The Capital of French Socialism
Nineteen year old Deng Xixian was the son of a not really wealthy farmer from Xiexing in the Sichuan Province. Because he had visited a secondary school at Chongqing, which prepared young Chinese for studies in France, he had gone to France in late 1920 – together with his uncle, Deng Shaosheng, who only was few years older than Xixian.
But the France of 1920/21 was not the France young Xixian had heard about from his teachers at Chongqing. Most important of all – the promised bursary never had materialised, forcing Xixian to work for his living instead of improving his French and going to university. Uncle Shaosheng soon had given up and had returned to China, but Xixian had been determined to make the best out of this sojourn in Europe.
The social climate in France was not favouring non-white people, Xixian had only found jobs, which no Frenchman wanted and which were ill-paid for the toil required. And hardly anybody ever had been friendly to him. He was an unwanted foreigner for them – and they didn’t bother to let him know.
But what could he do? French was the only European language he could speak…
Finally, Xixian ended up in Metz. When Germany had annexed what today was ‘Lothringen’ in 1871, the city still had been a German language enclave in a francophone environment. But over the years, things had become bilingual and Xixian’s French was agreeable everywhere.
In fact, there were quite many Frenchmen in town, who had only recently immigrated from France proper, and French clearly was gaining ground.
As Xixian slowly found out, French Socialists – another variety of people unwelcome in France – made up the majority of these new arrivals.
The German authorities were indifferent, there was no obstruction but also no help – neither for the French Socialists nor for Xixian.
But the German Socialists – the SPD and the KPD – cared for their French fellow travellers; and both parties offered Xixian a small bursary if he would join their ranks. (Xixian didn’t know that there were numerous Chinese students in Germany, many of which favoured Socialist ideas – and for whose membership the SPD and the KPD battled intensely.)
From his experience in France, Xixian tended to support the more radical KPD. But what he saw in Germany, made him think twice.
When Xixian had come to Germany, the SPD/FVP government of Friedrich Ebert had already been replaced by Matthias Erzberger’s centre-right cabinet, but Xixian learned that the SPD had governed Germany from 1918 to 1921 – and had been instrumental in reforming the once authoritarian structures into a working democracy, while the KPD never had ruled anywhere and only cried radical paroles without providing proof about their practicability.
Now, Germany was a prospering country with perfectly working structures. What the SPD had accomplished couldn’t be ignored. German workers enjoyed the most comprehensive and efficient system of social security in the world. Obviously, Germany was a rich country, and one of the – if not the foremost – nations leading in science and technology.
In autumn of 1921, Xixian had joined the SPD – and had been rewarded with a modest fellowship, which nevertheless allowed him to complete his studies of the French language and to start learning German.
One thing that had truly astonished Xixian was the ubiquitous presence of black people everywhere. There also had been black people in France – which had ‘enjoyed’ a social status equal to Xixian’s. Here in Germany, these Negroes were apprentices, learning in administration and economy. The Germans treated them well, although sometimes rather gruff and impolite – but that was, as Xixian had already understood, the typical German way of doing things. They also were very gruff and impolite to each other.
These Negroes all spoke impeccable German, something that deeply impressed Xixian. His new SPD comrades explained him why this was so. Already before the Great War, the Germans had seen that German immigration to their colonies would never reach any substance. If the colonies ever were to become self-sufficient or even profitable, this could only happen by educating the natives. As a consequence, the educational systems in the colonies had been upgraded. With the post-war decision to emancipate the colonies, the educational systems had experienced another incredible boom. It was thought that today all indigene people in the German colonies – including the Congo – could speak and understand German and that about half of them already were practised in reading and writing German.
The French Socialists in Metz had welcomed their new Chinese SPD comrade as well. At least for the first two years, Xixian had felt more comfortable in a francophone environment.
Today, in autumn of 1923, his German was good enough to allow him to join the university in Straßburg and commence his studies of economy and international law. After passing a German language test, he had qualified for a state financed bursary that would support him for the next three years.
