Carl Rosendahl

Carl Rosendahl (born September 2, 1852 in Copenhagen , † August 11, 1917 in Trento ) was a German naval officer, most recently Rear Admiral of the Imperial Navy and from April 16, 1898 to February 18, 1899, first governor of the German Kiautschou protected area .

Life

Years of training and first commands

Rosendahl was the son of a German employee in the Danish Ministry of Finance in Copenhagen. He entered in 1869 into the Navy the North German Confederation one, in 1873, lieutenant , 1876 Lieutenant , Lieutenant in 1883, and on April 15, 1890 , Lieutenant Commander . From May 1891 to September 1894 he was in command of the 2nd Torpedo Department of the Torpedo Inspection Department . This was followed by assignments as commander of the newly commissioned coastal armored ship SMS Hagen from October 1894 to September 1895 and then the much older but larger ironclad SMS Friedrich Carl from September 1895 to January 1898 - during this period of service he was promoted to sea captain in 1896 .

Governor of Kiautschou

After the occupation of Jiaozhou Bay by German naval forces in 1897 Rosendahl became the first governor of the model colony appointed and took over on April 16, 1898, the operations of the interim commanding officer Oskar von Truppel , should be the turn in 1901 governor of Jiaozhou Bay. In his office, Rosendahl pursued a policy with a clear focus on running the colony as a military base and less as a civil (commercial) port. This corresponded to its main function as a naval base for the Imperial Navy, not the Imperial Colonial Office , but by the Admiralty was administered. Rosendahl was thus directly responsible to the State Secretary of the RMA, Grand Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz . After only half a year, Rosendahl was recalled by Tirpitz. The reason for his recall was, according to Tirpitz, that he was not able to focus on the great goals of rapid economic development and to promote them beyond the scope of his work as a military commander. Tirpitz reacted nervously to criticism in the German press, behind the interests of German merchants, for whom the town planning and land sales in the protected area were regulated too slowly. Tirpitz made Rosendahl available on October 10, 1898. Since Rosendahl's designated successor Paul Jaeschke did not arrive in Tsingtao until February 18, 1899, Rosendahl remained in office until then.

Another marine career

Rosendahl returned to Germany in September 1899 and took command of the liner SMS Brandenburg . The Brandenburg was one of the ships that were sent to China in July 1900 as a "detached division" to suppress the Boxer uprising that had broken out in the meantime . Therefore, Rosendahl was back in China 1900-1901 and attended, among other things, on April 8, the inauguration of the railway from Tsingtau to Jiaozhou, the first section of the Schantung Railway . In September 1901 he returned to Germany. On January 11, 1912, Rosendahl was retired with the rank of rear admiral. He died in Trento on August 11, 1917.

Others

A locomotive on the Tsingtau- Tsinan Railway (completed in February 1904 as part of the Shantung Railway) was named after him.

literature

• Carl Rosendahl. In: Heinrich Schnee (Ed.): German Colonial Lexicon. Quelle & Meyer, Leipzig 1920, Volume III, p. 183 ( online ).

Web links

• Biography at www.tsingtao.org - History of the Germans in East Asia - 1898 to 1946, accessed on November 6, 2015