Magdalene of Prince
Magdalene von Prince , née von Massow (* 1870 in Silesia ; † 1936 there ) was a German colonialist , plantation owner in German East Africa and wife of the officer Tom von Prince .
Life
Magdalene von Prince was born in Silesia in 1870 as the daughter of Rittmeister von Massow. At the age of 14 she met her future husband Tom Prince in Liegnitz , today's Legnica . In 1889, after his military service, Prince joined the Wissmann troop , a forerunner of the protection force for German East Africa . Magdalene moved to live with her father in Königsberg in East Prussia .
On January 4, 1896, she married Tom Prince in Militsch , now Milicz , and in the same year traveled with him to East Africa . There she accompanied her husband on so-called punitive expeditions in the Iringa region to subjugate the Hehe . She recorded her experiences as one of the few - if not the only - European women in the region in diary entries.
Around 1900 Magdalene and Tom Prince settled in West Usambara not far from Wilhelmstal , today Lushoto . There they founded the coffee - plantation Sakkarani and built a manor house. It was there that Magdalene Prince wrote the book A German Woman in the Inner German East Africa from her diary notes , which appeared in several editions in Germany. In doing so she tried to convince local girls and women of life in the German colonies .
The Prince couple had three children. Tom Prince and his family were raised to hereditary nobility in 1906.
On November 4, 1914, Tom of Prince fell at the Battle of Tanga . Magdalene von Prince initially stayed in northern German East Africa, which was occupied by British colonial troops in 1916. After the First World War, she was expelled from the colony together with other German settlers in 1919. She had to sell her property and went back to Europe. In 1930 she saw German East Africa, now Tanganyika , again on a visiting trip .
Magdalene von Prince spent the last years of her life in Vienna . Shortly before her death from cancer , she moved to her Silesian homeland, where she died in 1936. She was buried in a grave of honor in the city of Liegnitz .
memory
The story of the couple from Prince is part of the ZDF - documentation headhunting in East Africa from the series The Empire of the German (Germany, 2010).
Works
- A German woman in the interior of German East Africa - told eleven years after leafing through a diary. Verlag von EG Mittler & Sohn, Berlin 1903. (Reprint of the 2nd edition from 1905: Europäische Geschichtsverlag, Paderborn 2012, ISBN 978-3-86382-514-0 .)
- From the desk and from the studio. how our plantation in German East Africa came into being . In: Velhagen & Klasings monthly books . No. 21/1, September 1906. pp. 89-101.
literature
- Herbert Viktor Patera : The white man without fear - The life of the Schutztruppe Captain Tom von Prince . German publisher, Berlin 1939.
- Gudrun Wedel: autobiographies of women . Böhlau Verlag, Cologne / Weimar / Vienna 2012, ISBN 978-3-412-20585-0 , p. 661.
- Christine de Gemeaux: Wahehe Wars, Farm Life and Colonial Violence. Magdalene von Prince in German East Africa. 1896-1919 . In: Stefan Noack / Christine de Gemeaux / Uwe Puschner (eds.): German East Africa. Dynamics of European cultural contacts and horizons of experience in the colonial area , Berlin a. a .: Peter Lang 2019 (Civilizations & History; 57), ISBN 978-3-631-77497-7 , pp. 79-100.
Web links
- openlibrary.org: A German woman in the interior of German East Africa (online version of the 3rd edition from 1908)
- Magdalene von Prince on a historical photo , picture inventory of the German Colonial Society in the University Library in Frankfurt am Main.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Gateway Bavaria : bibliographic evidence
- ↑ Gateway Bavaria: bibliographic evidence
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Prince, Magdalene of |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Colonialist in German East Africa |
| DATE OF BIRTH | 1870 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Silesia |
| DATE OF DEATH | 1936 |
| Place of death | Silesia |