The collection of historical images of the German Colonial Society (Deutsche Kolonialgesellschaft- DKG) is now housed in the archives of the Frankfurt am Main Library. It contains over 55,000 colonial images, including around 550 of Togo-Germany.
Our aim is to make it possible for the images produced during the colonial and even pre-colonial periods, which served the propagandist ideology of colonisation based on racism, to be placed in contexts appropriate to the local realities of the colonised peoples.
This website presents colonial photographs of German Togo, with the aim of raising awareness of the importance of cultural heritage and providing a different view of German colonial history from the perspective of local people. The colonial photographs can be used as teaching aids for certain aspects of history in schools and as an introduction to themes in the humanities in African universities in general and in Togo in particular.
The photos collected by the German Colonial Society cover the period from 1847 to 1936.
The collection of colonial images in the archives of the Frankfurt Library and the ethnographic photographs in the Frobenius Institute are of educational importance for pupils, students and researchers of all kinds who are looking for ways of explaining history differently and deconstructing the imperial view of the cultural and social realities of formerly colonised peoples.