Bebe M’pessa / Louis (Lewis) Brody [1892 - 1951] – Cameroon | Germany
Life stories
Robbie Aitken, 2022
The Cameroonian Louis Brody (Bebe M’pessa) was a well-known stage and screen performer during the Weimar and Nazi periods. Although a gifted actor, the range of roles he was offered was increasingly limited and he came to incorporate the figure of the exotic Other for German audiences. At the same time, Brody actively challenged racialised depictions of Black people through his involvement in several Black anti-colonial and anti-racist organisations in Germany, including the African Welfare Association and later the League for the Defence of the Negro Race. His political activism extended to writing and in 1930 he wrote and performed in the revue show Sonnenaufgang im Morgenland, which sought to celebrate Black history and culture. Brody died in Berlin in 1952.
Contact:
Robbie Aitken, Sheffield Hallam University, r.aitken(at)shu.ac.uk; @rjma_uk
Main Sources:
Bundesarchiv Berlin R1001 7562, R1001 4457/7
Wachtel, ‚Levis Brody in einem Wiener Film‘, Die Filmwelt: Illustrierte Kino Revue, Heft 9 (1922)
Louis Brody, “Die deutschen Neger und die ‘schwarze Schmach’,” B.Z. am Mittag (24 May 1921)
Further Literature:
Tobias Nagl, Die unheimliche Maschine. Rasse und Repräsentation im Weimarer Kino (Munich: edition text + kritik, 2009)
Andreas Eckert , 'Louis Brody (1892-1951) of Cameroon and Mohammed Bayume Hussein (1904-1944) of Former German East Africa', in Dennis Cordell (ed.), The human tradition in modern Africa (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2011), pp.159-74
Weblinks:
Robbie Aitken: "Louis Brody on Black Germans and the "Black Shame" (1921)", Black Central Europe
Stationen
Childhood
Film Star in Babelsberg
Brody the Activist
Brody the Author
Performing Politics: "Sonnenaufgang im Morgenland"
Family life
Brody the Film Star II
Jazz at Schöneberg’s Pinguin Bar