Carl Zimmermann (General)

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Officers of the Cameroon Protection Force in the First World War. Colonel Carl Zimmermann in the center

Carl Heinrich Zimmermann (born September 7, 1864 in Louisendorf / Frankenfeld , † January 13, 1949 in Hanau ) was a Prussian officer , member of the protection force for Cameroon and its commander from 1914 to 1919. In this function he led the fighting of the Schutztruppe during the First World War against the British , French and Belgian troops invading Cameroon and, after the military situation in the colony had become untenable, joined the neutral with the troops and the entourage in February 1916 Spanish colony of Rio Muni about where she was interned. Zimmermann was in 1920 by the Provisional Reichswehr with the character as a Major General adopted and lived since then in retirement.

Origin, youth and education

He was the son of pastor Wilhelm Friedrich Zimmermann (1825-1910) and his wife Amalie, née Frankfurt, daughter of pastor Peter Frankfurt in Kassel . Zimmermann's paternal grandfather was the grammar school teacher Heinrich Zimmermann. After an upbringing in his parents' house, Carl Zimmermann attended pre-school and then the high school in Hanau, which he graduated from high school in 1883 .

Military service 1883–1912

Training and first use

Undecided about a future career choice, joined Carpenter on April 1, 1883 as a one-year volunteer in the Infantry Regiment. 97 of the Prussian army and was on 1 October 1883 in the third Badische Infantry Regiment. 111 in Rastatt displaced . On October 10th he was transferred to the category of those serving on promotion , on December 13th he was promoted to Portepeefähnrich . He was promoted to second lieutenant on February 14, 1885. It is still unclear when he attended which war school. From April 1, 1887 to March 1, 1891 he served as a battalion adjutant and court officer . On July 15, 1893 he was promoted to lieutenant prime minister.

Instruction officer in the Chilean army

On August 18, 1895, Zimmermann was granted leave for the purpose of transferring to Chilean services. From 1895 to 1897 he served in the Chilean army as an instruction officer. He belonged to the group of German military advisors around Emil Körner , who was also sent to Chile in 1885 and who pushed ahead with the modernization of the armed forces in Chile based on the Prussian-German model, the so-called "Prussianization" ( prusianización ).

Renewed employment in Germany

After his return from Chile, Zimmermann served briefly in the 4th Thuringian Infantry Regiment No. 72 in 1897/98 . On April 1, 1898, he was commanded to serve on the Great General Staff . On September 13, 1899, he was promoted to captain and used as company commander .

First service in the Cameroon Protection Force, 1900–1908

On July 5, 1900, Zimmermann resigned from the Prussian Army and was hired the following day as a captain and company commander in the Cameroon Guard . After a brief activity as leader of the parent company in Duala from October 1900 to the end of February 1901, he was station chief in Ebolowa from 1902 to 1904 and was temporarily deputy district administrator in Kribi . From 1905 to 1908 he was a. a. Representative of the commander in Soppo, resident in Adamaua and resident of the German Tschadseeländer . In 1907 Zimmermann was instrumental in suppressing a Muslim uprising (so-called Mahdist riots ) in Adamaua. In April 1908 he made a trip to the so-called intermediate river area.

Service in command of the protection forces, 1908–1912

On November 1, 1908, he was posted to the command of the protection troops in the Reich Colonial Office in Berlin and on November 19 he was promoted to the superfluous major . Effective April 1, 1909, he was transferred to the command; he was also an extra-official member of the Reich Military Court . He was relieved of this position in 1912 and reassigned to the Cameroon Protection Force.

Commander of the Cameroon Protection Force. Use in the First World War

1912/13 Zimmermann Oberleiter was the German border expedition in southern Cameroon (so-called border expedition south) and as a boundary commissioner operates. In April 1914 he was appointed commander of the protection force.

The strategic situation of Cameroon at the outbreak of the First World War

As early as 1913, Governor Karl Ebermaier had considered the eventuality of a European war and its effects on Cameroon and looked for options to defend the colony against invading enemy troops. Considerations played a role here, to fortify Duala as the seat of the West African station of the Imperial Navy and to use it as a base for cruiser warfare in the event of war . However, these considerations failed due to the rejection of the Reichsmarineamt , which rightly pointed out that the navy was not responsible for the defense of the colonies. In addition, due to its unhealthy climate, Duala was avoided even by the stationary people at the "West African station" if possible; all repairs and maintenance of the stationary, mostly older gunboats , had to be carried out in Cape Town anyway due to a lack of technical possibilities .

After the outbreak of the First World War , Ebermaier and Zimmermann agreed on a defense concept. The protection force should pursue a defensive strategy together with the Cameroon police force , reservists , landwehr men and additional recruits . Their goal was not to bind opposing forces, as Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck pursued in German East Africa , but served to demonstrate the claim to rule over the colony against the enemy powers.

This strategy made sense insofar as Ebermaier and Zimmermann, as well as a large part of the political and military leadership in Europe, assumed that the war would only last a few months. A long-term resistance against invading French, British and Belgian colonial troops was excluded because the colony had no military reserves such as B. possessed ammunition and the sea route was blocked by the Allies from the beginning of the war . Therefore, as far as is known, the Imperial Navy did not consider sending blockade breakers like Rubens and Marie to Cameroon , as in the case of German East Africa .

There was a division of labor between Ebermaier and Zimmermann, according to which Zimmermann, who had been promoted to lieutenant colonel on August 19, 1914 , was solely responsible for the military operations, while Ebermaier was responsible for the civil, and above all economic, organization of the resistance. Both agreed to transfer to the neutral Spanish colony of Río Muni and be interned at the risk of military defeat .

The balance of power between Zimmermann's troops and his allied opponents was extremely unfavorable from the start. Both sides operated mostly with mercenary troops from recruited Africans . 1,460 Europeans and 6,550 Africans were mobilized on the German side, and around 18,000 Europeans and Africans on the Allied side. Artillery was scarce in the colony and its ammunition supply was extremely limited. There was also no cavalry or mounted infantry for reconnaissance purposes or operations behind the enemy.

Due to the strong geographical fragmentation of Cameroon and the scarcely existing traffic routes , the six divisions of the protection force operated practically independently of one another, each with the strength of a battalion in the (north, west, south, east, south-east and in Yaounde ). Zimmermann had the advantage of the inner line and could move troops within the front sections if necessary . The protection force faced a Franco-British expeditionary force under General Charles Macpherson Dobell (1869-1954) in the west, French-British forces under General Cunliffe in the north and French troops under General Joseph Aymerich (1858-1937) in the east and south. Their operations were strongly influenced by directives from their governments in Paris and London or, in the case of Aymerich, by the Governor General of French Equatorial Africa in Brazzaville ; the Allied fighting was not coordinated until autumn 1915.

The fighting

Due to the overall strategic situation in Cameroon, the Allied operations were not under time pressure and were therefore carefully prepared. So the seasonal climatic conditions could be taken into account. Conquered positions were thoroughly secured against further advance. The Allies' strategic goal was to conquer Yaounde as the seat of government. The fighting took place in three phases:

1. The struggle for the so-called pre-terrain (coastal belt) until October 1914.

2. The battle for the highlands until October 1915.

3. The withdrawal of the protection force to the south and internment in the Rio Muni area in Spain from December 1915 to February 1916.

Despite its significant economic and communication facilities in the port of Duala, the coastal belt had to be cleared during the first weeks of the war, as the strategic situation there gradually became untenable. The Royal Navy began blocking the coast immediately after the war began ; a measure which the German side could not counter. The German attempt on 16 September 1914 Duala using the converted into a makeshift gunship steamer Nachtigal British gunboat HMS Dwarf by ramming sink, ended with the demise of the Nachtigal , with part of the crew drowned, while the British warship hardly was damaged.

Due to the geographical conditions in the central highlands, the protection force had a well defensible starting position, while at the same time the route of retreat to Rio Muni could be kept open. Yaounde formed the center of the German defense; Zimmermann took quarters there in April 1915 . From here he was in contact with the Edéafront in the north, the east department and the south department through telegraph lines established during the war . Due to the lack of a telegraphic connection, he could only give general instructions to the department heads in the northwest and north .

Despite all the initial defensive successes, which were largely based on small-scale war operations , the situation became untenable in October 1915 due to the constantly deteriorating economic, military and, last but not least, medical situation (lack of medicines of all kinds), so that from the beginning of the war operations the situation became untenable a planned retreat to the south was initiated. On February 15, 1916, the entire Schutztruppe including the extensive entourage had transferred to the Spanish colony of Rio Muni. She was then transported to the Spanish island of Fernando Póo ( Bioko ) or to Spain and interned. Only the 3rd Company under Captain Ernst von Raben in the fortress of Mora, cut off in the far north of the colony, was forced to capitulate to British troops and was taken prisoner .

Internment, farewell, retirement, inheritance

The European members of the protection force were interned after a short stay on Fernando Poo in Spain, where carpenter jefe (chief) of the internment camp in Saragossa became.

After the end of the war, Zimmermann was briefly a member of the Reichswehr and was promoted to colonel on December 23, 1919 ; the patent had already been awarded to him on April 18, 1917, apparently still during internment. Because of the reduction in personnel in the Reichswehr due to the terms of the Versailles Treaty , he was adopted on March 31, 1920 with the status of major general.

After the end of his service, Zimmermann apparently lived in Saxony for a while and until 1924 was chairman of the association of officers, medical officers and senior officials of the former imperial protection force for Cameroon . After giving up the function, he was made an honorary member .

Nothing has been known about political or propaganda activities or Zimmermann's private life. From the small article A Cameroon Soldier , which appeared in an anthology on colonial wars in 1936 , it can be interpreted that Zimmermann was ready to get involved with his former African subordinates:

“Do we not have a debt of thanks and honor to pay off with such loyalty and self-sacrifice among our colored people? Do we think that the payment of the relevant wages also compensates for their permanent health and material damage? Let's not forget that before the economic demand for a debt of gratitude and honor must determine our struggle for the stolen colonial property and the graves of fallen comrades there. "

- Carl Zimmermann : A Cameroon soldier

Zimmermann died on January 13, 1949 at the age of 84 in Hanau and is buried there in the main cemetery. His estate is in the Federal Archives-Military Archive in Freiburg i. Br. Under signature BA-MA N 521. An ethnographic collection that Zimmermann had originally given to the city of Hanau is said to be in the Museum of World Cultures in Frankfurt am Main today , but has not yet been opened.

Own publications (selection)

  • The unrest in Deutsch-Adamaua 1907. In: Deutsches Kolonial-Blatt. 19 (1908), pp. 167-171.
  • Our Cameroon. In: Frankfurter Oder-Zeitung. October 31, 1926.

literature

  • General carpenter. In: Cameroon Post. Born 1934, no. 2, pp. 14-16.
  • Zimmermann, Heinrich C ar l. In: Florian Hoffmann: Occupation and military administration in Cameroon. Establishment and institutionalization of the colonial monopoly of force, part II: The imperial protection force and its officer corps. Göttingen 2007, p. 201f.
  • Jürgen Schäfer: German military aid in South America. Military and armaments interests in Argentina, Bolivia, and Chile before 1914. Düsseldorf 1974.
  • The Cameroons. In: Hew Strachan: The First World War in Africa. New York 2004, pp. 19-60.
  • Heinrich Mentzel: The fighting in Cameroon 1914-1916. Preparation and course. Berlin 1936. (Phil. Diss.)
  • Herbert Pürschel: The Imperial Protection Force for Cameroon. Structure and task. Berlin 1936. (Phil. Diss.)
  • Erich Student: Cameroon's fight 1914/16. Berlin (Bernard & Graefe) 1937.
  • The fighting for Cameroon. In: Reichsarchiv (Hrsg.): The World War 1914 to 1918, Vol. IX: The operations of 1915. The events in the West and in the Balkans from summer to the end of the year. Pp. 468–474 (contrary to the title, Chapter VI. The war in the colonies. Also deals with the events overseas).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. Walther Amelung describes in his memoirs that a marriage between his aunt Louison Leclercq (1869-1954) and her "childhood friend General Zimmermann, the defender of Cameroon in the First World War and splendid people" failed because of a "tragic incident". 1984, p. 42
  2. A Cameroon soldier. In: Werner von Langsdorff (ed.): German flag over sand and palm trees. 53 colonial warriors tell. Bertelsmann, Gütersloh 1936, pp. 287–289.