Georg Schmiele

Georg Schmiele (* 1855 ; † March 3, 1895 in the roadstead of Batavia , Dutch East Indies ) was a German colonial official and governor of the New Guinea Company in German New Guinea .

Schmiele joined the New Guinea Company in 1886 as a court assessor . In 1890 he became Chancellor at the Imperial Commissariat of New Guinea. As such, he led several punitive expeditions in the Bismarck Archipelago . When the management of the protected area was temporarily transferred back to the New Guinea Company in 1892, Schmiele took over the post of governor on September 1 , which he held until his death.

A dispute about allegedly illegal behavior with Paul Kolbe, the station master for the eastern administrative district of the protected area, escalated into a duel demand on the part of Kolbe in 1894 . A marriage between Kolbe and the half Samoan Emma Forsayth was stopped by Schmiele around the same time. Since Schmiele did not comply with Kolbe's demand, the latter referred to him as a coward in front of witnesses and hit him with a tailstock. Schmiele then felt compelled to accept the request.

On a trip to Germany, among other things to obtain an official permit for the duel, Schmiele died on March 3, 1895 on board the imperial mail steamer Lübeck in the roadstead of Batavia .

literature

• Heinrich Schnee (Ed.): German Colonial Lexicon . Volume 3, Leipzig 1920, p. 302.
• Joseph Hiery (Ed.): The German South Seas 1884-1914. A manual , Schöningh, Paderborn 2001, ISBN 3-506-73912-3 .