Resetting the Relevance of the Berlin Wall. German Public Diplomacies on the African Continent During the Cold War (original) (raw)
2019, Machineries of Persuasion
German Public Relations in theF ocus 1960 was the so-called "year of Africa",i nw hich 18 European colonies on the African continent became independent states.The power vacuum that followed this decolonisation processled to a "second scramble for Africa",¹ and both West and East Germanyp articipatedi nt his struggle for political,e conomic, and cultural influenceo vert he new states. Throughout the following decades, both countries expandedn ot just their diplomacy, economic aid, development aid, and military aid on the African continent,b ut also massively increased their public diplomacyo perations. While the former aspect has been the subject of several studies over the last three decades,² the literature on German public diplomacies duringthis period is still rare-and rather fragmented. In his monograph on German public diplomacies, DanielOstrowski stated that this area of studycan be divided into twosubareas,culturala ctivities and publicr elations,³ and identifiedt he latter as being most important.⁴ Nevertheless, studies on German public diplomacies usually focus on cultural activities.⁵ This article, therefore, adopts the opposite approach and concentrates on the lesser known⁶ half of German public diplomacies-its public relations operations. Cultural activities and public relations operations differ in severala spects; the formera re designed to achieve am id-and long