As of: February 10, 2024, 10:30 a.m
By: Alexandra Anderka
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First visit to Germany in 1970: Jean-Pierre Félix with a traditional hat and accordion and his friend Alain make music with his friend Ingrid's family in the Allgäu.
© private
Dorfen - Jean-Pierre Félix (72) from Oberdorfen is known to many in the district as an exceptional special education teacher.
In the series My Life he talks about his life's theme and his torn between his two homes.
Dorfen – The street sign “Nachtigalplatz” in Berlin is crossed out with a red line.
It is the beginning of December 2022, a crowd of people of different nationalities has gathered there, ambassadors from Cameroon, including King Eboumbou Douala Bell and the couple Jean-Pierre and Martha Félix from Oberdorfen.
The new street sign is unveiled.
The square is now called Manga Bell Square, named after Rudolf Douala Manga Bell.
The resistance fighter against colonialism has replaced Nachtigal, a colonial ruler.
What does this all have to do with Oberdorfen?
Jean-Pierre Félix Eyoum is Rudolf Manga Bell’s great-nephew – and “very happy” that day.
The 72-year-old has been fighting for the rehabilitation of his great-uncle for 30 years.
He was sentenced to death in the German colony in 1914.
The filmmaker Peter Heller accompanied Félix in his research for decades and released a film called “The New Good German – About Injustice and Reconciliation”.
Heller tracked down the victim's great-nephew in the early 1990s.
He knew “that something had happened to my great-uncle”.
But he was too young when he left Cameroon for France and later Germany to understand that.
“Then we started researching together, and from then on I was hooked,” he says.
But first things first: Félix was born on March 11, 1951 in Douala, Cameroon, as the first son of Jeanette and Théodebert Félix.
They are followed by the brothers Charles and Romain.
But it doesn't take long before the mother separates from her first husband.
Jean-Pierre is five years old.
As a seven-year-old: At that time, little Jean-Pierre still lived with his mother.
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She soon starts a new family with Eitel Mbonjo.
Jean-Pierre, his brothers and five half-siblings grew up with him and his mother.
“He was good to us,” remembers the Oberdorfen native.
But unlike the father, the stepfather is poor.
“We didn’t know any gifts and didn’t even know that it was a birthday.”
With Grandma Emilia in 1966: Jean-Pierre (r.) with the brothers Charles (front) and Romain.
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Félix has great respect for his mother: “She put in so much effort.
He kept taking on jobs so that he could buy us school books.” School is easy for little Jean-Pierre, he is at the top of his class.
Then his father suddenly becomes interested in him again.
The accountant, who works for a French company, decides to send his firstborn to a French boarding school in the capital Yaounde, 350 kilometers away.
Jean-Pierre was eleven years old when he left the family for the first time.
"That was bad.
“I felt very alone,” he still remembers today.
After secondary school, the father has new plans for his gifted son: he should attend a high school in Nice.
The Cameroonian uses his connections with the French embassy, which enables his son to receive a scholarship.
Jean-Pierre is 15 years old when he sets off for Europe – to the “land of milk and honey”.
Still: “It was empty in my head.
I thought, what could happen?'” In the end, the young person is “overwhelmed by everything.”
He sees a plane for the first time and immediately boards it.
When he arrives in his new home, he sees a television - a novelty.
The boarding school is located in the former residence of a Russian tsar.
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We didn't know any gifts and didn't even know that it was a birthday.
Jean-Pierre Félix about his childhood in Cameroon
From then on he shares a dormitory with his classmates - mostly from rich families.
He quickly finds a connection.
But while the friends go home at the weekend, the Cameroonian stays behind alone at the boarding school.
The director's wife has a heart for the boy and occasionally invites him to dinner.
Alain's family, who became his best friend and with whom he maintains close contact to this day, also supported Félix.
The loneliness disappears when exchange students move into the next wing - mostly girls from southern Germany.
Monsieur Clement, the director, has the idea that Jean-Pierre could show the Germans Nice at the weekend.
He's happy to do this and "falls in love" with Ingrid.
He also travels a lot with his classmates - to the mountains, surrounding caves and places.
“It was a wonderful time, but I didn’t know how I was going to finance it all.”
The high school student is resourceful and hard-working: During Carnival he sells confetti at the parades, and during the summer holidays he takes a “back-breaking job” in a restaurant on the coast.
He sends half of his first salary home.
“My mother often wrote about her worries in letters.” Then he buys flowers for Alain’s mother and a gift for his friend.
“I have a lot to thank this family for and you have to give something back,” he says.
In 1970 he traveled to Germany with Alain to visit his girlfriend Ingrid's family and saw snow for the first time in the Allgäu; he was fascinated.
After the 20-year-old graduated from high school, he began studying medicine and later law in France.
But the scholarship has expired, the father from Cameroon doesn't have enough money, he has to earn money.
Everything together becomes too much for him.
Ingrid persuades him to come to her in Munich.
When he arrived in Bavaria, the 20-year-old took a job in a neurological hospital with an attached “brain injured home” - the guide for his later professional life.
A special education teacher and speech therapist regularly practices with the patients and encourages them to speak.
The progress impresses and touches the young man in equal measure.
“Now I had found what I wanted,” says Félix, his eyes still shining.
He immediately goes to the authorities and arranges for his French high school diploma to be recognized.
In the school camp in 2002: Jean-Pierre Félix (l.) loves his job as a special school teacher.
And the students love him no less.
His open nature benefits the educator in his work with young people.
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Although his relationship with Ingrid fell apart, he began studying to become a teacher in Munich in 1973, even though he disappointed his parents: "My father had hoped that I would become a rich lawyer, my mother was waiting for the doctor from France."
Meanwhile, Martha, a student teacher, has come into his life.
“But the Martha had to be conquered, it took and took,” says the 72-year-old with a smile.
Finally, the student invites her boyfriend to come to Düsseldorf.
“A very cosmopolitan family.” The “mom” had already said to her daughter: “You won’t be able to get rid of him anymore.” She turned out to be right.
She is also the one who vehemently defends her future son-in-law against an aunt who says: "Such a pretty girl, does she have to have a black man as a husband?" "You take that back immediately or you'll never enter my house again." she reprimanded the relative.
Félix, who has long had German citizenship, is repeatedly confronted with racism.
“I can dramatize it or de-escalate it,” he says conciliatoryly.
He has strengthened his two children in this regard from the beginning.
"If someone insults you because of your skin color, just say: 'You're just jealous'."
His son did this when a classmate annoyed him.
“At home he told me everything and burst into tears,” his father regrets.
Félix extended family (front, from left): son Jean-Daniel with baby Amelie, grandson Nando, wife Martha, Jean-Pierre, daughter Nina with Samuel;
(back, from left): daughter-in-law Leonie, sister-in-law Susi, grandson Nelson and son-in-law Moritz.
© private
In 1978 Martha and Jean-Pierre married in Düsseldorf.
The couple continues to live in Munich in a student dormitory.
They both ended up in Erding for their traineeship.
Jean-Pierre to the special school and Martha to the Anne Frank High School.
The special education teacher will remain at this school until he retires in 2015.
Finally, he and Heribert Schmucker built what is now known as the St. Nicholas School.
“There I discovered my sympathy for children with Down syndrome and autistic people.
I never had any problems with them.
I loved her and she loved me.” Since he has long since retired, the children keep asking about him.
They fall into his arms when he visits them at school.
In 1981 the couple bought a terraced house in Oberdorfen, where they still live today.
Martha Félix moves to the Dorfen high school and teaches English and French there.
With the birth of son Jean-Daniel in 1982 and daughter Nina a year later, they founded a family that has now grown to four grandchildren between the ages of three months and ten years.
After so much fulfillment, the 72-year-old must have arrived.
But he says of himself: “I feel more than ever between two cultures.” The research into his great uncle, for which he has been honored several times, has “become a huge topic in my life,” he admits (see below).
“My husband is a great conciliator,” says Martha Félix.
“He doesn’t want the negativity to take over.
He wants to lead history towards a better commonality." "I am fundamentally for reconciliation," emphasizes Jean-Pierre Félix, "but for this justice must be established.
Only when my first and second home come together will I be at peace.”
On the story of Rudolf Douala Manga Bell
“No African was ever as German as him”
A look back
: Rudolf Douala Manga Bell's grandfather was King of Cameroon at the end of the 19th century, and he sent his grandson to Germany in 1891.
This person was supposed to get to know the German language and German law in Aalen and Ulm.
“He was enthusiastic, especially about German law.
He even wanted to become German,” reports Jean-Pierre Félix Eyoum.
“No African was ever as German as him,” his great-nephew is convinced.
However, after five years his stay ended abruptly because relations had deteriorated.
“The people in Cameroon began to resist colonialism,” he says.
“It was a dilemma for him, as he stood in the middle between the Germans and the interests of his people,” explains Felix Eyoum.
Things became even more difficult when the Germans made more and more demands.
Against this injustice, even under the German law of the time, he sent his secretary to Germany with the signatures of a petition.
He was supposed to present the papers to the Reichstag - without success.
The expropriations followed and King Rudolf Douala Manga Bell was sentenced to death together with his secretary for “high treason against Kaiser Wilhelm”.
“The story is so tragic because Rudolf was a completely peaceful person.
I have been demanding for years that both of them be rehabilitated and that the grounds for treason be revised.
The federal government must make this decision.
I submitted a petition,” he says.
Félix-Eyoum has already achieved a lot.
Three places are already named after Rudolf Douala Manga Bell - in Ulm, Aalen and Berlin.
and