Julius von Zech on Neuhofen

Johann Nepomuk Felix Julius Graf von Zech auf Neuhofen (born April 23, 1868 in Straubing ; † October 29, 1914 near Gheluvelt , Flanders ) was a German officer and colonial official who served as governor of the German colony of Togo from 1905 to 1910 .

Julius Graf von Zech on Neuhofen

Life

Zech came from the old Bavarian aristocratic family Zech auf Neuhofen , whose members worked as civil servants for a long time. His father was a senior judicial officer in the Kingdom of Bavaria and the owner of Steinach Castle near Straubing, where Zech was born.

Officer career

Zech's career began in 1886 when he joined the Bavarian Army . In 1888 he became second lieutenant in the 2nd Infantry Regiment "Crown Prince" . From 1891 to 1894 he was regimental adjutant and was promoted to first lieutenant in 1895 . But the service in Bavaria, especially in times of peace, offered only very limited career opportunities. During this phase of professional dissatisfaction, the Reich leadership became aware of Zech. At that time one intended, among other things, the establishment of an, albeit costly, military presence in the newly won colonial empire . At the beginning of the 1890s, regular military units were created as defense and police forces specifically for the African colonies with the protection troops . This opened up a number of new possibilities which made colonial service attractive in the eyes of many officers. Above all, it was adventurous and outsiders who could not expect any professional or social advancement in their home country. In addition, it was mainly officers with average qualifications who hoped to be promoted more quickly in the colonies. But there were also a few officers with above-average talent, among whom one could undoubtedly include Zech, for whom colonial service seemed attractive. Because a colonial officer had to appear on site as both a military and civil authority. Within the German colonies, local administration tasks were carried out in many areas by military personnel in the rank of officers and NCOs. Zech joined in 1895 as a first lieutenant in the Bavarian army in the service of the Colonial Department of the Foreign Office (AAKA) ( later Reichskolonialamt ) and was first with a task within the police force of Togo in charge.

Colonial official

Zech came to Togo at a time when the future of the German colonial project here was largely determined by the competition between the British and the French in the interior of Africa. Equipped with colonial territory that not only possessed the narrowest coastal strip in West Africa, but also offered extremely few resources, Germany seemed to be on the losing side from the start in this race. Nevertheless, at the time when Zech arrived in Togo, the colonial government in Togo was pursuing the ambitious goal of penetrating into the interior of Africa and bringing areas that had not yet belonged to the French or British under German suzerainty. Several research expeditions were sent inland to undertake geographic explorations and to conclude contracts with local authorities regarding the accession of their sphere of influence to the German “protected area”. The long-term goal at that time was (still) a connection between the Togo coast and Niger as a coherent German colony .

Nevertheless, the German government saw an economically secure future for the Togo colony, primarily on the basis of the development of natural resources, control of the markets through which goods were exchanged with the interior of Africa and the use of labor reserves from those further inland located regions. The main focus was on the coastal region, which was already under German protection, which, although small in size, was economically strong enough to cover the costs of any necessary smaller military expeditions into the interior of the country itself, since the Reichstag no longer approved sufficient funds for such purposes .

Zech's activity in Togo was initially only linked to the advance into the hinterland. After his arrival in Togo in 1895 he was appointed head of the newly established administrative station in Kete Krachi , which had been established the year before in order to be able to manage effective control over the Togo hinterland from here as well as some of the internal trade tax with the more distant regions of Togo and Dahomé . The Kete-Krachi location as an administrative center was also important because it allowed the Germans to maintain continuous relationships with the Dagombas , arguably the most important people and empire in the north of Togo. In addition, two important trade routes converged in Kete Krachi, one of which led to the northeast and the other to the northwest. Zech's tasks were not only in the political administration of the Kete Krachi region. At the beginning of 1896 he led an expedition to northeast Togo, which had a contract with the chief of Sugu and the establishment of German control at a strategically important point vis-à-vis the French. In doing so, however, he met resistance and there were skirmishes with the Sugus. Finally he and the 16 soldiers in his company succeeded in intimidating the local chiefs to the extent that they finally stopped the fighting. However, his troops were too small in number to leave a garrison in Sugu .

The deficiency that accompanied the German advance in West Africa from the start was particularly evident in Zech's second expedition to Sugu in 1896/1897. He reached Sugu before the French competition, which at the same time came from Dahomé to take Sugu in turn. But the French appeared with a slightly larger team and Zech, who was well aware that he could not expect any help from the local chiefs, finally left Sugu to the French superiority and returned to Kete Krachi.

Zech remained station manager in Kete Krachi until 1900. During this time he played a not entirely insignificant role in the negotiations on the Franco-German border treaty of 1897 on the border between Dahomé and Togo and the British-German treaty on the neutral zone ( Salaga area ) between Togo and the northern territories of the Gold Coast . He was also the first German commissioner to be a member of the German-British commission, which in 1901/1902 measured and established the final border between Togo and the northern territories of the Gold Coast.

In 1900 Zech was appointed district administrator and entrusted with the administration of the Anecho district. Anecho (hist. Klein-Popo) was the largest and most important city on the Togo coast at that time, although Lomé had also been given the role of the colonial capital. However, before he started his service in Anecho, Zech made trips to Morocco , Algeria , Tunisia and Tripoli . During his time as district administrator in Anecho, Zech gained a lot of reputation . After participating in the German-British Border Commission in 1901/1902, he was promoted to Chancellor in 1902, the second highest position in Togo's German colonial administration. As such, he was responsible for running the central government offices in Lomé. 1903 Zech became the Government appointed.

governor

Governor of Zech

In 1903, in response to the Horn Affair, Governor Horn was removed from office for the duration of the investigations. At the same time, Zech was provisionally given responsibility for government affairs as deputy governor. In this position, Zech made a sufficiently positive impression on his superiors in Berlin that in 1905 his position was transformed into that of permanent governor.

During his tenure as governor, Zech tried to reform the colonial administration, which was aimed primarily at improving relations with the locals. The reputation of the German colonial administration among the population had been severely damaged by the Horn affair. At the same time, both Berlin and Lomé felt compelled to respond to the interests of colonial economic lobbies , which had been organized in the German Colonial Society and some smaller groups in the Colonial Economic Committee (KWK). For some of these lobby groups, their motivation to engage in the colonial economy grew out of political and ideological views. Most of them could be satisfied by the government with limited trade concessions. Other groups, on the other hand, were able to exert economic pressure and call for political decisions that were sometimes very far-reaching and costly. This latter group in particular intensified its activities during the period when Togo was trying to further develop its indeed profitable trade and broadening agricultural production, i.e. H. with a greater variety of products. Zech never wrote an autobiography, but from his official statements and also those of his contemporaries it seems that he never adopted policies or actions in favor of individual interest groups.

In 1908, Zech went on a study trip to Dahomé and the British Protecorate areas of northern and southern Nigeria . Zech was very interested in getting to know the details of the British " indirect rule ", which he also intended to introduce in Togo. He was not alone in this attitude; in Berlin he had influential like-minded people like the publicist Paul Rohrbach or the colonial secretary and governor Wilhelm Solf . In particular, the methods of Lord Lugard in Northern Nigeria or the methods of the British administration of Yorubaland were the ones to which Zech expressed his respect.

On November 7, 1910, for health reasons, Zech asked for his retirement, which was granted to him at the same time he was awarded the rank of first class councilor.

Return to Germany

In March 1911, Zech was the first delegate of the German commission to the Paris negotiations to draw the border between Togo and Dahomé. In 1912 he took part in the negotiations of the International Spirits Conference in Brussels as a representative of the Reich Colonial Office. Zech auf Neuhofen fell at the beginning of the First World War in Flanders in 1914 with the rank of major . He wasn't married.

literature

• Ralph Erbar: A “place in the sun”? The administrative and economic history of the Togo colony 1884-1914. Steiner, Stuttgart 1991, ISBN 3-515-05800-1 , ( contributions to colonial and overseas history 51), (also: Mainz, Univ., Diss., 1991).
• Woodruff D. Smith: Julius Graf Zech on Neuhofen (1868-1914). In: Lewis H. Gann, Peter Duignan (Eds.): African Proconsuls. European Governors in Africa. Free Press, New York 1978, ISBN 0-02-911190-0 , pp. 473-491.
• Peter Sebald: Togo. 1884-1914. Akademie-Verlag, Berlin (East) 1988.
• Heinrich Schnee (Ed.): German Colonial Lexicon . Edition Suppes, Wiesbaden 1996, ISBN 3-9804954-0-X , (Repr. D. Edition Leipzig 1920), Volume III, p. 739.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Sugu or Sudu? Sudu is located in the Sudu-Dako plateau north of Mount Koranga, about 10 km east of the city of Bafilo ( 9 ° 20 ′  N , 1 ° 15 ′  E ). It could also be today's Djougou ( 9 ° 42 ′  N , 1 ° 40 ′  E ), the capital of the Donga region in modern-day Benin.
2. ↑ Governor Woldemar Horn found himself embroiled in a scandal shortly after his arrival in Togo in 1902, which was accompanied by general outrage in Togo and violent reactions in Germany. Horn had ordered the whipping of a chief who had defied the German colonial authorities and refused to obey the colonial government. The chief subsequently died of his injuries. The affair escalated, especially in the Reichstag, from general outrage over the methods of the German colonial administrations to general criticism of the imperial government.