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.Sheworked there for the Women s Association for Nursing for eight years,often unaccompanied.In the mid-1890s she obtained a special contractfrom the association to run a hospital single-handedly at Beliao, GermanNew Guinea.When she terminated her contract with the association incolonial nursing 47 1899, she did not leave New Guinea but instead became an independenthealth care worker on the remote western Gazelle Peninsula of theNew Guinea mainland.There she applied Robert Koch s new quininemethod of malaria prevention, having been trained by a military doctorto perform the necessary microscope work. "&!+" Clearly, Hertzer preferredto work under her own authority and feared neither colonial subjectsnor the climate. "&!&! She managed to turn a short-term posting as colonialnurse into a lifelong overseas career.Her example, though rare, indicatesthat even though nurses led generally very restricted lives, colonialspace especially if remote from other colonists o"ered the possi-bility of autonomous action.clubwomen in colonial spaceost members of the German Women s Association for NursingMin the Colonies lacked the nurses experiences of traveling to thecolonies, or even making a living by paid work.Typical associationmembers were wives of locally prominent men.The women s interest incolonial nursing stemmed from their existing charitable work, the desireto help their own relatives in the colonies, or the desire to promote anationalist project.Colonial exoticism added fascination and vicariousadventure to the middle-class and elite feminine charity of nursing.Likethe nurses, the clubwomen saw themselves as sacrificing for the sake offaraway men and women and for a nationalist cause.Under the Red Crosspublished accounts of clubwomen hastening to sew and pack supplies intime for a ship s departure alongside the nurses letters describing theirwork in the colonies.The clubwomen also claimed a special authorityover the nurses: as women, they declared themselves best suited tooverseeing the training and work of other women.d"`"`"While a few association chapters formed in the colonies, most club-women s colonial encounters took place in Germany: at ethnographicshows (Völkerschauen) where people whom Europeans considered ex-otic were put on display, at balls and other festive occasions of thecolonialist movement, and in private homes.Such events created a kindof colonial ambience through decorations and the use of Africans asperformers or party servants.Clubwomen also had imaginative colonialencounters in the pages of Under the Red Cross, which featured eth-48 german women for empire nographic articles about courtship, marriage, and motherhood amongthe various peoples under German colonial rule.d"`" " Colonial subjectsappeared in caricature, too, such as a carved figure of an African at aChristmas fund-raising bazaar in 1891 similar to the one Bülow remem-bered: a so-called Toss-Man, a Negro dandy.into whose wide-openmouth a ball had to go, in order to yield the remarkably valuable prizesto the skilled thrower. d"`"d" These added a fascination that most othercharitable nursing work in Germany lacked, and it was in these exoticathat clubwomen perceived colonial space.For clubwomen, colonial space was entertaining, never threatening.They never faced masses of Africans at a marketplace or confrontedPacific Islander workers in their home.The colonial subjects clubwo-men saw were isolated individuals who were virtually always peripheralto the women s own everyday lives and needs.The sexual fear thatsometimes surfaced in nurses accounts was replaced by pity, curiosity,or even flirtation in the accounts of clubwomen.For example, the Cam-eroonian Paul Zampa, who belonged to the Guard Fusiliers (Garde-fusiliers) in the garrison of Potsdam, was described in a"ectionateterms.d"`"e"Clubwomen also found endearing the African children who had been rescued from slave traders and brought to Germany
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