Justus Strand

Justus Strandes (born February 4, 1859 in Stade ; † July 16, 1930 in Hamburg ) was a Hamburg overseas merchant , politician and Senator from Hamburg who was involved in establishing the German colony in German East Africa .

childhood and education

Strandes father worked as a Hanoverian civil servant in the royal interior ministry, from 1859 to 1866 the Strandes family lived in Hanover . After the defeat of the Kingdom of Hanover in 1866 and the annexation by Prussia , the father was transferred to the Prussian government council and his family to the Prussian cathedral . In 1871 he got a job in the Hanoverian monastery chamber and the family moved back to Hanover. At the beginning of 1875, Strandes left grammar school prematurely to start a commercial apprenticeship at the trading house Hansing & Co in Hamburg. He successfully completed this apprenticeship after three years in order to work in the following year 1879 in the branch of Hansing & Co in Zanzibar .

East Africa

Hansing & Co had had a trading post on Zanzibar since 1853 and was the second Hanseatic branch on Zanzibar alongside O'Swald & Co. Hansing & Co was active in the field of trade and shipping in Zanzibar , but mainly earned money from banking . From 1879 to 1881 Justus Strandes was a clerk, i.e. an employee, in the branch on Zanzibar, from 1882 to 1889 he was the head of the branch. He had a very influential position and was in close contact with the Sultan of Zanzibar until 1884 .

When Carl Peters came to Zanzibar in 1884 , Strandes supported his request to establish a German colony in East Africa, although he personally refused Peters. Justus Strandes was a proponent of the colonial idea in East Africa, most of all he believed that Britain was on the verge of establishing a colony in East Africa. In order to secure his own interests in the long term, he broke the trust of the Sultan of Zanzibar, which he possessed, by lying to the Sultan about the intentions of Carl Peters. So Peters could leave Zanzibar unhindered. Strandes also provided Peters with money, information and weapons. Peters would not have been able to quickly gain a foothold in East Africa without Strandes' support. Justus Strandes advocated that the protection treaties negotiated by Peters with the sultan's vassals should be recognized by the German Reich , contrary to the previous announcements by the Foreign Office . Strandes was thus an important midwife of the German colonies in East Africa and witnessed the downfall of his former ally, the Sultan of Zanzibar.

Justus Strandes had married in Germany in the summer of 1884 and decided, when the so-called “ Arab uprising ” broke out in the German colonies in East Africa in 1888 , to return to Germany with his family. In 1889 he met Hermann von Wissmann and the troops sent with him in Zanzibar to put down the uprising. With Wissmann's order to recruit soldiers in Cairo , buy ammunition and send them to East Africa, Strandes traveled to Cairo with his family. There he completed the assignments assigned to him and traveled on to Hamburg.

Hamburg

In 1890 Justus Strandes returned to Hamburg with his family. Since he did not get a job in the Foreign Office or in the German colonial administration, he stayed with Hansing & Co and obtained power of attorney there . In the following years he felt professionally underutilized, he wrote down his memories (published in 2004) and worked scientifically on East Africa. In 1897, Strandes became a partner at Hansing & Co and was appointed to the colonial council the following year . The years up to 1907 were mainly characterized by the expansion of the business; Hansing & Co opened further branches in East Africa. Then Strandes turned to Hamburg's local politics and became a member of the board of the Hamburg Chamber of Commerce and a commercial judge .

In the following years Justus Strandes achieved an unprecedented rise, which was documented by the acquisition of numerous influential offices. In 1908, Strandes became a member of the Hamburg Geographical Society and chairman of the commercial advisory board of the Hamburg Colonial Institute, which was newly founded in the same year . This institute was the nucleus of the later University of Hamburg . In addition, Strandes was elected to the board of the German Colonial Society in the same year . Justus Strandes was very wealthy, in the ranking of the richest people in Hamburg published in 1912, Strandes was listed among the 100 richest people in Hamburg with assets of around 3.9 million marks. In 1912 Strandes became chairman of the supervisory board of the German East Africa Line (DOAL) and in 1917 a member of the supervisory board of Commerzbank . In the 1920s he was a member of the board of directors of the Woermann lines, the board of directors of Deutsche Reichspost , the board of directors of Deutsche Ostafrika Bank and the board of directors of Handelsbank Ostafrika. From 1913 he was chairman of the Hamburg department of the colonial society.

senator

First Justus Strandes was elected to the Hamburg parliament in 1910 , and on January 9, 1911, he was elected as a commercial senator, where he mainly worked in the field of trade. During the First World War , Strandes took leave of absence from the Senate in October 1914 in order to become civil administrator there after the occupation of Antwerp . After problems he returned to Hamburg in July 1915, and his Senate colleague Gustav Sthamer continued the work in Antwerp. In Hamburg he devoted himself to supply issues during the World War. In addition to his Senate office, in September 1918, Strandes became the Hanseatic ambassador to Berlin for all Hanseatic cities . After the November Revolution, Strandes remained a senator - at the request of Carl Petersen - and was re-elected by the majority SPD (→ Hamburg Senate 1919–1933 ). He was mainly active as Hamburg envoy and Hamburg member in the Reichsrat until he resigned on March 18, 1925 for reasons of age. Due to his successful work, he was appointed extraordinary envoy and authorized consul of the Hanseatic City of Hamburg in Berlin in 1925, and held this office until his resignation on March 31, 1930.

Honors

• In 1922, Strandes was awarded an honorary doctorate from the Philosophical Faculty of the University of Hamburg for his services to the establishment.
• In 1930 he was awarded the “ Mayor Stolten Medal ”, Hamburg's highest honor after becoming an honorary citizen.
• In 1938 a street in the district of Ohlsdorf - the former Réesweg , named after the Jewish reform pedagogue Anton Rée from Hamburg - was renamed Justus-Strandes-Weg.

Works

• Memories of childhood and youth and the time as a merchant in Hamburg and East Africa: 1865 - 1889. Justus Strandes; Sven Tode (Ed.), Hamburg 2004, Hanseatischer Merkur, ISBN 3922857302
• Justus Strandes: The Portuguese Era of German and English East Africa , Berlin 1899

literature

• Literature by and about Justus Strandes in the catalog of the German National Library

Web links

• Newspaper article about Justus Strandes in the 20th century press kit of the ZBW - Leibniz Information Center for Economics .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Unless otherwise stated, all data from the time table in the memoirs, p. 297 ff
2. ↑ Memories, p. 226
3. ↑ Memoirs, p. 216
4. ^ Rudolf Martin (ed.): Yearbook of the wealth and income of millionaires in the three Hanseatic cities (Hamburg, Bremen, Lübeck), Berlin 1912; Page 13
5. ↑ Archived copy ( Memento of the original from June 10, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.