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one of the supposed achievements of German colonialism, none of the organisers could come up with an effective counter argument, so Petrus and the others remained in neat Victorian suits – including the trousers. Similarly, the Herero kept their hats and Boer-style military uniforms.
    Despite lacking in ‘authenticity’, the Herero and Witbooi were the high point of the exhibition when it opened. The official purpose of the show was to expose the unbridgeable gap between savage and cultured peoples, but Friedrich Maharero, Petrus Jod and their colleagues seemed living proof of how successfully the chasm had been bridged. The gentlemen and ladies of Berlin, whose notions of what Africans looked like and how they might behave had been gleaned from the turgid prose of the explorers, peered intently across a barrier at human exhibits who wore identical suits, starched white shirts and fashionable summer dresses. These ‘savages’ sat peacefully reading their Bibles or stared back at them. Some members of the South-West African delegation, such as the Herero Josephat Kamatoto, could not only speak Dutch but were also fluent in German and could converse, across the fence, with the visitors who had come to marvel at the primitive habits of their African subjects.
    To the utter horror of the organisers, the dapper dress, good looks (and one presumes the conversational skills) of the young African men from the south-west began to attract attention from the women of Berlin. The twenty-two-year-old Friedrich Maharero, in particular, found himself the focus of much attention and began to flirt shamelessly. Worse still, the women flirted back. Years after the show, when Friedrich was back in South-West Africa, love letters from his Berlin admirers continued to arrive in the colony. They were intercepted and confiscated by the missionaries and Friedrich never received his fan mail.
     
    The men behind the Berlin Colonial Show had been determined that the country’s leading race scientists should take a key role inthe event. In 1896 racial science in Germany was dominated by physical anthropology. In Berlin, perhaps the most distinguished anthropologist was the Deputy Director of the Berlin Museum of Ethnography, Professor Felix von Luschan.
    Professor von Luschan was a leading proponent of the dubious anthropological ‘science’ of phrenology – the study of the human skull. Phrenology was widely believed to offer a means by which the characteristics and mental abilities of the individual could be determined by the examination and measurement of the external shape of their skull. Early phrenologists focused on criminals in an attempt to define the typical dimensions and appearance of the ‘criminal type’ – sometimes referred to as the ‘criminal race’. Von Luschan used similar measurements to determine the abilities and characteristics of whole races. His studies had led him to acquire one of Germany’s largest collections of human skulls.
    The Colonial Show brought to Berlin 103 members of the various races of the empire. It was such a rare opportunity to advance his work that von Luschan willingly made do with living specimens, and with the full cooperation of the organising committee he was given permission to conduct anthropological examinations upon the ‘exhibits’.
    Each morning the professor, accompanied by his wife and a gaggle of eager students, left industrial, urban Berlin and embarked upon a daily anthropological safari, amid the fake African villages clustered around the fishponds in Treptow Park. The progress of von Luschan’s urban safaris was not without obstacles, however. When working with living subjects, anthropologists and phrenologists measured various facial features ranging from the length of noses to the angles of the jaw line. For the subjects, these examinations were uncomfortable and degrading. Among the Africans and Pacific Islanders of the Colonial Show there was a palpable lack of