Eugen von Zimmerer

Eugen Zimmerer as a Würzburg Bavarian, 1862

Eugen Ritter von Zimmerer (born November 24, 1843 in Germersheim , † March 10, 1918 in Frankfurt am Main ) was the German governor of Cameroon .

Life

Zimmerer, the son of a Bavarian officer, studied law at the universities of Würzburg and Heidelberg from 1861 after attending grammar school in Bayreuth . In Würzburg he became a member of the Corps Bavaria in 1862 . He began his professional career as a district court advisor in Bayreuth . In 1874 he became a substitute public prosecutor at the Straubing District Court , in 1876 District Court Assessor in Starnberg , 1878 Second Public Prosecutor at the District Court in Bayreuth, 1879 Second Public Prosecutor at the District Court of Munich  I and in 1886 District Judge there.

In 1887 Zimmerer switched to the colonial career and was initially acting chancellor and deputy governor of Cameroon and as such sent to the Bakoko area in 1887 by the then governor Julius von Soden to relieve Captain Richard Kund's research expedition . In October 1888 he became Imperial Commissioner for Togo . In 1890 he again took over the representation of the governor of Cameroon and was appointed governor himself in April 1891. Zimmerer relied more on consolidating the colony's finances and moderate development of the already occupied territories than on expanding the colonial territory. This led in particular to a long-lasting conflict with the researcher Eugen Zintgraff , who, in consultation with the Federal Foreign Office, had started building a system of bases in the grasslands of Western Cameroon since 1890. As a result of a mutiny by the police soldiers (the so-called Dahomey uprising ), which was caused by his deputy Heinrich Leist , but for which Zimmerer was made jointly responsible as the chief officer of the colony, Zimmerer was recalled from Cameroon in 1893 and on July 20, 1895 for health reasons put into temporary retirement.

In 1898 Zimmerer became consul in Florianópolis (Brazil), in 1902 consul general in Valparaíso (Chile), in 1906 Minister -Resident in Port-au-Prince , since 1907 with the title and rank of extraordinary envoy and plenipotentiary minister. On December 24, 1910, he was given final retirement at his own request and moved to Frankfurt am Main, where he died eight years later. His body was cremated and the ashes sunk in the Main.

See also : List of governors of the German colony of Cameroon

literature

• Heinrich Schnee (Ed.): Deutsches Kolonial-Lexikon , Volume 3, Leipzig 1920, p. 749.
• Adolf Rüger: The uprising of the police soldiers (December 1893) , in: Stoecker, Helmuth (ed.): Cameroon under German colonial rule , Vol. 1, Berlin (East) 1960, pp. 97–147.
• Johannes Hürter (Red.): Biographical Handbook of the German Foreign Service 1871 - 1945. 5. T - Z, supplements. Published by the Foreign Office, Historical Service. Volume 5: Bernd Isphording, Gerhard Keiper, Martin Kröger: Schöningh, Paderborn et al. 2014, ISBN 978-3-506-71844-0 , p. 375 f.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Kösener Corpslisten 1930, 137 , 269