Eugene Brandeis

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Eugene Brandeis

Eugen Brandeis (born September 23, 1846 in Geisingen , † December 9, 1930 in Säckingen ) was a German engineer in Central America and an administrative officer in the German colonies in the Pacific.

Life

Eugen Brandeis, son of the Hessian court advisor Hermann Brandeis, attended grammar school in Baden-Baden from 1854 to 1861 , then grammar school in Freiburg , where he graduated from high school in 1863. Until 1866 he studied mathematics, first at the Technical University of Karlsruhe , then at the Albert Ludwigs University in Freiburg. During his studies in Karlsruhe he became a member of the Corps Saxonia in 1864 .

As an Advantageur he joined the 5th Baden Infantry Regiment in 1866. As a lieutenant he served from 1868 in the Grand Ducal Baden field artillery regiment, with which he also took part in the Franco-German War . From 1873 he served in the Silesian foot artillery. In 1875 he was promoted to prime lieutenant. In 1876 he became a reserve officer and voluntarily resigned from the military the following year.

From 1877 to 1881 Brandeis worked as a businessman for a Hamburg trading house in Gonaïves (Haiti). From 1879 to 1882 he administered the imperial consulate in Haiti . At the same time, in 1880 he was involved in building railways in Cuba . In 1884 Brandeis was employed as an engineer in the construction of the Panama Canal . Due to illness, he was seconded to the German consulate in Sydney in 1886.

Brandeis advised the Samoan King Tupua Tamasese Titimaea, who came to power with German support , between 1886 and 1888. He trained a local police force loyal to the king and supplied the king's supporters with weapons to protect the colonists from their opponents and protests against the newly raised Smash poll tax for locals. He left Apia in February 1889. At the same time, he was a member of the Secret Chancellery of the Foreign Office . From December 1, 1889 to April 15, 1891 Brandeis was secretary at the Imperial Commissariat on Jaluit ( Marshall Islands ), then deputy commissioner. Brandeis was also a member of the "German Trade and Plantation Society" (DHPG).

On February 5, 1892, Brandeis was appointed chief judge for the eastern jurisdiction of the Bismarck Archipelago and the Solomon Islands of the German New Guinea colony . In July 1893 there were riots due to the illegal expansion of the New Guinea Company (NGC) plantations . Brandeis reacted to the local uprising with a punitive expedition.

From December 17, 1892 to December 14, 1894 (provisional until February 5, 1893) he was judge in Herbertshöhe ( Kokopo ) in New Pomerania ( New Britain ) for the colony of the New Guinea Company. In the dispute between the colonist Georg Schmiele and Paul Kolbe, husband of “ Queen Emma ” in June 1894, Brandeis pointed out to the former that he was “duty” as an officer, namely to challenge Kolbe to a pistol duel at 15 m. In the same year he undertook another punitive expedition against the local population as a captain with other colonists.

From 1895 to 1898 he worked in the colonial department of the Foreign Office in Berlin .

Since March 24, 1898, he was Imperial Commissioner for the Marshall Islands , where he arrived on August 28, four months after his appointment. His title changed from February 22, 1900 to Governor. On January 18, 1906, he was forced to retire. He was recalled for excessive punishment and brutality towards locals. In the stage he still took part in the First World War voluntarily .

family

On April 30, 1898, Eugen Brandeis married in Beirut. His wife Antonie Ruete (born March 25, 1868) was a daughter of the merchant Rudolph Heinrich Ruete and Sayyida Salme , the princess of Oman and Zanzibar . The daughters Marie Margaretha (born September 6, 1900 in Jaluit) and Julie Johanna (born August 10, 1904 in Jaluit) came from the marriage.

Antonie Brandeis worked on Jaluit in the nursing and collected ethnographica. Since 1908 she was active in the " Women's Association of the German Colonial Society ". In 1911 she took part in the International Hygiene Exhibition in Dresden, organized by Friedrich Fülleborn . After separating from Brandeis in 1920, Antonie lived in Hamburg and was instrumental in founding the colonial women's school in Rendsburg. In 1907 she wrote the cookbook for the tropics .

Awards

Literature and Sources

  • Dirk HR Spennemann: An Officer, Yes But a Gentleman ...? Eugen Brandeis, Military Adviser, Imperial Judge and Administrator in the German Colonial Service in the South Pacific. Center for South Pacific Studies, University of New South Wales, Sydney 1998, ISBN 0-7334-0454-5 .
  • Dirk HR Spennemann: Eugen Brandeis. In: Fred Ludwig Sepaintner (Ed.): Badische Biographien , New Series 5, pp. 29–31.
  • Karl Baumann, Dieter Klein, Wolfgang Apitzsch: Biographical Handbook German New Guinea. Brief résumés of former colonists, researchers, missionaries and travelers. 2nd edition, Fassberg, Berlin 2002. (Entries on Antonie and Eugen Brandeis)
  • Freiburg-Postkolonial.de (December 18, 2009) (PDF; 355 kB)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Corps list of the Weinheimer SC from 1821 to 1906 . Dresden 1906, p. 41
  2. to the military career
  3. George Steinmetz: The devil's handwriting: Precoloniality and the German Colonial State in Qingdao, Samoa, and Southwest Africa. University of Chicago Press, p. 298
  4. deviating: Jan. 20
  5. ^ German Administrators in the Marshall Islands
  6. ^ Lora Wildenthal: German Women for Empire, 1884-1945 . Durham [u. a.] 2001 (Duke Univ. Press); Footnote 190
  7. Emily Ruete: Life in the Sultan's Palace . 1886. New edition: Frankfurt 1989
  8. ^ Katharina Walgenbach: The white woman as a bearer of German culture . ISBN 978-3-593-37870-1 , Appendix: Brief portraits of women authors from the Women's Association, p. 288
  9. ^ UB Uni Frankfurt.de
  10. whole section