Fasia Jansen

Fasia Jansen (June 6, 1929 - December 29, 1997) was a German political singer-songwriter (Liedermacher) and peace activist.

Life and career

Fasia Jansen was born in Hamburg; she was the illegitimate daughter of the German chambermaid Elli Jansen and the Liberian Consul General Momolu Massaquoi (1869-1938), grandfather of Hans-Jürgen Massaquoi (1926-2013), who worked as a journalist and managing editor of Ebony after emigrating to the United States and authored Destined to Witness: Growing Up Black in Nazi Germany. Although both grew up in close proximity to each other, they did not know each other personally.

She experienced bullying and discrimination at an early age, both because of her skin color and her illegitimate birth. Growing up in the working-class neighborhood of Rothenburgsort in Hamburg, Jansen went through the problems of being an obviously "non-Aryan" during the Nazi era. Her Josephine Baker-oriented hopes of making a living through music and dance were dashed for the time being when she was expelled from dance school at age 11. Three years later she was "conscripted into service" and had to work in a soup kitchen that also supplied satellite camps of the Neuengamme concentration camp near Hamburg. The fifteen-year-old Jansen experienced both the brutality of the SS and the desperation of the prisoners - experiences that had a decisive impact on her life. During this time, she contracted a heart condition from which she suffered for the rest of her life.