August Otto (businessman)

August Otto († December 24, 1884 in Muinin Sagara, Usagara, East Africa ) was an Austrian businessman and witness to the founding of German East Africa .

Life

In 1884 Otto joined the expedition of Carl Peters , Karl Jühlke and Joachim von Pfeil traveling via Trieste . The last three participants named had been commissioned by the Society for German Colonization (GfdK) to acquire the land in East Africa. They should lay the foundation for a German colony. Otto initially accompanied the expedition at his own expense, as he wanted to set up a trading post in the planned colony . Despite Otto's moderate knowledge of English, the participants at times pretended to be English to camouflage themselves.

In Zanzibar , the expedition received no support from the German consul William O'Swald . So Otto decided, taking up a long-cherished idea, to travel on to Japan . In a meeting of the four participants, however, von Pfeil advocated continuing the expedition. Otto followed this attitude, which, according to von Pfeil, guaranteed the existence of the group. All four Europeans traveled to the mainland, where around ten contracts were signed with Africans in November and December 1884. Although - or precisely because - he was not a representative of the GfdK, Otto testified by signing parts of the documents on which the later founding of German East Africa was based.

On December 4, 1884, the expedition reached the westernmost point of their journey at the village of Muini Sagara. Von Pfeil was supposed to stay behind to set up a station. To the surprise of the fellow travelers, Otto, whose health was weakened, decided to support Graf von Pfeil. Otto should help with the construction of the station and be fed at the expense of the GfdK. But the background was also a conflict between Peters and Jühlke on the one hand and Pfeil and Otto on the other. About three weeks after the participants separated, on the morning of December 24, 1884, Otto died of a tropical disease . The funeral took place at the instigation of Count von Pfeil near the village of Muini Sagara in the afternoon of the same day. Von Pfeil arranged the small estate that Otto had carried with him on the trip. He sent his personal papers to Consul O'Swald in Zanzibar for forwarding to the relatives.

reception

In contrast to the social perception of his fellow travelers, Otto was hardly known to the public. In the Nazi propaganda film Carl Peters , Jühlke and von Pfeil are shown alongside Peters, while Otto does not appear at all. Since he had neither a noble or academic title nor a military rank and, as an Austrian merchant, had more economic than national motives, he was apparently not considered to be memorable. However, Bückendorf counts all four people among the "colonial pioneers" of German East Africa. The historian Michael Pesek also names all four participants right at the beginning of his article on Peters' Usagara expedition:

"At the end of September 1884, Carl Peters, accompanied by Carl Jühlke, Joachim Graf von Pfeil and August Otto, set out for East Africa to make history ..."

- Michael Pesek : A founding scene of German colonialism

August Otto is named as businessman Otto in the files of the Foreign Office , which are preserved in the Federal Archives .

Otto's death was described by Kerstin Decker in the factual novel Meine Farm in Afrika .

literature

• Jutta Bückendorf: Black-white-red over East Africa! - German colonial plans and African reality. LIT-Verlag, Münster 1997, ISBN 3-8258-2755-0 .
• Arne Perras: Carl Peters and German Imperialism 1856-1918 - A Political Biography. Clarendon Press, Oxford 2004, ISBN 978-0-1915-1472-2 .
• Joachim von Pfeil: On the acquisition of German East Africa - a contribution to its history. Verlag von Karl Curtius, Berlin 1907, ( online at archive.org )

Footnotes

1. ↑ Jonas Fossli Gjersø: Continuity of Moral Policy '- A Reconsideration of British Motives for the partition of East Africa in light of Anti-Slave Trade Policy and Imperial Agency, 1878-96. PhD thesis, The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), London 2015, p. 88 ( online at etheses.lse.ac.uk ).
2. ↑ Perras 2004, p. 51 f.
3. ↑ According to Förster, Otto was already a fellow traveler from Berlin. See Brix Förster: German East Africa - Geography and History of the Colony. Brockhaus, Leipzig 1890 ( online in the Digital Collection of German Colonialism ).
4. ↑ Bückendorf 1997, p. 202.
5. ↑ Perras 2004, p. 52.
6. ↑ From Pfeil 1907, p. 64.
7. ↑ Bückendorf 1997, p. 203.
8. ↑ Von Pfeil 1907, p. 69.
9. ↑ Extracts with details of the contract witnesses were printed by Carl Peters, for example, in his memoirs The foundation of German East Africa (Berlin 1906, p. 80 f.) ( Online at archive.org ). See also Bruno Kurtze: The German East African Society - A contribution to the problem of the protection letter companies and the history of German East Africa. Verlag von Gustav Fischer, Jena 1913, p. 178 ff. ( Online at archive.org ).
10. ↑ Bückendorf 1997, p. 202.
11. ↑ Von Pfeil 1907, p. 81.
12. ↑ Perras 2004, p. 61 f.
13. ↑ Von Pfeil 1907, p. 92.
14. ↑ Von Pfeil 1907, p. 93.
15. ↑ Hans Schmid: I am me. Telepolis, February 16, 2014, accessed April 27, 2019 . 
16. ↑ Bückendorf 1997, pp. 202, 204.
17. ↑ Michael Pesek: A founding scene of German colonialism - Peters' expedition to Usagara, 1884, in: Marianne Bechhaus-Gerst, Reinhard Klein-Arendt (ed.): The (colonial) encounter - Afrikanerlnnen in Germany 1880-1945, Germans in Africa 1880-1918 . Peter Lang, Frankfurt a. M./Berlin/Bern/Brüssel/New York / Oxford / Vienna 2003, ISBN 978-3-6313-9175-4 , pp. 255-267.
18. ^ The Federal Archives (ed.): Acquisition of Usagara, Volume 1, file number KA I Gr. 11 companies, archive signature R 1001/382, ( online as digital version ).
19. ↑ Kerstin Decker: My farm in Africa - The life of Frieda von Bülow. Berlin Verlag, Berlin 2015, ISBN 978-3-8270-7786-8 .