brandstetter, Anna-Maria, 1998a: “Dr. Ulla Schild”. Nachruf auf Ulla Schild. JOGU 160 (April 1998), 31.
- Brandstetter, Anna-Maria, 1998b: “Character is beauty”. Nachruf auf Ulla Schild. ALA Bulletin 24, 2, 43-44.
- Czernik, Godehard and Carolin Olivares Canas, 1999: “Schriftenverzeichnis Ulla Schild”. Paideuma 45, 311-326.
- Jahn, Janheinz, Ulla Schild and Almut Nordmann, 1972: Who’s Who in African Literature. Biographies, Works, Commentaries . Tübingen: Erdmann.
- Müller, Ernst Wilhelm, 2006: “Reminiscences of a person affected”. In: Anna-Maria Brandstetter and Carola Lentz (eds.): 60 years of the Institute for Cultural Anthropology and African Studies. A birthday book . (Mainzer Beiträge zur Afrikaforschung, 14). Cologne: Rüdiger Köppe, 63-85.
- Riesz, János, 1999: “Ulla Schild (1938-1998)”. Obituary of Ulla Schild. Paideuma 45, 305-310.
- Schild, Ulla, 1981: Literaturen in Papua-Neuguinea. (Mainzer Ethnologische Arbeiten, 3) Berlin: Dietrich Reimer.