Georg August Zenker

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Georg August Zenker (* 11 June 1855 in Leipzig , † 6. February 1922 in Bipindi / Cameroon) was a German gardener , botanist and zoologist , who through his many years as head of the scientific station Yaounde in the central African colony of Cameroon a name made. Its official botanical author's abbreviation is " G.Zenker ".

Childhood, youth and first years of work

Georg August was born to Julius Theodor Zenker and Auguste von Rehbinder . His father worked as Orientalist his credit, including a Turkish - Arabic - Persian - Handwörterbuch out. His mother was a translator from Russian into German. After finishing school at Nikolai-Gymnasium, Georg began an apprenticeship as a gardener at the Botanical Garden in Leipzig.

From 1875 to 1878 he did his military service in Chemnitz . He then went to Naples , where he worked on the Botanical Garden. Over the next few years he became head gardener there and met his first wife Serafina Mack in Naples, who died within a year.

Start of stay in Africa

At the end of 1886 Georg Zenker accompanied the Italian explorer Giaccomo Bove (1852–1887) on an expedition to the lower reaches of the Congo . Bove died in 1887 on the way back to Europe. Zenker stayed in Gabon , where he worked for the Woermann company on the Sibange farm not far from Libreville . A little later he worked for the Hamburg company Reiche Jr. and managed an experimental plantation for medicinal plants in Bokumbe on the Campo River .

When the company had to give up the plantation in 1889, the company owner made the head of the research expedition to the hinterland of Cameroon, Prime Lieutenant Richard Kund , aware of Zenker. Kund led the expedition initiated by the Foreign Office in Berlin together with Hans Tappenbeck since 1887 and had just founded the Jeundo (Yaoundé) research station , today's Yaoundé , in February 1889 . In order to correspond to the scientific character of the expedition and to compensate for the failures of the two previous scientific participants, Weissenborn and Braun, Zenker was suggested by Kund for a gardening position at the new station. The Foreign Office approved the proposal with reservations, since "... Zenker's morality with regard to some youth pranks was not perfect ...". The expedition was currently in a critical phase, as Kund's deputy Tappenbeck had already died on July 26, 1889 in Duala. Curt Morgen was ordered to replace Tappenbeck in Cameroon. When he arrived in Kribi , Kund had just suffered a stroke, so that tomorrow took over the leadership of the expedition.

The expedition morning during the first stay in Yaoundé. GA Zenker with Fez (front left)

Head of the Yaoundé Station (1889–1895)

The Morgen expedition left Kribi on November 5, 1889 and arrived in Yaounde on November 30. Just a week later, Morgen with most of the troops set off further north. Zenker stayed in Yaounde with around 20 Africans from the expeditionary force, so-called Elmina and Popo . During the next few years he was the only European on the station. His subordinates were originally recruited as porters and workers from the area of ​​what is now Ghana and Togo . Some of them had been on the hinterland expedition for almost two years. In addition to the unilaterally extended working hours, their displeasure aroused in particular the fact that they had been forced to do arms service after arriving in Kribi. The ward diary of the first months of his stay shows that Zenker tried very well at the beginning to enforce his claim to leadership - as was customary at the time - with methods of corporal punishment. However, this was only to change a short time later.

On February 27, 1890, Zenker was slightly injured by a javelin while he was trying to free several Ewondo in a Bava village. The prisoners were in debt for the Abbia game. From his point of view, as a stranger, he acted to the best of his knowledge, but he was obviously not aware of the consequences of his intervention on the exchange systems that existed at the time. The matter escalated and resulted in a guerrilla war with several dead. It was only days later that negotiations and a compromise came about between the three parties. Zenker obviously drew lessons from his actions and tried in the following time to ensure the survival of the station by willingness to compromise. From this point on, there are no more indications of flogging imposed against members of their own small troops.

The most important local partner was Esono Ela ( Zonu in the sources at the time; Sonno at Zenker), who had already played an important role by giving his consent to the construction of the station. Both were probably in a mutual asymmetrical relationship of dependency in favor of Esono Ela, who every now and then borrowed a few rifles from Zenker.

Isolated from European supervisory bodies, Zenker built a network of personal relationships based on polygyny . This gave birth to five children in the following years. In November 1891 Max-Felix Zenker was born, whose mother was Embolo, the daughter of the boss Tschungi Mballa Ngono. A woman from Dahomé became the mother of Curt Julius and Hans Zenker. His third wife during this period was Ngoso, the daughter of Esono Ela's brother, Onambele Ela. Embolo and Ngosso introduced Zenker to the Ewondo language as well as the drum language.

During his stay in Yaoundé, Zenker rarely received visitors. After visiting the station again in the morning in July 1890, it was only afterwards that an expedition led by Hans Ramsay advanced to Yaounde in April 1892. In his report, Ramsay extensively praised Zenker's performance. The report is also likely to be the reason for the award of the Order of the Crown, 4th class, shortly thereafter. Ramsay also expressed his wish to remain on the station for a longer period of time, so that the government and the foreign ministry decided to extend his engagement until 1896.

From the turn of the year 1892/1893 the access to Yaounde from Kribi was opened for a more regular supply. In the period that followed, Zenker received support from the gardener Alois Staudt and the adventurer and former Foreign Legionnaire Rabischt. On August 9, 1894, Hans Dominik first arrived in Yaoundé. Together with Zenker, he made a push towards Sanaga in the following days . One result of this trip was a report to the Foreign Office dated September 20, 1894, in which he a. a. reported an advance by the Vute south of the river. This report forms the basis for a memorandum from the Foreign Office dated November 25, 1894, in which Yaounde's new role as a military outpost was defined. When Zenker learned of the new doctrine, he first asked for his contract to be terminated. The government rejected the application on the grounds that the establishment of a military station would not change Zenker's position.

In May 1895, the commander of the Schutztruppe, Max von Stetten , inspected the station together with Dominik. Zenker himself was absent at the time and was in Kribi. It was obviously Rabischt who provided the two visitors with the crucial facts about the allegedly inadequate administration of the station by Zenker. Von Stetten then wrote a report in which the previous station manager was consistently criticized. He replaced Zenker with Dominik, who was 15 years his junior, and formally converted Yaounde into a military station. Zenker subsequently withdrew from Yaoundé and arrived in Hamburg in October of the same year.

Last years

In 1896 he settled in Bipindi on Lokundje . He pioneered coffee, cocoa and rubber plantations that enabled him and his family to earn a secure income. Bipindi is on what was then the main route between Kribi and Yaounde. Numerous visitors testify to Zenker's agricultural and scientific successes in the following years, including Governor Jesko von Puttkamer when he passed the town in early January 1897.

When the German protection force withdrew to the neighboring Rio Muni in early 1916 , Zenker received the order to destroy the bridge over the Lokundje after they had passed through. He did not do this and was therefore the only German who was tolerated in Cameroon after the end of the war. Zenker was also the German who spent most of the years in the German colony of Cameroon. Zenker died on February 6, 1922 in Bipindi after a brief illness. His grave is in the Bipindi courtyard. His descendants still live in Bipindi Hof today.

Scientific work

Despite the lack of a natural science degree, Zenker made a number of contributions in the fields of botany and zoology. He sent 5,000 plant samples to Germany alone. Important buyers for his objects were the Zoological Museum of the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität zu Berlin , the Botanical Central Office for the German Colonies and the Ethnological Museum . Since he was also a painter and draftsman, he often added colored sketches to his exhibits.
Zenker developed into a point of contact for exhibit inquiries. His collaboration with Paul Matschie from the Zoological Museum Berlin, which also brought him a certain income , is well documented .

Honors

The following plant genera are named after him:

A number of animal and plant species are also named after Zenker (selection):

Evaluation and reception

Georg August Zenker was exceptional in several respects. Certainly not entirely free of colonial-political thoughts, he showed that peaceful integration in the interests of both parties was possible. His policy of compromise and careful scanning of possibilities was not only due to the numerical inferiority at the beginning. After 1895 he could have expanded his research under the protection of the military, but did not do so. Rather, his request for an early termination of the contract in 1894 shows that he was not prepared to endure the military excesses.

As someone who has openly lived in polygamy with several African women, he was directly affected by measures taken by the colonial administration. Various ordinances prohibited the recognition of children from such relationships. Zenker recognized all of his children before the law and even offered them a school education in Germany.

In the scientific field, he was able to show that close practical relevance can lead to recognition in the specialist world even without a corresponding degree.

swell

  • Laburthe-Tolra, Phillippe: Yaoundé d'après Zenker, Yaoundé 1970
  • Postcard from 1902 with a picture of the Zenker house in Bipindi

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ J. Mildbraed: Georg Zenker. in: Notblatt des Königl. Botanical Garden and Museum in Berlin Vol. 8, No. 74 (Feb. 1, 1923), pp. 319-324
  2. ↑ [1]
  3. ↑ Eichhorn (Foreign Office) to Kund v. August 28, 1889 in: Archives nationales de Yaoundé, Fonds Allemands FA 1/79, sheet 7
  4. ↑ displaying Dolphine and Cadjoe in Elmina for breach of contract, Archives Nationales de Yaounde, funds Allemand, FA 1/79, 33
  5. ^ [2] , Ateba Ngoa: Histoire de la traduction et de l'interprétation en pays beti. De la période coloniale á nos jours. in Chia, Suh: Perspectives on Translation and Interpretation in Cameroon. 2009
  6. ^ Archives Nationales de Yaoundé, Fonds Allemand FA 1/134, Bl. 44
  7. ↑ FA 1/134, Bl. 48
  8. ^ [3] , Frahm, Eggers: Lexikon deutschsprachiger Bryologen, Volume 2, p. 575
  9. ↑ [4] , Köstering, S .: Nature to look at: the natural history museum of the German Empire 1871-1914. 2003, p. 201
  10. ↑ Lotte Burkhardt: Directory of eponymous plant names - Extended Edition. Part I and II. Botanic Garden and Botanical Museum Berlin , Freie Universität Berlin , Berlin 2018, ISBN 978-3-946292-26-5 doi: 10.3372 / epolist2018 .
  11. ↑ [5]  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.ag-deutsche-kolonien.de  

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Zenker, Georg August
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German gardener, botanist, zoologist and long-time head of the Yaounde station, Cameroon
DATE OF BIRTH June 11, 1855
PLACE OF BIRTH Leipzig
DATE OF DEATH February 6, 1922
Place of death Bipindi , Cameroon