Emil Rausch (officer)

Emil Rausch (born October 8, 1877 in Gießen ; † September 6, 1914 near Nssanakang ) was a German officer and district manager in Cameroon .

Life

Rausch was a son of the secondary school principal Emil Rausch from Gießen. He attended high school and joined the 5th Westphalian Infantry Regiment No. 53 as a flag junior in 1895. In the same year he became an ensign, in 1896 a lieutenant and retired from the Prussian army in January 1902 for the purpose of joining the Imperial Guard for Cameroon .

After his arrival in the protected area, Rausch first became adjutant to Captain Wilhelm Langheld , then head of the Tinto and Fontemdorf stations . In 1905 he took part in the Manenguba expedition under command Wilhelm Mueller and was adjutant in the Mbo expedition under Captain von Krogh in 1905/06. After a home leave he took over the management of the district again in May 1908, the seat of which was moved from Fontemdorf to Dschang under his management . In 1909/10, Rausch carried out the pacification of the Nkam-Nun region in the east of the district from there. Even after the district was transferred to civil administration, he remained its head and was initially assigned to serve in the government. After he had been promoted to captain in 1912, he left the military association entirely in June 1914 and was taken over as a civil servant in his previous position. With the outbreak of the First World War he was re-enlisted in the Schutztruppe and fell during the reconquest of Nssanakang in the Ossidinge district, which was occupied by the British .

Rausch played a decisive role in the development and valorisation of the district area, through the violent subjugation of the population, but also through measures to promote the economy such as the establishment of commercial cattle breeding or the establishment of an agricultural school, in which, in a two-year apprenticeship, mainly sons of local rulers in the were instructed in the proper keeping of cattle and the rational cultivation of their fields by the plow. Dschang owes its current position as the political and economic center of the grasslands to the relocation of the district administration carried out by Emil Rausch, which was retained under French mandate administration and after Cameroon's independence.

literature

• Florian Hoffmann: Occupation and military administration in Cameroon. Establishment and institutionalization of the colonial monopoly of violence 1891–1914 . Göttingen 2007