Heinrich Rudolph Elections

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Heinrich Rudolph Wahlen (born June 4, 1873 in Grünendeich ; † May 4, 1970 in Hamburg ) was a German merchant, royal Swedish consul for German New Guinea and owner of South Sea islands and companies.

Life

Farewell party for Heinrich Rudolph Wahlen on the island of Matupi , German New Guinea, 1902 (Photo: Otto Dempwolff )

Wahlen was born in Grünendeich in 1873 as the son of Jacob and Margaretha Wahlen (née Koepke). In 1895 he went to the colony of German New Guinea and was an employee of Hernsheim & Co in Matupi until 1903 . He acquired real estate and fishing rights in the western islands through the German governorate . Around 1902 he settled on the island of Maron, a neighboring island of Luf , and built his Wahlenburg estate there , a two-story mansion in Wilhelmine style with a surrounding park. Wahlen introduced one of New Guinea's first automobiles.

Mönckebergstrasse  5 (Caledonia House) : Headquarters of HR Wahlen GmbH in Hamburg from April 1913 (photo from 2012)

In the following years Wahlen built up a colonial group of companies that was initially based primarily on the trade in copra and mother-of-pearl . In 1906 Wahlen owned real estate on 56 islands in what is now the province of Manus . As of 1907, as consul, he exercised the diplomatic rights of the Kingdom of Sweden in German New Guinea. In 1910 Wahlen bought E. E. Forsayth & Co. and founded Heinrich Rudolph Wahlen GmbH in Hamburg in November 1910 . The two large companies he controlled were profitable: HR Wahlen GmbH paid around 9 and 12 percent dividends in 1911 and 1912, respectively, with a capital of 1,800,000  marks . The E. E. Forsayth GmbH merged in November 1913, the Forsayth Kirchner & Co. GmbH as a public company for Hamburg South Seas AG with election as director. Other companies under his control were Baining GmbH , Kalili GmbH , Ramu GmbH and Nambung Sägewerk GmbH . Wahlen also received a prospecting concession for gold mining for the Waria Syndicate , named after the Waria River in Kaiser-Wilhelms-Land . Together with the German governorate and the company Starker & Fischer from Sydney , attempts were made to process ironwood .

By 1914, Wahlen was one of the most influential German entrepreneurs in the region. Australian evaluations of German investments in New Guinea at the end of the First World War put Hamburgische Südsee AG and its subsidiaries at around 500,000  pounds . It was thus second only to the New Guinea's Company, and before Hernsheim & Co .

As a result of the First World War, Wahlen was expropriated in 1920. After the war, he led a long legal battle with the Australian mandate power over compensation or restoration of the election group . He joined the management of the Melanesian Company , based in London. The company bought back part of the former German plantations in New Guinea in 1926 and 1927. In 1929 he went to Australia to tour the plantations, but the Australian government forbade him to travel to New Guinea territory . He returned to Europe and the Melanesian Company lost the plantations. Wahlen still upheld his claims. During the National Socialist era, Wahlen was entrusted with colonial issues as an expert on New Guinea .

Up until the 1960s, Wahlen was known as the “King of the South Seas” and “Lord of a hundred islands”. He died in Hamburg in 1970 at the age of 96.

family

His brother, Julius Wahlen, ran the HR Wahlen GmbH branch in Maron in New Guinea. In 1913 Wahlen married the Swedish Thyra Elisabeth Oskaria Wahlen (born von Erfaß) (1889–1953) in London. The couple had five children, including the actress and voice actress Viola Wahlen (1917-2018) and the submarine commander Rolf-Birger Wahlen (1915-1998). The family grave is located in the Ohlsdorf cemetery in Hamburg.

literature

  • PIM (Ed.): Once a King on Maron - Heinrich Rudolph Wahlen Expects to Live To be One Hundred. In: Pacific Islands Monthly (PIM). Bd./Jg. XXVIII, No. 11 (June, 1958), Sydney: Pacific Publications, pp. 79, 95 ( online access ).
  • PIM (Ed.): King of the western isles' dies at 97. In: Pacific Islands Monthly (PIM). Bd./Jg. 41, No. 6 (June, 1970), Sydney: Pacific Publications, pp. 32, 132 ( online access ).
  • Stewart Firth: German Firms in the Western Pacific Islands, 1857-1914. In: The Journal of Pacific History. Bd./Jg. 1973, 8, Taylor & Francis, pp. 10-28. ( Online access ).
  • Hansjürgen Kiepe: German New Guinea (V). In: Deutsche Briefmarken-Revue. No. 2, 2012, pp. 31–32 ( online access ).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Information according to the German National Library. According to PIM (1958, p. 79) Wahlen was born in Hanover. According to Firth (1973, p. 23) Wahlen was a native of Hamburg.
  2. ^ Rudolf Fitzner: German Colonial Handbook. Bd./Jg. 9, Hermann Paetel, Berlin 1909, p. 366 ( online access ).
  3. ↑ Reich Ministry of the Interior (ed.): Central Gazette for the German Empire. Bd./Jg. 36, Carl Heymanns Verlag Cologne 1908, p. 121.
  4. ↑ a b Otto Dempwolff, Michael Duttge (Ed.): Diary of the Western Islands 1902. BoD, Norderstedt 2019, ISBN 978-3-750-40573-8 .
  5. ↑ Wahlen's property on Maron (Hermit Islands): Wahlenburg , park .
  6. ^ Albert Hahl: Governor in New Guinea. ANU Press, Canberra 1980, ISBN 0-7081-1820-8 , p. 91 ( online access, PDF ).
  7. ↑ a b Without author: Deutsches Kolonial-Handbuch 13th edition Paetel, Berlin 1913, p. 14 ( online access ).
  8. ↑ Peter Sack, Dymphna Clark (ed.): German New Guinea - The Annual Reports. Australian National University Press, Canberra 1979, p. 247 ( online ).
  9. ^ A b Hans-Jurgen Ohff: Empires of enterprise: German and English commercial interests in East New Guinea 1884 to 1914. University of Adelaide 2008, p. 44 ( online ).
  10. ^ Wahlen GmbH, Heinrich Rudolph. In: Heinrich Schnee (Ed.): German Colonial Lexicon. Vol. 3, Quelle & Meyer, Leipzig 1920, p. 656.
  11. ^ Joachim Schultz-Naumann: Under the emperor's flag. Germany's protected areas in the Pacific and China then and now. Universitas, Munich 1985, ISBN 3-8004-1094-X , p. 125.
  12. ↑ Firth 1973, p. 23.
  13. ↑ Firth 1973, p. 24.
  14. ↑ Horst H. Geerken: Hitler's Reach for Asia 1: The Third Reich and Dutch East Indies. Establishment of German naval bases. A documentation. Vol. 1, BoD, Norderstedt 2015, ISBN 978-3-738-69377-5 , p. 290.
  15. ↑ Elections, Rudolph Heinrich (Consul, “King of the South Seas”, Lord of a Hundred Islands, born June 4th, 1873, June 4th, 1968 95 years old) , German Digital Library / State Archive of the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg, newspaper clipping collection.
  16. ^ Matthias Gretzschel: More than 1700 visitors came to the “South Sea Day”. Hamburger Abendblatt, December 7, 2008, accessed on January 4, 2021 .
  17. ↑ PIM 1958, p. 95.
  18. ↑ NB Eggert (photos): Gravestones Friedhof Hamburg-Ohlsdorf 0077. genealogy.net, 2017, accessed on January 16, 2021 .
personal data
SURNAME Elections, Heinrich Rudolph
SHORT DESCRIPTION German merchant and Swedish consul for German New Guinea
DATE OF BIRTH June 4, 1873
PLACE OF BIRTH Grünendeich
DATE OF DEATH May 4th 1970
Place of death Hamburg