Colonial Economic Committee

Car with the label KWK transporting cotton in the German colony of Togo

Meeting booklet of the Colonial Technical Commission (a subdivision) from April 1911

Overview of the undertakings of the Colonial Economic Committee 1896/1906 , Economic Atlas of the German Colonies, published by the Colonial Economic Committee, 1906

The Colonial Economic Committee (KWK) was a German non-profit organization in the German Empire and in the Weimar Republic based in Berlin .

The Colonial Economic Committee was founded in 1896. The founding members included Karl Supf , who was also chairman of the committee for many years, and the botanist Otto Warburg , known as the "tropical botanist" .

The organization saw its main goals in the following four points:

1. Expansion of traffic with and in the colonies, in particular the railway network there
2. Promotion of the settlement of Germans in the protected areas
3. Promotion of raw material production in the colonies in the interest of local industry and food for the people
4. Increase in the sale of domestic industrial products, especially those of the machine industry in the colonies.

Many scientific and economic expeditions to the German colonies and other overseas destinations were financed or supported financially by the Colonial Economic Committee . From 1897 the journal Der Tropenpflanzer appeared as the committee's organ . It was published by the board members Ferdinand Wohltmann and Otto Warburg and dealt with topics related to agriculture in the tropics. At irregular intervals a supplement on the tropical planter appeared with special treatises or travel reports. The Colonial Economic Committee also published individual works on colonial economic topics and organized exhibitions in order to contribute to the “revitalization of the colonial idea”. The Colonial Technical Commission , the Cotton Building Commission and the Rubber Commission were formed as standing commissions on special issues .

From 1902 the Colonial Economic Committee carried out economic advice for the German Colonial Society under the name "Economic Committee of the German Colonial Society" ; However, the committee explicitly stayed out of questions of colonial policy. From 1903 to 1907, the Colonial Economic Committee ran a cotton school for natives in Nuatjä , South Togo. In 1909 a colonial economic archive was set up at the Berlin office, which collected information about commercial companies operating in the colonies.

The following commissions existed until August 1, 1914:

• 1906: Cotton Building Commission
• 1910: Colonial Technical Commission
• 1911: Rubber Commission
• 1913: Oil Raw Material Commission
• 1914: Wool Sheep Breeding Commission

literature

• German Colonial Lexicon . 1920, Volume II, p. 346. Online ( [1] and [2] ) at uni-frankfurt.de.

Web links

Commons : Colonial Economic Committee  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Digitized editions of the Tropenpflanzer, the magazine of the Colonial Economic Committee
• Early documents and newspaper articles on the Colonial Economic Committee in the 20th Century press kit of the ZBW - Leibniz Information Center for Economics .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Zech / Buses: Nuatjä in: German colonial lexicon . Volume II, Leipzig 1920, p. 662
2. ↑ Federal Archives, Committee for the Introduction of Products from German Colonies  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.