Total population | |
---|---|
(500,000 ) | |
Regions with significant populations | |
Berlin, Hamburg, Frankfurt, Munich, Cologne | |
Languages | |
German, Niger–Congo languages, Nilo-Saharan languages | |
Religion | |
Islam, Roman Catholicism, Lutheranism, Atheism |
Afro-Germans (German: Afrodeutsche) or Black Germans (German: schwarze Deutsche) are an ethnic group which exists in certain parts of the Federal Republic of Germany such as Hamburg, Berlin, Frankfurt, Munich, and Cologne and in a variety of smaller settlements across Germany. Afro-Germans are as well indistinguishably defined as German citizens of Black African descent.
Cities such as Hamburg and Berlin, centers of occupation forces following World War II and more recent immigration, have substantial Afro-German communities, with a relatively high percentage of ethnically mixed and multiracial families. With modern trade and migration, communities such as Frankfurt, Munich, and Cologne have an increasing number of Afro-Germans. As of 2005[update], there were approximately 800,000 Afro-Germans in a nation of 80 million persons. This number is difficult to estimate because the German census does not use race as a category, following the genocide committed during World War II under the "German racial ideology". Up to 70,000 (2% of the population) people of Afro-German origin live in Berlin.
The first Africans in Germany were brought as household servants around the 17th century. During the 1720s, Ghana-born Anton Wilhelm Amo was sponsored by a German duke to become the first African to attend a European university; after completing his studies, he taught and wrote in philosophy. Later, Africans were brought as slaves from the western coast of Africa where a number of German estates were established, primarily on the Gold Coast. After King Friedrich Wilhelm I of Prussia sold his Ghana Groß Friedrichsburg estates in Africa in 1717, from which up to 30,000 people had been sold to the Dutch East India Company, the new owners were bound by contract to "send 12 negro boys, six of them decorated with golden chains," to the king. The enslaved children were brought to Potsdam and Berlin.