Heartbeat of the Empire: German Colonial Nurses and Health Knowledge Circulation

This poster will display my own maps to render visible the movement of women nurses throughout the German overseas empire at the turn of the twentieth century. As Germany expanded its territory into Africa and the Pacific from 1884-1914, it brought with it a landscape of healthcare based on Western science. Nurses played a crucial role in this setting. Women who trained in Germany and were dispatched by the German Women’s Association for Nursing in the Colonies took nursing posts throughout the German overseas empire. They often worked in more than one German colony throughout their tenure before returning to Germany. Their nursing knowledge and practice in each location was informed by their experiences at colonial hospitals. In turn, the colonial encounter influenced the development and professionalization of the nursing profession in Germany.

The maps featured on this poster presentation allow the audience to visualize how nurses circulated throughout the German empire. I have created them based on my own database of nurse locations gathered during archival work. I will use four separate maps to show the proposed imperial circulation. The first plots all locations where German colonial nurses trained and worked, which includes entries in Germany, Cameroon, Tanzania, Namibia, and Samoa and other Pacific Islands. The second shows ship lines to show the routes German nurses took to their tropical posts and back. The third overlays the first two to create a comprehensive vision of the imperial circulatory system of travelling nurses. Finally, the fourth is a case study that focuses on one particularly active nurse, Sister Auguste Hertzer, to trace her movements and provide a concrete example of how colonial nursing contracts might bring one nurse to diverse regions, bringing her experience and ideas of best practices along with her. The scattered locations plotted on the maps, as well as the maritime routes of movement, provide insight about how colonialist officials envisioned health, scientific research, and German presence overseas. By observing nurses’ overseas trajectories, the audience will understand how healthcare knowledge transferred and transformed globally over the course of the colonial encounter.