Herero prisoners from the German colonial war in Africa as seen by Uwe Timm

Abstract

On January 12, 1904, the supreme chief of the Herero, Samuel Maharero (1856-1923), a teacher and missionary trained at the Augustineum College of the Lutheran Mission Otjimbingwe, South West Africa (presente-day Namibia) – launched a surprise attack in Okahandja and the surrounding area against German farmers, officials, and military personnel, resulting in 123 deaths. He was heavily in debt to German merchants and had planned to reclaim territories he had previously sold. On August 11 of the same year, Mahareros’s ill- equipped troops, gathered at Omahakari in the Waterberg region to the north, were defeated by the forcers of General Lothar von Trotha. The survivors – accompanied by women, children, the elderly, and their cattle – fled through the Omaheke Pass toward the Kalahari Desert. Maharero, who had previously sought political asylum from the governor of the British colony of Bechuanaland (presente-day Botswana) to the east, fled with members of the local nobility, abandoning his warriors. This study of the novel Morenga by Uwe Timm aims to examine the vulnerabilities of the soldiers and their families who were left behind in the desert; they were captured by the German at various times and transported to prisoner camps overseen by German religious figures, with some being sent to perform forced labor on infrastructure maintenance, railway construction, mining, and farm work. The analysis is based on Peter Burke’s concept of ‘image’ and Linda Hutcheon’s concept of ‘historiographic metafiction’.

Submission: Jul 20, 2026 ⊶ Accepted: Sep 16, 2026