Adolf of Duisburg

Adolf David Wilhelm von Duisburg (born July 15, 1883 in Arnhemia, today Pancurbatu, Sumatra Island , † 1946 in Weimar ) was a German officer and linguist and cultural scientist .

Life

Officer career

Duisburg, born as the son of a German-born plantation owner in Arnhemia (Pancurbatu near Medan ) in the Dutch East Indies , became an officer in the Prussian army in 1901 and, after attending the seminar for oriental languages in Berlin, joined the Imperial Protection Force for Cameroon in 1909 , which he up to belonged to the First World War . Soon after his arrival in the colony, he was assigned to Bornu and from 1909 to 1911 he was appointed post leader in Dikoa and leader of the mounted section of the Schutztruppe . In 1912/13 he was station leader in Kusseri , from 1913 to the end of July 1914 he was resident of the German Tschadseeländer and leader of the 3rd company of the Schutztruppe. 1914-16 he took part in the First World War in Cameroon. 1917–19 he was interned in Spain.

During his stay in North Cameroon, he carried out extensive ethnological , ethnohistorical and linguistic studies, which were published in several monographs and journals.

Lecturer activity

After retiring from military service, Duisburg became a lecturer in languages ​​(English and Spanish) at the German Colonial School in Witzenhausen and editor of the magazine "Der Deutsche Kulturpionier" in May 1920 . His teaching activities later extended to other languages ​​such as French, Dutch, Malay and several African languages. In 1923 he was awarded a doctorate by the Philosophical Faculty of the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität in Berlin with a thesis on African linguistics. phil. PhD . In May 1924 he took over the management of the Colonial Studies Institute and Archives of the German Colonial School, most recently he was also a lecturer in "Ethnology and Racial Studies" and in Economic Geography. At the end of the winter semester 1937/38 he left there for family reasons and then lived in Dresden and Weimar .

He joined the NSDAP in 1937.

post war period

Half a year after the end of World War II, Duisburg was arrested by Soviet troops on November 11, 1945 in his apartment in Dresden-Striesen. Since Duisburg worked as a lieutenant colonel in the Abwehr in Weimar during the war, he was sentenced to death by shooting and executed by a Soviet military tribunal for war crimes on January 30, 1946. He was posthumously fully rehabilitated by the Russian government in July 1995.

Own publications

• Contributions to the history of the Sultanate of Mandara , in: Official Journal for the Protected Area Cameroon 4 (1911), pp. 527-535
• Outline of the Kanuri language in Bornu (Berlin 1913)
• Remains of the Sso language , in: Mitteilungen des Seminars für Orientalische Sprachen 17 / III (1914), pp. 39–45
• The German share in research into Africa , in: Deutsche Akademische Rundschau 13/1925, pp. 5-8
• On the history of the sultanates of Bornu and Wándala (Mándara) , in: Anthropos 22 (1927), pp. 187–196
• In the land of the Cheghu of Bornu. Despots and Peoples South of Chad (Berlin 1942)

swell

• Archive of the German Institute for Tropical and Subtropical Agriculture (DITSL), Witzenhausen, personal files

literature

• Florian Hoffmann : Occupation and military administration in Cameroon. Establishment and institutionalization of the colonial monopoly of violence 1891-1914 , Part II, Göttingen 2007, pp. 88f.

Individual evidence

1. ^ ^{A b} Klaus-Dieter Müller , Thomas Schaarschmidt, Mike Schmeitzner , Andreas Weigelt: Death sentences of Soviet military tribunals against Germans (1944–1947): A historical-biographical study . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2015, ISBN 978-3-525-36968-5 , p. 108.