Richard Deeken

Richard Deeken, ca.1906

Richard Deeken (born June 16, 1874 in Westerstede as the son of the chief magistrate Leonard Deeken, who died in 1878 ; † August 28, 1914 in Arracourt , France) was a German lieutenant in the 1st Westphalian Field Artillery Regiment No. 7 in Wesel , founder of the German Samoa Society and its planting director in the German colony of German Samoa , writer and colonial politician .

Life

After graduating from high school, he began an officer career in 1893 and was appointed to the new War Technology Academy in Berlin , where he trained as an interpreter for English, French and Italian, which also took him to the USA and Belgium. Together with his professor Dr. Rothen books he wrote the English military interpreter for the academy (and the Boxer Rebellion in China).

In 1900, the outbreak of a life-threatening lung disease forced him to spend nine months in Italy and Portugal (paid for from the regimental princess's cash register) and then to travel to the South Seas for a year. To finance them, he procured collection orders from German museums, especially the Berlin Museum of Natural History , wrote reports for German newspapers about the new "German colonies" in the South Seas and received an inspection order from the German Consul Art for its plantings in Hawaii and Samoa . He traveled via Hawaii, Australia, New Zealand to Samoa, toured the Marshall Islands , the Caroline Islands and Palau Islands.

In 1901 Deeken returned to Germany. For health reasons, he said goodbye to military service and changed to a position “ à la suite ” as a reserve officer. Because of his asthma, his doctors urgently advised him to avoid the climate in Germany. He then undertook several lecture tours throughout Germany, during which he promoted the establishment of a stock corporation , the German Samoa Society, with which he wanted to create a new livelihood outside of Germany.

German Samoa Society

In 1902 he founded the German Samoa Society (DSG) in Berlin, a stock corporation for the "purposes of cocoa cultivation", of which he was director in German Samoa from 1902 to 1910. The book Deekens Manuia Samoa - Heil Samoa , published in 1901, had sparked enthusiasm for Samoa in Germany and the founding of the corporation was now a "cocoa fever". However, the company never paid a dividend; the possibilities of economically viable plantation cultivation in Samoa were too limited and were overestimated by Richard Deeken.

The German settlers, who, often with little capital, had followed Deeken's call to Samoa and hoped for “great wealth” according to his promises, were disappointed by the cultivation possibilities and the shortage of local labor. Deeken asked the governor Samoas Wilhelm Solf to "make more land and labor available", which he refused, however, as he saw the sensitive balance between local and European planters threatened by the onslaught.

The conflict between Solf and Deeken goes back to the year 1901, as the governor Deeken rejected plans to establish the colony of Samoa as a settlement colony from the beginning. Deeken's attitude reflected above all an all-German outlook , which provided for the most profitable exploitation of land and natives in the colony. This was contrary to the Land and Title Commission initiated by Solf , which checked legal claims and tried to strengthen the land rights of the locals against German settlers.

In 1903 Deeken founded the Pan-German Planters' Association , in whose resolution he called for eight months of forced labor on the part of the locals on German plantations, which in turn was rejected by Solf.

The conflict between Deeken and Solf spread to other areas as well. Deeken called on the German planters to protest against the alleged unjust treatment by the Samoan colonial administration. Among them there was also partial dissatisfaction with the traditional English language of instruction in the Protestant mission schools in what is now a German colony.

In 1904 Richard Deeken was sentenced to two months in prison for "grossly mistreating" his Chinese workers and insulting Imperial Governor Solf.

Later, through the intervention of the Grand Duke of Oldenburg and the support of two members of the German Center Party, Matthias Erzberger and Karl Trimborn (a cousin of Deeken's wife), he was granted a partial pardon from the Kaiser. The sentence was converted to honorary imprisonment at the Ehrenbreitstein Fortress near Koblenz.

In 1905, Deeken and his wife and his two small children, who were born in Samoa, went on a ship voyage to Germany lasting several weeks in order to begin their two-month period of honorary detention (only present at night in the officers' offices). Meanwhile, his family stayed with grandparents Dr. Boese in Cologne. Then he immediately returned to the planting districts of the German Samoa Society on Samoa.

In 1908 he was elected to the Government Council of Samoa. Thereupon the governor Dr. Solf a resignation request from the German Kaiser due to the loss of confidence in the German and English population. As a result, Deeken renounced his mandate on the governorate.

Return to Germany

In 1910 Deeken returned to Germany and settled with his family in Miltenberg in Lower Franconia . There he built a large country house in a former vineyard above the Main, whose hillside location seemed beneficial to his health. This building, which is now a listed building, is still owned by the family and houses around 1000 pages of colonial files that were in old aluminum travel chests from Samoa.

From 1911 to 1914 Deeken studied colonial geography, tropical agriculture and colonial politics and received his doctorate from the Maximilian University of Würzburg on land use in Samoa . Deeken's goal was to then go into colonial politics.

In 1912 he founded the forest and colonial school in Miltenberg am Main and then acted as one of two directors (with teaching activities).

From autumn 1912 to spring 1913 Deeken undertook his fourth and last voyage around the world to Samoa as a board member of the supervisory board of the German Samoa Society to inspect the planting districts there. He toured the Tonga and Fiji Islands, the Bismarck Archipelago and the mainland of German New Guinea . In the same year Deeken's racial novel Rassenehre was published , in which he spoke out against " mixed marriages " between Samoan women and German settlers.

At the beginning of the First World War , Deeken was killed in the Battle of Serres on August 28, 1914.

His wife Elisabeth (Else) Deeken raised her six small children alone during times of war and famine. The property in Samoa was lost. She continued the extensive journalistic work of her husband who - despite his work demands, especially in Samoa - had written a total of six books and 135 treatises, essays and articles, especially on colonial geography, tropical agriculture and colonial politics. He was also the editor of the Weltkunde- und Weltwirtschaftsanzeiger . In addition, he was invited to lecture tours all over Germany with his photographs from the new German South Sea colonies.

Works (selection)

• Manuia Samoa! Samoan travel sketches and observations , Oldenburg 1901.
• The prospects of cocoa culture , Oldenburg, Leipzig 1901.
• The Carolines. Based on own travel observations, older monographs and the latest official reports n.d. (1911).
• Rustling palm trees. Colorful stories and novellas from the South Seas , Oldenburg 1912.
• Racial honor. A novel from the South Seas , Oldenburg 1913.
• Germany as a Colonial Power, Part 7: The German Colonies in the South Seas , 1914.
• Agriculture in the German colonies according to the latest official reports , 1914.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Horst founder: History of the German colonies . 5th edition, UTB, Stuttgart 2004, p. 185.
2. ^ Lora Wildenthal: German Women for Empire, 1884–1945 . Duke University Press, 2002, p. 122 f.
3. ↑ Bernhard Großfeld (Ed.): Legal comparator - misunderstood, forgotten, suppressed. Münster studies on comparative law, Volume 62, 2000, p. 78.
4. ^ Founder: Colonies, p. 184.
5. ↑ Wildenthal: p. 123.
6. ↑ FAZ.NET: June 16, 1904

Web links

• Literature by and about Richard Deeken in the catalog of the German National Library