Colonial history of the city of Cologne
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At the time of imperialism, Cologne was one of the most important trading cities of the German Empire , as such it was the Rhenish center for expeditions and scientific colonialism .
"Scientific colonialism" and its Cologne actors
Since 1905 the city of Cologne has been a member of the Colonial Economic Committee (KWK) with an annual contribution of 100 marks . Richard Hindorf, director of the Rheinische Handeï-Plantagen-Gesellschaft , and Max Esser, founder of the West African planting company Victoria, were represented in the executive committee of the KWK .
In 1914 the Colonial Economic Committee had 1231 corporate members. The following Cologne companies can also be found in a list:
- Bertuch & Co.
- Franz Clouth, Rheinische Gummiwarenfabrik, GmbH (Nippes)
- Deutz gas engine factory
- Kölnische Gummifädenfabrik, vorm. Ferd. Kohlstadt & Co. (Deutz)
- W. Leyendecker & Cie. (Ehrenfeld)
- Maschinenbauanstalt Humboldt (Kalk)
- J. Pohlig, Act. Ges. (Folding rule)
- The Stollwerck brothers
August Reichensperger , Viktor C. Eduard Schnitzler , Gustav Michels , Eugen and Hans Langen and the Leverkus family were particularly important for colonialism in Cologne . Konrad Adenauer , then Lord Mayor of Cologne and also Executive Vice President of the German Colonial Society from 1931 to 1933, later Federal Chancellor once said:
“ The German Reich must absolutely strive to acquire colonies. In the realm itself there is too little space for the large population. It is precisely the somewhat daring, strongly advancing elements that could not be active in the country but find a field for their activity in the colonies, are constantly being lost to us. We have to have more space for our people and therefore colonies. "
Institutions and locations
In 1884, at the beginning of the active Reich German colonial policy, the Cologne branch of the West German Association for Colonization and Export was established , initially with around 100 members. The turn of the century brought with it many new establishments in the field of commercial colleges and technical universities, in Cologne, for example, today's Hansagymnasium , the commercial college and the chamber of commerce , which were all members of the German Colonial Society . In order to satisfy the general interest of the population in colonial topics, these were introduced as additional compulsory courses at the universities. The connection between Cologne science and German colonialism was further secured by treaties. Large parts of the teaching staff at the Chamber of Commerce, the commercial college and other institutions belonged to the German Colonial Society, e. B. Christian Eckert , Kurt Wiedenfeld , Paul Moldenhauer , Oskar Jäger , Heinrich Geffcken , Otto Wilhelm Thomé and Richard Hindorf .
On the evening of October 19, 1888, numerous citizens of various social backgrounds gathered in the “Upper Society Hall” of the “Römergang” to establish the Cologne subdivision of the German Colonial Society.
The Cologne newspaper's pro-colonial propaganda
The Kölnische Zeitung existed for almost a hundred years at the beginning of German colonialism and was firmly anchored as a source of information in the bourgeois and national-conservative camp. Like the general tenor in western society at the turn of the century, the articles in the Kölnische Zeitung were, from today's perspective, racist , nationalistic and euphemistic . The editor of the newspaper, Prosper Müllendorf accompanied the Cologne College of Commerce on the East Africa expedition of 1908 and gave a lecture on " The French colonial empire in West Africa ", Cameroon, German South-West Africa, the " Damaged in DSW ", " Germany's next duties in the South West ", “ German South West Africa at the time of the Herero uprising ”, “ The means of transport of the Congo state ”, “ Overview of the development of the African colonies ”, “ The latest development in DOAs ”, “ Technology and goods in DOA ” and “ The development in British East Africa ". Hugo Zöller gave lectures for the procolonials in the Gürzenich on "The land and people of Samoa "; von Mach, also editor of the paper, spoke about " a German task in the Transvaal ".
The Kölnische Zeitung , with its editor Hugo Zöller, was one of the few German newspapers to be able to afford to send a correspondent to the colonies. The “colonial journalism” of that time usually consisted of mere copies of articles from leading newspapers or was acquired second-hand, for example through travelers, traders or missionaries. In view of this, the enthusiastic colonial friend Zöller was a godsend for the Kölnische Zeitung . In 1879 she sent her editor on a colonial scientific study trip and from 1884 to 1885 to West Africa in order to be able to take an active part in the appropriation of new areas at the side of Reich Commissioner Gustav Nachtigall .
Zöller himself openly described his style as "colonial political agitation" which can be understood as an intense form of political propaganda. The type of Zöller propaganda differed depending on the political situation. Naturally, before the active expansion of the German Empire, he had to use different propagandistic means than during the German colonial period, during the First World War and the subsequent period of colonial revisionism.
Cologne as the origin of the mission
The city of Cologne has been a Catholic center north of the Alps since ancient times. It is therefore obvious that missionaries also set off from this city to colonial Africa. The Africa Association of German Catholics (AVdK) was founded there in 1888 . The chairmanship of the association was held for years by the Cologne cathedral capitular Franz Karl Hespers, who was also a member of the German Colonial Society. The AVdK was under the protection of the Archbishop of Cologne and was inspired by the “anti-slavery movement” initiated by Cardinal Lavigerie in France. The aim of the AVdK was " the civilization of the negroes through conversion to Christianity ". Initially, it was limited to German East Africa, and later the involvement was extended to the other colonies.
Paul zu Lukuledi from the missionary station of St. Peter noted:
“ Everywhere on the northern border of our prefecture I found the main obstacle to the East African missions - namely an extremely sparse population. Often it was only in the evening, after a six to eight hour march through undeveloped and uninhabited Pori, to find a small village with a few dozen negroes, mostly half-starved, ghostly figures, whose hollow-eyed faces stared at me with distress like hardly one in Europe can imagine. "
Daniele Comboni, venerated as saint by the Catholic Church since 2003, promoted the Africa mission in Cologne and received direct support for this from the AVdK.
On May 18, 1920, the AVdK was dissolved. The neo-colonial ideas to renew the association almost forty years later were never implemented. In addition to the AVdK, there was also an Evangelical Africa Association and the Rhenish Mission Society .
East Africa expedition of the Cologne Commercial College in 1908
The three professors Paul Moldenhauer (insurance science), Heinrich Geffcken (public law) and Kurt Wiedenfeld (political science) met during the lecture-free period in 1908 (August 2 to October 15, 1908) with 25 students, a doctor and their expedition leader, the Director of studies at the commercial college, Christian Eckert and his wife set out to scientifically "conquer" Africa as the first academic institutions in Germany. Prosper Müllendorff was part of the expedition for the Kölnische Zeitung , the most important pro-colonial newspaper in Germany, as a reporter for the “colonial trip” planned with the Reichskolonialamt .
Christian Eckert justified the trip as follows:
“ So it had to appear as a significant task, especially for a young business school, to try whether it could, to a modest extent, promote an understanding of the current tasks and future problems that are facing us in overseas areas. In the knowledge that the colonial questions must be clarified above all to the aspiring commercial youth [...]. Such a colonial trip also offered the advantage of being able to focus emphatically on where German industry has already achieved success abroad, and to keep an eye out where the drive of our merchants and industrialists can prove itself even more strongly in the future. [...] "
The first section of the expedition was British East Africa including Uganda , to which they set off from Naples ; It went with the steamer Margrave of the German East Africa Line to Mombasa and from there with the Uganda train to Kisumu for a 10-day round trip around Lake Victoria . From there it went back to Mombasa via Nairobi , and then set off with the government steamer Kaiser Wilhelm II to Tanga , where the German-East Africa section began. In addition, Usambara , Zanzibar and Morogoro were on the program before starting the return journey from Dar es Salaam . A comparison of the colonies was therefore sought.
Plantations, plantations and farms were visited.
Africans from the colonies in Cologne
The "Amazons of Dahomey"
In 1890 the “Dahomey Amazons”, a corps of men and women from Togo , Germany, who used to appear in exotic costumes, were put on display in Cologne. The corps was seen a total of four times in Cologne with different line-ups until 1908. The Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger wrote about the “soldiers in petticoats”: “ The warriors are clever, mostly well-educated chestnut-brown figures, only one or two are lighter, some are darker. They wear a kind of bodice, which covers the breast and is decorated with small white cowrie shells, amulets, which are worn on the neck and on the breast, belong to the jewelry of the black-brown ladies. "
A sixteen-year-old “Amazon” died in 1898 of pneumonia in the Cologne Bürgerhospital on Cäcilienstraße. She was buried in the Melaten cemetery with great attention from the local press : “ Yesterday after All Souls' Day a rare burial took place in the Melaten cemetery. An Amazon of the troop, who gives her presentation in Castan's Panopticum, suddenly fell ill with pneumonia last week. The attending physician arranged for her to be placed in the local community hospital. The illness worsened and on Saturday death carried the otherwise strong girl away. [...] The funeral was scheduled for Monday. "
Samoans in Cologne Zoo
In July 1901, a people show of 26 Samoans including the chief Tamasese Le Alofi II and members of his family and other aristocratic families from the islands took place in the Cologne Zoological Garden . The supervisory board and the management board announced:
“ From Tuesday 5th to Tuesday 26th July a group of Samoans will be present to the visitors in the zoological garden. They come from the South Sea island of Samoa, whose 10-year membership of the German Empire was celebrated there in that year. "
Several times a day the human exhibits had to perform dances and weapon games, twice a week cook a whole pig in a roasting pit filled with leaves and hot stones, and delight the audience with samples. On top of that, a slide was installed as an additional attraction, on which the Samoans, lightly clad in raffia skirts and flower chains, slid into a pool of water and swam around or rowed in canoes. The exhibition concept came from Carl Marquardt and his brother Fritz, who, as the former police chief of Apia in Samoa, had excellent relations with the German colony. Exhibitions by exotic people had been known for a long time since their introduction at the world fairs and popularized the image of the "tamed savage" or the new "compatriots" in the age of European colonialism. At the beginning of the exhibition, the Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger (July 6, 1910) highlighted the advantages of the exhibition and the exhibitors:
“ From Tuesday 5th to Tuesday 26th July a group of Samoans will be present to the visitors in the zoological garden. They come from the South Sea island of Samoa, whose 10-year membership of the German Empire was celebrated there in that year. "
In addition, the anonymous author of the article praised the ethnological value of the event:
“ In addition to the great artistic enjoyment offered by the Samoan performances, there is also the educational value that is contained in the fact that the broad public is granted an insight into the manner and manners of a human race, which according to its concepts of morality and morality is on a par with the European one in many respects. "
Admission of imperial German colonialism in the Cologne carnival
Shortly before the carnival session in 1884/1885, the prokoloniale Kölnische Zeitung published the travel reports of the geographer and ethnologist Wilhelm Joest , which attracted a great deal of attention among Cologne's citizens. Joest had traveled to southeastern Africa over the course of a year; In addition, the year saw many significant events in German colonial policy ( German Southwest Africa is founded, Carl Peters founds the Society for German Colonization , the Congo Conference takes place). The train motto of the session was: " Hero Carneval as Colonizer "; all Rose Monday participants were disguised as "negroes" in black shoe polish. On the title page of the session, the "Colonia Agrippina" is related to the newly won "Colonia Anna Bequema", behind "Anna Bequema" hides "Angra Pequeña", the old Portuguese name of the coastal region in Southwest Africa, the later " Lüderitz Bay ”. The Kölnische Zeitung wrote about the "Amazon Music Corps" clad with spiked hoods :
“ They give a drastically comical sight, these half-wild, tamed female musicians, and first of all the musical enjoyment, it is heavenly! "
Places that are reminiscent of Germany's colonialism in Cologne
In the north of Nippes is the so-called "Africa Quarter" (also known as Klein Afrika , Heia Safari-Viertel or Neger-Viertel ), which is what the neo-colonial movement of the 1930s in Cologne gave it (including the street names). Gustav-Nachtigal-Straße, Namibiastraße (formerly Carl-Peters-Straße), Usambarastraße (formerly Lüderitzstraße), Togostraße, Kamerunstraße and Tangastraße are reminiscences.
In (Neu) ehrenfeld the Gravenreuthstraße, the Lansstraße , the Iltisstraße, the Takustraße, the Takuplatz , the Takufeld and the Wissmannstraße are reminiscent of the imperialist times of the German Empire.
Other places in Cologne with comparable names are Heinrich-von-Stephan-Straße (Bilderstöckchen), Konrad-Adenauer-Ufer (old town / north), Mohrenstraße (old town / north), Moltkestraße (Neustadt / south and Rodenkirchen), the Robert-Koch-Straße (Lindenthal and Pesch), the Wilhelmstraße (Nippes) and the Geschwister-Scholl-Realschule (formerly named after Karl Freiherr von Gravenreuth ).
(Further reading
- Lothar Pützstück: "Exotic magic in front of the city wall and front door". Völkerschau im Kölner Zoo 1878–1932 Journal of the Kölner Zoo 40,4: 151–157, 1997
- Marianne Bechhaus-Gerst: Cologne and the colonies, in: Ulrich van der Heyden and Joachim Zeller (eds.): Colonialism in this country - A search for traces in Germany. Sutton Verlag, Erfurt 2007, ISBN 978-3-86680-269-8 , pp. 11-18.
- Marianne Bechhaus-Gerst, Anne-Kathrin Horstmann (ed.): Cologne and German colonialism. A search for traces, Böhlau Verlag, Cologne, Weimar, Vienna 2013. 286 pages
- Anne-Kathrin Horstmann: Scientific Colonialism between Theory and Practice: The East Africa Expedition of the Cologne University of Commerce 1908. (PDF) Contributions to the Cologne Africa Scientific Conference for Young Researchers (KANT II). Marilena Thanassoula, Kathrin Kolossa, Claudia Baasner, Peter André Rodekuhr, Marc Seifert, Nico Nassenstein, Anne-Kathrin Horstmann, Christoph Vogel, Larissa-Diana Fuhrmann, accessed on January 29, 2014 .
Member directories
- Directory of members on January 1, 1901 (PDF) German Colonial Society, Cologne Department, January 1, 1901, accessed on January 25, 2014 .
- List of members December 1903 (PDF) German Colonial Society, Cologne Department, December 1903, accessed on January 25, 2014 .
- Directory of members October 1906 (PDF) German Colonial Society, Cologne Department, October 1906, accessed on January 25, 2014 .
- IX. Annual report, March 1918 to March 1919. (PDF) Women's Association of the German Colonial Society, Cologne Department, March 1919, accessed on January 29, 2014 .
Footnotes
- ^ A b Historical Archive of the City of Cologne, pp. 401–570
- ^ FW Morren: Preparation and trading of Liberia coffee. 1898 , in extra sheet of tropical planters , p 37
- ↑ Jessica Agoku: Colonial special show at the Pressa - May 12 to October 14, 1928. Events. Head Worlds, accessed on January 29, 2014 .
- ↑ Klaus J. Bade: Friedrich Fabri and Imperialism in the Bismarckian Age. Internet edition on the website of the University of Osnabrück , 2nd edition with a new foreword, Osnabrück 2005, p. 286.
- ^ A b c d Anne-Kathrin Horstmann: Scientific colonialism between theory and practice: The East Africa expedition of the Cologne commercial college in 1908. Institutions. Head Worlds, accessed on January 28, 2014 .
- ↑ Tobias Schnell: "Hotel im Römer" and "Hansahaus" - central locations in Cologne's colonial history. (Article) In: Kopfwelten. Retrieved September 12, 2015 .
- ↑ Tobias Schell / Deutsche Kolonialzeitung: “Kolonialkalender” - colonial events in Cologne from 1888 to 1918. Compiled from the German colonial newspaper by Tobias Schnell. Head Worlds, accessed on January 29, 2014 .
- ↑ Bradley D. Naranch: Covering the Colonies: Overseas Journalism and German Empire Building, from 1884 to 1890. Conference lecture: Germany's Colonialism in International Perspective San Francisco State University, 6. – 9. September 2007. Unpublished conference paper.
- ^ Hugo Zöller: A word about colonial-political agitation In: Kölnische Zeitung of February 17, 1887, No. 48, 1st sheet, p. 3
- ^ A b c d Johannes von Abendroth: Africa Association of German Catholics. Institutions. Head Worlds, accessed on January 28, 2014 .
- ↑ Timeline of the life of Daniel Comboni - Comboni missionaries. (PDF) (No longer available online.) Archived from the original on May 19, 2014 ; Retrieved May 18, 2014 . 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.
- ↑ Kölnische Volkszeitung: Feuilleton , October 26, 1908, No. 922: pp. 42–46
- ↑ Stadt-Anzeiger on No. 239 of the Kölnische Zeitung , Friday, August 29, 1890
- ↑ Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger on No. 503 of the Kölnische Zeitung , Thursday, November 3, 1898
- ↑ a b c d e Beatrix Alexander: "On special days: Roasting whole pigs ..." The (colonial) encounter. Head Worlds, accessed on January 28, 2014 .
- ↑ a b Kölnische Zeitung No. 45; Feb. 14, 1885
- ↑ Marianne Bechhaus-Gers: The "Africa Quarter". Places. Head Worlds, accessed on January 29, 2014 .
- ↑ a b places. Head Worlds, accessed on January 29, 2014 .
