Bayume Mohamed Husen

Bayume Mohamed Husen (born Mahjub bin Adam Mohamed; 22 February 1904 – 24 November 1944) was an Afro-German soldier, actor and victim of Nazi persecution.

Husen, the son of a former askari officer, served together with his father in World War I with German colonial troops in East Africa. Later, he worked as a waiter on a German shipping line and was able to move to Germany in 1929. He married and started a family in January 1933. Husen supported the German neo-colonialist movement and contributed to the Deutsche Afrika-Schau, a former human zoo used by Nazi political propagandists. Husen worked as a waiter and in various minor jobs in language tutoring and in smaller roles in various Africa-related German film productions. In 1941, he was imprisoned in the KZ Sachsenhausen, where he died in 1944.

His life was the subject of a 2007 biography and a 2014 documentary film.

Background

Husen was born in Dar es Salaam, then part of German East Africa, as the son of an askari who held the rank of Effendi. Prior to World War I, he had already learned German and worked as a clerk at a textile factory in Lindi. When war broke out in 1914, both he and his father joined the Schutztruppe and participated in the East African campaign against Allied forces. Husen was wounded in the Battle of Mahiwa in October 1917 and held as a prisoner of war by British forces.

After the War, Husen worked as a "boy(servant)" on various cruise ships and worked as a waiter with a Deutsche Ost-Afrika Linie ship in 1925. In 1929, he travelled to Berlin to collect outstanding military pay for himself and his father, but his claims were rejected by the Foreign Office as too late. Husen stayed in Berlin and worked as a waiter. He used his Swahili in language courses for officials and security personnel and as a low paid tutor in university classes, e.g. for the famous scholar, Diedrich Westermann.