Louis Baur

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Louis Baur (around 1880)

Louis Baur , from 1886 Louis Baur-Buchmann (born March 22, 1858 in Basel ; † February 5, 1915 there ) was a Swiss merchant and commercial agent for French and German colonial traders . He negotiated the treaties that led to the short-lived German colony in Kapitaï and Koba (now part of Guinea ).

Life

Sankt Alban-Vorstadt street (right) in Basel: Baur's parents' house is number 44.

Louis Baur was one of seven children of master locksmith Ludwig Baur and his wife Elisabeth, née. Lip. His father ran a locksmith's shop in the St. Alban district of Basel. Baur attended a trade school and did an apprenticeship with the factory owner Johann Rudolf Geigy-Merian . After a brief episode in Paris , he went to West Africa for the French company CA Verminck in January 1880 . From March to June 1880 he was employed in Freetown . From July 1880 to June 1883 he worked for the same company in a trading post in Boké .

Trading shops where Louis Baur worked

In July 1883 he returned briefly to Basel and traveled to Germany, where he was hired by Friedrich Colin . Colin had previously also worked for CA Verminck , but started his own business. Baur and his colleagues - including his future brother-in-law Carl Buchmann - established factories for Colin in Boulbiné on the Tumbo peninsula near Conakry and in the surrounding area. The stations should become the starting point for a German colony to be founded. Baur bought this land from the local ruler Bala Demba, of a friendship request to Kaiser Wilhelm I taught. However, Bala Demba avoided the protection contract proposed by Gustav Nachtigal in June 1884 . Nachtigal then drove on to the Togo coast without having achieved anything , but gave Baur a certificate that he was not to blame for the failure of the negotiations. In July and August 1884, Baur and his colleagues signed preliminary contracts with the rulers of Kapitaï and Koba on behalf of Colin. Baur arrived in Hamburg on August 28, 1884 with the signed documents. In September 1884 he presented it to Otto von Bismarck and the so-called territorial acquisitions caused a sensation when they became known in Germany.

Back in Boulbiné, Baur waited a long time for items to be bartered from Colin to get the trade going. Instead, the Germans kept him from the corvette Ariadne at the turn of the year 1884/85 “... a full eleven days from all business until the two countries Koba & Kobitai were definitely placed under German protection.” The colony was already under German protection at the end of 1885 Exchange with France for a stretch of coast near Aného east of Togo . Baur tried to continue Colin's trade under French jurisdiction as best as possible, but fell so seriously ill that he returned to Basel in mid-1886 and left Colin's company. Colin wrote a letter of thanks to Baur, but at the same time made him responsible for the start-up difficulties of his company. Nonetheless, the company continued to exist for many years on the basis laid by Baur, so that in 1894 Baur was still satisfied with his share in the “... current flourishing of the s. The business I founded ”looked back.

Baur worked as a clerk and published articles on trade in West Africa. From 1897 to 1911 he was the production manager of a jersey factory in Marziliquartier in Bern . He was also on the board of the Geographical Society in Bern . From 1908 to 1911 he also tried his hand at running a sawmill in Entlebuch . After many years of lung disease, he died as a freelance book expert and auditor in Basel in 1915.

Family and estate

Louis' younger brother Fritz (1859–1922) was the editor of the Basler Nachrichten and described life in the parental craftsman household. Two other brothers worked in Budapest and Copenhagen, respectively .

Louis Baur married Wilhelmine (Mina) Buchmann from Basel in 1886, to whom he had already got engaged in September 1884. The couple had three children.

During his years in Africa, Baur exchanged letters with his family in Basel. At least until the 1990s, Baur's descendants lived in France and Switzerland and kept his letters. They offer a special insight into the work on European trading posts at that time in West Africa.

Works

  • Descriptions of the Sierra Leone coast, in: Geographische Nachrichten , 3rd vol., Issue 4–7, Basel February 15/1. March / 5. March / 1. April 1887.
  • Freetown in West Africa, in: Geographische Nachrichten , 3rd vol., Issue 21, Basel November 1, 1887.
  • Barter in Africa, in: Geographische Nachrichten , Basel 1891.

literature

  • Hans Werner Debrunner: Swiss in Colonial Africa. Basler Afrika Bibliographien, Basel 1991, p. 121 ff., ISBN 3-905141-51-5 .
  • Hans Werner Debrunner: Swiss witnesses and participants in the beginnings of German colonization in Africa, in: Peter Heine, Ulrich van der Heyden (ed.): Studies on the history of German colonialism in Africa - commemorative publication for the 60th birthday of Peter Sebald. Centaurus, Pfaffenweiler 1995, pp. 177-209, ISBN 3-89085-939-9 .
  • Jörg Schneider: Louis Baur - Merchant in Sierra Leone and Guinea, in: Jürg Schneider, Ute Röschenthaler and Bernhard Gardi (eds.): Photo fever - Images from West and Central Africa. The Travels of Carl Passavant 1883–1885. Christoph Merian Verlag, Basel 2005, pp. 111–118, ISBN 3-85616-251-8 .

Web links

Commons : Louis Baur  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Debrunner 1991, p. 121.
  2. ↑ Debrunner 1991, p. 123.
  3. ↑ Debrunner 1995, p. 191.
  4. ↑ Louis Baur, quoted in Debrunner 1991, p. 125 and the same. 1995, p. 192.
  5. ↑ Debrunner 1995, pp. 194f.
  6. ↑ Louis Baur quoted in Schneider 2005, p. 118.
  7. ↑ Debrunner 1991, p. 121.
  8. ↑ Debrunner 1995, p. 187.
  9. ↑ Schneider 2005, p. 112.
personal data
SURNAME Baur, Louis
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Bauer-Buchmann, Louis
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss merchant and commercial agent
DATE OF BIRTH March 22, 1858
PLACE OF BIRTH Basel
DATE OF DEATH February 5, 1915
Place of death Basel