Majubs Reise
Majub’s Journey
Eva Knopf
»Almost all we know about [Mohamed Husen] stems from the archives of the National Socialists, from documents kept by the German Foreign Office and from his appearances in propaganda films. He has no surviving relatives and there is nothing that reflects him in his own terms. If we show these archive pictures and documents, we run the risk of repeating the degradations that Mohamed Husen had to go though. If we don’t show them, he will remain forever forgotten in the archives.«
– Eva Knopf
Born in the then colony of German East Africa, Majub bin Adam Mohamed Hussein went on to become a soldier for the Germans in the First World War. He was just nine years old. After the Germans lost the war, they didn’t give him his pay. Subsequently, some ten years after the war, Majub decided to collect his wages in person. Thus it was that in National Socialist Germany a colonial soldier from the First World War became an extra and bit player much in demand for the German film industry. Whenever a black person was needed in the films of the Nazi period, it was nearly always Majub who got the part. He was Zarah Leander’s chauffeur, Hans Albers’s servant and Heinz Rühmann’s lift boy. In her essayistic documentary film Majub’s Journey, director Eva Knopf relates the story of his childhood in the colonies, his life in Nazi Germany and his place in the colonial fantasies of the Germans.

Eva Knopf
Eva Knopf studied ethnology and media studies in Göttingen, Amsterdam and Berkeley as well as directing at the Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg. She completed a PhD on essay films and the colonial image archive at the University of Hamburg and works at the intersection of theory and practice, specialising in documentary film, essay film, archival material and historical representation as well as visual anthropology. Since 2020, she has been a lecturer for artistic-aesthetical practice in photography and film and video, and she is head of artistic media practice at the University of Bremen’s Institute for Art History – Film Studies – Art Education.
Films by Eva Knopf
Myanmarket 2017 | Juju Movie − Get Rich or Die Trying 2011
Awards for Majubs Reise:
Jury-Selections-Preis (Art Division) – Japan Media Arts Festival
Dokumentarfilmförderpreis des Landes Bremen