Chief Mkwawa

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Chief Mkwawa

Mkwavinyika Munyigumba Mwamuyinga (* 1855 in Luhota ; † 19 July 1898 1 ), better known as Chief Mkwawa , in Germany also Makaua for a long time , was a chief of the Hehe tribe in German East Africa , today's Tanzania , who started an uprising led the indigenous population against the German colonial power .

biography

Return of the skull by Sir Edward Twining in 1954

The name Mkwawa comes from the word Mukwava , which in turn is an abbreviation for Mukwavinyika , which roughly means conqueror of many countries . Mkwawa was born in Luhota in 1855 to Chief Munyigumba , who died in 1879.

In July 1891, the German military commissioner Emil von Zelewski was given the order to attack the Wahehe ethnic group with a battalion of the protection force of 320 Askaris , officers and porters . On August 17th, the German troops at Lugalo were attacked by a 3,000-strong Wahehe army led by Mkwawa. Armed with spears and only a few rifles , the Wahehe warriors overpowered the Schutztruppen battalion and killed von Zelewski.

On October 28, 1894, German troops under the new commander Colonel Freiherr Friedrich von Schele attacked Mkwawa's fortress in Kalenga near the city of Iringa . Although they managed to take over the fortress, Mkwawa managed to escape. He then began to wage guerrilla warfare and repeatedly escaped the German occupiers until he was wounded in combat on July 19, 1898 and killed by one of his last warriors in order not to fall into the hands of his pursuers.

The sergeant and later member of the Bavarian People's Party , Johann Merkl , who had persecuted Mkwawa, cut off the head of the corpse, collected the bonus paid on him and set up a farm near Mount Kilimanjaro . The skull was probably brought to Germany by Lieutenant Tom von Prince . Because of his military successes, Mkwawa was nicknamed "Black Napoleon ".

Subject of the Versailles Treaty

Skull of Chief Mkwawa

In 1919, Article 246 of the Treaty of Versailles decided to send the skull back to Africa, which supposedly did not happen until July 9, 1954, in particular due to multiple interventions by the then British Governor in Tanganyika , Sir Edward Twining . Today the one that Sir Edward Twining took with him from the Bremen Übersee-Museum can be viewed as a real Mkwawa skull in the Mkwawa Memorial Museum in Kalenga.

Article 246 of the Versailles Treaty:
Within six months of the entry into force of this treaty [...] Germany will hand over the skull of Sultan Mkwawa, which was brought to Germany from the Protectorate of German East Africa, to the royal British government.

annotation

1 Some sources give the date of death June 19, 1898, others July 19. In the report of Sergeant Merkl, who found the bodies of Mkwawa and his last companion with some soldiers, July 19 is given as the date of death.

swell

  1. ^ Susanne Thimann-Verhey: Imperialism: Focus on Great Britain and Germany . 1st edition. Ernst Klett Verlag, Stuttgart 2011, ISBN 978-3-12-430091-1 , p. 21 .
  2. ↑ Peace treaty crazy - The skull of the Sultan, one day - Zeitgeschichten on Spiegel Online
  3. ↑ www.mkwawa.com ( Memento from January 5, 2009 in the Internet Archive )
  4. ↑ www.kilimanjaroworld.com ( Memento from December 28, 2008 in the Internet Archive )
  5. ↑ www.savageandsoldier.com
  6. ↑ www.mkwawa.com ( Memento from November 19, 2008 in the Internet Archive )

literature

  • Martin Baer, ​​Olaf Schröter: A head hunt. Germans in East Africa . Christoph Links, Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-86153-248-4 .
  • Thomas Morlang: You wanted it that way. In: Zeit Online. Die Zeit 32/1998, July 30, 1998, p. 66 , accessed on July 24, 2011 : "The war of extermination against the Hehe people in East Africa is a particularly dark chapter from the black book of colonialism"

Web links

Commons : Chief Mkwawa  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files
personal data
SURNAME Chief Mkwawa
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Mkwavinyika Munyigumba Mwamuyinga
BRIEF DESCRIPTION African tribal chief
DATE OF BIRTH 1855
PLACE OF BIRTH Luhota
DATE OF DEATH July 19, 1898