Theodor Michael

Theodor Wonja Michael (15 January 1925 – 19 October 2019) was a mixed-race German journalist and actor as well as a prominent speaker on living as a prisoner in Nazi forced labor camps during World War II.

Life

Theodor Wonja Michael was born in Berlin in 1925 as the youngest son of the Cameroonian colonial migrant Theophilius Wonja Michael and his German wife Martha (née Wegner). He had three siblings: James (b. 1916), Juliana (b. 1921) and Christiana.

When his mother died in 1926, he grew up as a half-orphan with foster parents, who were the operators of a folk show and used him there from 1927, at the age of two, as extras. His father died in 1934 and the siblings were separated. Although he finished elementary school in 1939, he could not start an education due to the Nuremberg Race Laws. He initially worked as a porter in a Berlin hotel, but was dismissed due to a guest's complaint about his skin colour. His German passport was revoked and he became stateless. He was not drafted into the Wehrmacht because of his skin colour. He earned his living as a circus actor and as an extra in colonial movies made by UFA. Until 1942 he made about 100 colonial movies on behalf of the Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda which glorified the German colonial era. The films were shot in Germany with black actors and offered black Germans and African migrants employment and protection from persecution. Prisoners of war were also used. Theodor Wonja Michael was clear about the intention of the films: "We were the Moors you needed. For us this was a question of existence". He also played a minor role as an extra in the film Münchhausen (with Hans Albers and others). In 1943 he was obliged to do forced labor and was interned in a labor camp near Berlin until the arrival of the Red Army in May 1945.

After 1945 he worked as a civilian employee for the US occupation troops and took on roles as an actor. He completed his high school diploma and studied political science in Hamburg and Paris with a degree in economics. One of his academic teachers was Ralf Dahrendorf. He then worked as a journalist and became editor-in-chief of the magazine Afrika Bulletin. He was also a government advisor to the SPD, a lecturer for the German Foundation for International Cooperation and a civil servant at the Federal Intelligence Service. He also took on qualified acting roles in theatre, film, television and radio.

He only found his siblings Juliana and James again in the 1960s. Later he lived in Cologne and was an active member of the black German community.