Gustav Adolf von Götzen

Gustav Adolf Count von Götzen (1908)

Gustav Adolf Count von Götzen

Gustav Adolf Graf von Goetzen (* May 12, 1866 at Scharfeneck Castle in the County of Glatz , Province of Silesia , † December 1, 1910 in Hamburg ) was a German East Africa researcher and governor of German East Africa .

Studies, military and diplomatic career

Götzen studied law and political science in Paris , Berlin and Kiel from 1884 to 1887 . In 1885 he joined the 2nd Guard Uhlan Regiment and was made an officer in 1887 . From 1890 to 1891 he was a military attaché at the German Embassy in Rome , from where he went on a hunting trip to Mount Kilimanjaro , which was followed by a number of famous trips to Africa and Asia Minor.

Götzen, who had been assigned to the Military Academy as an officer, made the first trip to Asia Minor in 1892 with Major Walther von Diest (1851–1932).

Expedition from 1893/94

After Carl Peters had started to take possession of the area of ​​the Tanganyican coast for Germany in 1885 , the task arose of exploring the hinterland as far as the Congo territory . To this end, Götzen organized an expedition in 1894 that led to what is now Rwanda , which he was the first German to set foot on; on this trip he was also the first European to see Lake Kiwu . With the intention of exploring Central Africa , Götzen set out with Georg von Prittwitz and Gaffron (1861-1936) and the doctor Hermann Kersting on December 21, 1893 from Pangani on the German-East African coast and marched through the areas of the Maasai , north Uniamwesi and Usuwi .

On May 2, 1894, the expedition members crossed the Kagera and went into Rwanda, which until then had only been touched by Oskar Baumann in 1892 on the eastern edge. They climbed one of the highest peaks of the Virunga volcanoes , the Msumbiro and the still active Nyiragongo volcano . On June 29, Götzen decided to advance west through the jungle of Uregga . After great exertion they reached the Congo at Kirundu on September 21 and Matadi on November 29, near the mouth of the great river in the Atlantic .

military service

In January 1895 Götzen returned to Germany and was a military attaché in Washington from 1896 to 1898 . After his return to the Berlin General Staff of the Army, he was promoted to captain in 1900 .

Governor of German East Africa

Due to his knowledge of local conditions, Götzen was appointed governor of German East Africa and promoted to major in March 1901 . After the local population had revolted against colonial efforts at the end of the 1880s, Götzen had to deal with the outbreak of the Maji-Maji uprising in 1905 , which soon took hold of around half of the colony, making this uprising hardly behind the Herero War in German -South West Africa lagged behind , even if it was less publicized. Von Götzen felt compelled to request reinforcements from Germany, with whose help he put down the uprising. Estimates of the deaths of the famine following the uprising are on the part of the insurgents, depending on the source, at 75,000, 100–120,000 or 200–300,000, while the protection force under Götzen officially lost 15 Europeans and 389 African soldiers.

Tomb "von Goetzen", Ohlsdorf cemetery

Return to Germany

In 1906 von Götzen gave up the post of governor because of his poor health to Freiherr von Rechenberg and returned to Germany. He continued to work on German colonial policy, especially as a member of the German Colonial Society . In 1908 he was appointed royal Prussian envoy and plenipotentiary minister to the Hanseatic cities and the Grand Duchies of Mecklenburg in Hamburg .

Gustav Adolf von Götzen died on December 1, 1910 in Hamburg. His tomb with a bronze sculpture by the German sculptor Gustav Eberlein is in the Ohlsdorf cemetery on Norderstrasse near Nordteich .

Works

• Through Africa from east to west. Berlin (1895)
• German East Africa in the 1905/06 uprising. Berlin (1909)

Awards and honors (selection)

In 1893 von Götzen received the Carl-Ritter-Medal .

In 1913 a steamship was named after him, today's Liemba . It was built in the Meyer shipyard in Papenburg and named Goetzen . It was then dismantled into individual parts and reassembled at Lake Tanganyika in Africa. It was sunk in the meantime, lifted again and still operates on the lake today.

A mineral described in 1957 by Thure Georg Sahama and Kai Hytönen was named Götzenite in his honor .

literature

• Reinhart Bindseil : Rwanda as portrayed by the officer, Africa explorer and Imperial Governor Gustav Adolf Graf von Götzen (1866–1910). = Le Rwanda vu à travers le portrait biographique de l'officier, explorateur de l'Afrique et gouverneur impérial Gustav Adolf comte de Götzen. With an outline of the contemporary explorers Franz Stuhlmann, Oskar Baumann, Richard Kandt, Adolf Friedrich Herzog zu Mecklenburg and Hans Meyer. Reimer, Berlin 1992, ISBN 3-496-00427-4 .
• Franz Volkmer : Memorable men from County Glatz. In: Sheets for the history and local history of the County of Glatz. 1, 1906-1910, ZDB ID 1444322-3 , pp. 17-18.
• Friedrich Wilhelm:  Götzen, Gustav Adolf Graf von. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 6, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1964, ISBN 3-428-00187-7 , p. 593 f. ( Digitized version ).

Web links

• Literature by and about Gustav Adolf von Götzen in the catalog of the German National Library
• Newspaper article about Gustav Adolf von Götzen in the 20th century press kit of the ZBW - Leibniz Information Center for Economics .
• an article in the Preussische Allgemeine Zeitung about Gustav Adolf von Götzen

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Called Kirunga-tscha-gongo by idols
2. ^ Walter Nuhn : Flames over German East Africa. The Maji Maji uprising in 1905/06. The first joint uprising of black African peoples against white colonial rule. A contribution to German colonial history. Bernard & Graefe, Bonn 1998, ISBN 3-7637-5969-7 .
3. ↑ Father-city sheets ; Lübeck, May 10, 1908, article: Gustav Adolf Graf von Götzen
4. ^ LB Cane, SS Liemba. In: Tanganyika Notes and Records 1947, p. 31 ( Memento of the original from March 6, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 13.3 MB)  
5. ↑ Der Spiegel 16/2010: The Ship Africa
6. ↑ Th. G. Sahama, Kai Hytönen: Götzenite and Combeite, Two New Silicates from the Belgian Congo. In: Mineralogical Magazine. Volume 31, No. 238 (September 1957), pp. 503-510 ( PDF 316.7 kB )

Remarks

1. ^ Last address (1910): "v. Götzen, Adolf, Graf, Königl. Prussian extraordinary Envoy u. authorized Minister, Harvestehuderweg 8 “, in: Hamburg address book at the Hamburg State Library