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enthusiasm and many outright refusals.
    For a man whose normal contact with non-Europeans involved taking measurements of their skeletons, it was a shockfor von Luschan to come face to face with Africans who were very much alive and often completely unwilling to submit to his demands. Several of the ‘exhibits’ refused to allow von Luschan and his students to strip them of their clothes, measure their bodies or even photograph them in the supposedly traditional costumes they had refused to wear.
    The most disturbing aspect of his encounters with the human exhibits was that their demeanour, independence and level of education represented a profound challenge to the racial theories that underpinned the professor’s work. When he met the representatives of the Herero and Witbooi peoples, von Luschan was extremely agitated by the experience. Rather than question his racial presumptions, von Luschan dismissed these particular Herero and Witbooi as exceptions. He stated in the official report, produced to commemorate the Colonial Show, ‘I doubt that all Hereros make such a thoroughly distinguished impression and have such a gentleman-like appearance as those we have seen here in Treptow.’ 6 Only when he was permitted to examine Vitje Bank, a thirty-year-old Witbooi woman, was normal service restored for Felix von Luschan. Clearly recovered from his earlier shocks he described her as a bushman-like dwarf of ‘a not inconsiderable imbecility’. 7
    Back in Treptow Park, the behaviour of the Africans continued to diverge from the expectations of the organisers. The show was a farce. By day the organisers struggled to maintain an air of authenticity, cajoling the human exhibits to occupy themselves making supposedly traditional handicrafts or preparing authentic food. But by night those same Africans sat by fires, drinking and singing the German folk songs they had learned as youths, and as the temperature dropped they slipped back into their warm European clothing. 8 This scene of conviviality, hidden away in a closed park in the dead of night, was a far more accur ate reflection of the way many of the peoples of Germany’s empire lived than anything seen during opening hours. Yet each morning the European clothes and empty bottles were hidden away and, after von Luschan had negotiated for his callipersand slide rules to be fixed to a few more unwilling heads, the public were allowed back into the park, and the fantasy version of colonial life began once again.
    The highlight of each day for the Berlin audiences (though clearly not for the ‘exhibits’) was the cultural performance. The exhibition organisers noted with pride that ‘whenever dance routines were carried out by the blacks, the ring of spectators grew massively, so that the officials had difficulties keeping order’. 9 The South-West African delegation refused to take part in the cultural performances, just as they had refused to abandon their clothes or submit to anatomical examinations. The best the organisers were able to achieve was to persuade them to pose grudgingly in front of their makeshift village.
     
    Had he attended the Berlin Colonial Show, Theodor Leutwein would not have been surprised by the refusal of Friedrich Maharero and his colleagues to submit to the demands of their German hosts. Leutwein’s long-term strategy was rooted in his firm appreciation of their strident independence. Yet in the autumn of 1896, as the mock African villages in Treptow Park were dismantled and the Nama and Herero delegations steamed home, a plague was sweeping south across their continent. The pestilence was the first in a series of calamities to befall the Herero (and, to a lesser extent, the Nama), which allowed the Germans to slowly undermine the defiant independence of the Africans that had so impressed the Berlin crowds.
    Rinderpest was the term the Boers had given to a highly infectious virus that was fatal to cattle. The British called the disease