Emma Kolbe

Emma Kolbe , also called " Queen Emma " (born September 26, 1850 in Savaiʻi ; † July 21, 1913 in Monte Carlo ), was a Samoan - American entrepreneur and plantation owner .

Life

Queen Emma's father, Jonas Myndersse Coe, came to Samoa as a whaler in 1837 and was the second wife of Princess Le'utu Talelatale Malietoa . The first-born daughter was christened "Emma" with the second name "Eliza". Her father's six marriages resulted in over 18 children.

Emma attended a Catholic mission school in Apia before completing a five-month training visit to San Francisco in 1864 . Back in Samoa, she married the ship's captain James Forsayth. However, he died soon after as a result of a shipwreck in the China Sea .

In 1878, after an affair with the American Colonel Albert Barnes Steinberger, she married the Australian captain and adventurer James Farrell.

Emma and Farrell left their home and moved to Mioko , a small island in the Duke of York archipelago . This should be the starting point for a rapid economic expansion. When the archipelago, now called Neulauenburg , became part of the German colony of German New Guinea in 1884 , the German representative Gustav von Oertzen was astonished to find that most of the fertile land was already in the possession of a certain Emma Forsayth-Coe (because of her enormous land ownership and her imperious manner called "Queen Emma").

Her husband James Farrell died in 1888 and Emma continued to run his company under her first name and the name of her first husband as EE Forsayth .

1893 Queen Emma married the German Paul Kolbe, who at the time stationmaster for the district was Bismarck Archipelago and the Solomon Islands in the colony German New Guinea.

Emma Kolbe continued to expand her possessions in German New Guinea until 1907. She was one of the wealthiest but also most scandalous female entrepreneurs of her time. Her social rise was exemplary: if she was still considered a “native” when she left Samoa, around 1900 she was the center of fine society in the South Seas . Emma Kolbe had a luxurious property built in Gunantambu near Herbertshöhe near the capital of German New Guinea, Rabaul (this was destroyed in a Japanese air raid in World War II). In addition, she maintained good contacts, among others with the liberal governor of German Samoa , Wilhelm Solf .

In 1910 Emma Kolbe sold all of her shares in plantations (especially copra ) for one million US dollars to "Hamburgische Südsee Aktien Gesellschaft". From part of this fortune, she bought an apartment in Monte Carlo .

When her husband Paul fell ill with a heart condition in Monte Carlo in July 1913, she immediately traveled to Monte Carlo, where he died in her arms. Two days later she died herself. Emma Kolbe was cremated in Bremen and her urn was transferred to German New Guinea, where she was buried in her residence in Gunantambu.

literature

RW Robson: Queen Emma, The Samoan-American Girl who founded an Empire in the 19th Century New Guinea . Pacific Publications Sydney, New York, 1973.
C.Kracht: Empire . Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne, 2012.
H. Founder: Dream of the South Seas. Back then. The magazine for history and culture, issue 9/2008, p. 22.

Individual evidence

^ Western Mail, Perth, Australia, Oct. 21, 1954, p. 10
↑ Jakob Anderhandt: Eduard Hernsheim, the South Seas and a lot of money. Biography in 2 volumes. MV-Wissenschaft, Münster 2012, Volume 2, p. 260.
^ Hermann Joseph Hiery : Die deutsche Südsee 1884-1914 , Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh, Paderborn 2001, pages 282-283
^ Once a King on Marron: Heinrich Rudolph Wahlen expects to live to be One Hundred . In: Pacific Islands Monthly . 28, No. 11, June 1, 1958, p. 79, column 3. Accessed October 24, 2018.
↑ According to another source, Queen Emma died 7 days after her husband: Florian Illies: 2013 - What I really wanted to tell . S. Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2018, ISBN 978-3-10-397360-0 , p. 150 ff .
↑ Guido Knopp: The world empire of the Germans . Edel Elements, Hamburg 2017, ISBN 978-3-95530-971-8 , p. 128 ( limited preview in Google Book search).

personal data
SURNAME	Kolbe, Emma
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Queen Emma; Emma Forsayth-Coe
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	Samoan-American entrepreneur and plantation owner
DATE OF BIRTH	September 26, 1850
PLACE OF BIRTH	on Savaiʻi
DATE OF DEATH	July 21, 1913
Place of death	Monte Carlo

[1] Western Mail, Perth, Australia, Oct. 21, 1954, p. 10

[2] Jakob Anderhandt: Eduard Hernsheim, the South Seas and a lot of money. Biography in 2 volumes. MV-Wissenschaft, Münster 2012, Volume 2, p. 260.

[3] Hermann Joseph Hiery : Die deutsche Südsee 1884-1914 , Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh, Paderborn 2001, pages 282-283

[pim-jun-1958-4] Once a King on Marron: Heinrich Rudolph Wahlen expects to live to be One Hundred . In: Pacific Islands Monthly . 28, No. 11, June 1, 1958, p. 79, column 3. Accessed October 24, 2018.

[5] According to another source, Queen Emma died 7 days after her husband: Florian Illies: 2013 - What I really wanted to tell . S. Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2018, ISBN 978-3-10-397360-0 , p. 150 ff .

[6] Guido Knopp: The world empire of the Germans . Edel Elements, Hamburg 2017, ISBN 978-3-95530-971-8 , p. 128 ( limited preview in Google Book search).