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A Foot in the Door: The Colonial Section of the German Foreign Office and the Settlement of Germans in Interwar Tanganyika

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 April 2024

Willeke Sandler Open the ORCID record for Willeke Sandler [Opens in a new window]
Willeke Sandler*
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Department of History, Loyola University Maryland, Baltimore, MD, United States
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wsandler@loyola.edu
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Abstract

After 1925, German settlers began to return to the former German East Africa, lost through the Treaty of Versailles and transformed into the British Mandate of Tanganyika. The German Foreign Office's Colonial Section took on a proactive role to facilitate these Germans’ settlement in their former colony, including working with German ministries to release funding and navigating the British administration and settlers on the ground in Tanganyika. While Germany had lost its overseas colonies, these officials, many of whom had served in the pre-war empire, did not view their activity in colonial spaces like Tanganyika as belonging to the past. Officials in the Colonial Section navigated the appearance of political neutrality while also promoting their ‘colonial-political’ goals, hoping to create footholds of Germanness in Tanganyika that would keep open the possibility of future empire.

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Contemporary European History , First View , pp. 1 - 16
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Copyright © The Author(s), 2024. Published by Cambridge University Press

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References

1 Letter from Major A.D. Aumann, Iringa District, to the Ostafrikaner-Verband, 4 Mar. 1926, Bundesarchiv Berlin (hereafter BArch) R 1001/40, Bl. 4. (Unless otherwise stated, all translations are my own.)

2 Klotz, Marcia, ‘Weimar Republic: A Postcolonial State in a Still-Colonial World’, in Germany's Colonial Pasts, eds. Eric Ames, Marcia Klotz, and Lora Wildenthal (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2005), 135–47Google Scholar.

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6 See, for example, Friedrichsmeyer, Sara, Lennox, Sara, and Zantop, Susanne, eds., The Imperialist Imagination: German Colonialism and Its Legacy (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1998)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Langbehn, Volker, ed., German Colonialism, Visual Culture, and Modern Memory (New York: Routledge, 2010)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Krobb, Florian and Martin, Elaine, eds., Weimar Colonialism: Discourses and Legacies of Post-Imperialism in Germany after 1918 (Bielefeld: Aisthesis Verlag, 2014)Google Scholar; Gordon, Robert and Mahoney, Dennis, ‘Marching in Step: German Youth and Colonial Cinema’, in Germany's Colonial Pasts, eds. Ames, Eric, Klotz, Marcia, and Wildenthal, Lora (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2005), 189–202Google Scholar; Nganang, Alain Patrice, ‘Der koloniale Sehnsuchtsfilm. Von lieben “Afrikaner” deutscher Filme in der NS-Zeit’, in AfrikaBilder: Studien zu Rassismus in Deutschland, ed. Arndt, Susan (Münster: UNRAST-Verlag, 2000), 232–52Google Scholar; Britta Schilling, Postcolonial Germany: Memories of Empire in a Decolonized Nation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014); Joachim Nöhre, Das Selbstverständnis der Weimarer Kolonialbewegung im Spiegel ihrer Zeitschriftenliteratur (Münster: UNI Press, 1998); N'dumbe, Alexandre Kum'a III, Was wollte Hitler in Afrika? NS-Planungen für eine faschistische Neugestaltung Afrika (Frankfurt: Verlag für Interkulturelle Kommunikation, 1993)Google Scholar; Linne, Karsten, Deutschland jenseits des Äquators?: Die NS-Kolonialplanungen für Afrika (Berlin: Ch. Links Verlag, 2008)Google Scholar; Hildebrand, Klaus, Vom Reich zum Weltreich: Hitler, NSDAP, und koloniale Frage 1919–1945 (Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 1969)Google Scholar.

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8 Birthe Kundrus, ‘Nach Versailles. Postkoloniale Phantasien und neokoloniale Realitaten’, in Weimar in die Welt: Globale Verflechtungen der ersten deutschen Republik, eds. Christoph Cornelißen and Dirk van Laak (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht Verlag, 2020), 105.

9 Wempe, Sean, ‘A League to Preserve Empires: Understanding the Mandates System and Avenues for Further Scholarly Inquiry’, American Historical Review 124, no. 5 (Dec. 2019): 1725CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10 Authaler, Caroline, ‘Negotiating “Social Progress”: German Planters, African Workers, and Mandate Administrators in the British Cameroons (1925–1939)’, in League of Nations’ Work on Social Issues: Visions, Endeavours and Experiments, eds. García, Magaly Rodríguez, Rodogno, Davide and Kozma, Liat (Geneva: United Nations, 2016), 55–6Google Scholar. See also Authaler, Caroline, Deutsche Plantagen in Britisch-Kamerun. Internationale Normen und Lokale Realitaeten, 1925–1940 (Vienna: Böhlau, 2018)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11 Additionally, tropical medicine scientists and African studies scholars in Germany continued to assert the importance of their expertise within international networks in the interwar period. See, for example, Deborah Neill, Networks in Tropical Medicine: Internationalism, Colonialism, and the Rise of a Medical Specialty, 1890–1930 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2012), 182–204; Holger Stoecker, Afrikawissenschaften in Berlin von 1919 bis 1945: Zur Geschichte und Topographie eines wissenschaftlichen Netzwerkes (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2008), 147–215.

12 ‘Mandated Territory: Tanganyika’, International Labor Review 7, nos. 2–3 (Feb.–Mar. 1923): 353; Andrew J. Crozier, ‘The Colonial Question in Stresemann's Locarno Policy’, The International History Review 4, no. 1 (Feb. 1982): 44–5.

13 Sean Andrew Wempe, ‘From Unfit Imperialists to Fellow Civilizers: German Colonial Officials as Imperial Experts in the League of Nations, 1919–1933’, German History 34, no. 1 (Mar. 2016): 21–48.

14 ‘Germans in Tanganyika’, The Times (2 Nov. 1925): 13.

15 See a similar range in the responses to the 1927 survey in ‘Soll Deutschland Kolonialpolitik treiben? Eine Umfrage’, Europäische Gespräche 5, no. 12 (Dec. 1927): 609–76.

16 Harald Simmel, ‘Die Kolonialabteilung des Auswärtigen Amtes und das Reichskolonialamt’, in Kolonialmetropole Berlin: eine Spurensuche, eds. Ulrich van der Heyden and Joachim Zeller (Berlin: Berlin Edition, 2002), 32; Paulette Reed-Anderson, ‘Chronologie zur Deutschen Kolonialgeschichte’, Bundeszentrale für Politische Bildung, https://www.bpb.de/themen/migration-integration/afrikanische-diaspora/59376/chronologie-zur-deutschen-kolonialgeschichte/ (accessed 8 June 2022).

17 In 1936, the Foreign Office was reorganised from a regional system, in place since 1920, back to the topically organised system used in Imperial Germany. In this new structure, the work of the Colonial Section fell mostly under the Political Department. Eckert Conze, Das Auswärtige Amt: Vom Kaiserreich bis zur Gegenwart (Munich: Verlag C.H. Beck, 2013), 89–90.

18 ‘Stellungnahme des Auswärtigen Amts vom 30 Jan. 1924’, reproduced in Reed-Anderson, ‘Die Förderung des “kolonialen Gedankes” durch kulturelle Akteure’, 117–18.

19 Ibid.

20 Ibid.

21 Johannes Hürter, Martin Kröger, Rolf Messerschmidt, and Christiane Scheidemann, eds., Biographisches Handbuch des deutschen Auswärtigen Dienstes, 1871–1945, vol. 1, A-F (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 2000), 301–2, 504; Gerhard Keipert and Martin Kröger, eds., Biographisches Handbuch des deutschen Auswärtigen Dienstes, 1871–1945, vol. 2, G-K (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 2005), 138.

22 ‘Anhang III. Geschäftsverteilungsplan des Auswärtigen Amts (Stand vom Nov. 1925)’, in Akten zur deutschen auswärtigen Politik, 1918–1945, Serie B: 1925–1933, Band I, 1 Dezember 1925 bis Juli 1926 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1966), 758.

23 Keipert and Kröger, Biographisches Handbuch, vol. 2, G-K, 234.

24 Reed-Anderson, ‘Die Förderung des “kolonialen Gedankes” durch kulturelle Akteure’, 119–20, fn. 701.

25 Ibid.

26 ‘Aufzeichnung des Geheimen Oberregierungsrats Brückner’ (10 Nov. 1924), Akten zur deutschen auswärtigen Politik, 1918–1945, Serie A: 1918–1925, Band XI, 5 Aug. bis 31 Dez. 1924 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1993), 374–5.

27 Sandler, Empire in the Heimat, 27–28.

28 ‘Aufzeichnung des Geheimen Oberregierungsrats Brückner’ (10 Nov. 1924), Akten zur deutschen auswärtigen Politik, 1918–1945, Serie A: 1918–1925, Band XI, 5 Aug. bis 31 Dez. 1924 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1993), 374.

29 Ibid., 375.

30 ‘Das Auswärtige Amt an den Reichsminister der Finanzen Luther’ (17 July 1924), Akten zur deutschen auswärtigen Politik, 1918–1945, Serie A: 1918–1925, Band X, 7 Apr. bis 4 Aug. 1924 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1992), 530.

31 Susan Pedersen, The Guardians: The League of Nations and the Crisis of Empire (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), 197–8.

32 Keipert and Kröger, Biographisches Handbuch, vol. 2, G-K, 137–8.

33 Theodor Gunzert papers, 1902–1933 (inclusive), Yale University Library [microfilm], 47.

34 Keipert and Kröger, Biographisches Handbuch, vol. 2, G-K, 138.

35 Ibid.

36 Theodor Gunzert papers, 1902–1933 (inclusive), Yale University Library [microfilm], 49.

37 Ibid.

38 Ibid. This view is confirmed in Conze, Das Auswärtige Amt, 44–5.

39 Conze, Das Auswärtige Amt, 55.

40 See, for example, Katharina Abermeth, Heinrich Schnee: Karrierewege und Erfahrungswelten eines deutschen Kolonialbeamten (Kiel: Solivagus Praeteritum, 2017), 460–78; Reed-Anderson, ‘Die Förderung des “kolonialen Gedankes” durch kulturelle Akteure’, 192–3.

41 Bernd Isphording, Gerhard Keiper, and Martin Kröger, eds., Biographisches Handbuch des deutschen Auswärtigen Dienstes, 1871–1945, vol. 4, S (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 2012), 305–6.

42 Report from Speiser, German Consul in Mombasa to the A.A. re: Ansiedlungsmoeglichkeiten im Bezirk Iringa, 15 Sept. 1926, BArch R 1001/40, Bl. 43-44.

43 Peter A. Dumbuya, Tanganyika Under International Mandate, 1919–1946 (Lanham: University Press of America, 1995), 103–4; ‘Mandated Territory: Tanganyika’.

44 Sean Andrew Wempe, Revenants of the German Empire: Colonial Germans, Imperialism, & the League of Nations (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019), 68–95.

45 Article 297 (i) (Economic Clauses), Treaty of Versailles, https://net.lib.byu.edu/~rdh7/wwi/versa/versa9.html (accessed 24 July 2023).

46 Anton Wirz, Kriegsschädengesetze. Das Verdrängungsschädengesetz, das Kolonialschädengesetz, und das Auslandsschädengesetz (Freiberg im Breisgau: Verlag von Julius Boltze, [1922]).

47 Ibid., 56.

48 Ibid., 56, fn. 1.

49 Ibid., 56–7, fn. 2.

50 See, for example, John Hiden, ‘The Weimar Republic and the Problem of the Auslandsdeutsche’, Journal of Contemporary History 12 (1977): 280.

51 Wolfgang Hinnenberg, ‘Die deutschen Bestrebungen zur wirtschaftlichen Durchdringung Tanganyikas 1925 bis 1933’ (PhD diss., Universität Hamburg, 1973), 51.

52 Ibid.

53 Ibid., 60.

54 Ibid., 63.

55 Ibid., 90, 118.

56 Söldenwagner, Spaces of Negotiation, 21–2.

57 Hinnenberg, ‘Die deutschen Bestrebungen zur wirtschaftlichen Durchdringung Tanganyikas 1925 bis 1933’, 59.

58 Letter from the A.A. to the Finance Ministry, 6 Nov. 1926, BArch R 1001/40, Bl. 69RS.

59 Ibid.

60 Ibid., 69RS-70.

61 ‘211. Der Reichsminister des Auswärtigen Stresemann an den Reichsminister der Finanzen Reinhold (Abschrift)’, 6 May 1926, Akten zur deutschen auswärtigen Politik, 1918–1945, Serie B, Band I, 1 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1966), 499; Hiden, ‘The Weimar Republic and the Problem of the Auslandsdeutsche’, 277, 280.

62 Rundschreiben, BArch R 1001/36, Bl. 45.

63 De Haas had worked for several export firms in China, the Philippines, India, and Australia. After 1903, he worked in the German Consulate in Sydney, Australia, until his internment in 1915. In 1920, he began work in the Foreign Office in Berlin and, in 1924, assumed the leadership of Division III. Keipert and Kröger, Biographisches Handbuch, vol. 2, G-K, 149–50.

64 Letter from de Haas, A.A. to Finance Ministry, 30 Dec. 1926, BArch R 1001/36, Bl. 97.

65 Ibid.

66 Ibid., 98.

67 Letter from Dr Lothholz, Finance Ministry to the A.A., 23 Feb. 1927, BArch R 1001/40, Bl. 213.

68 Memo from de Haas, Foreign Office, to Finance Ministry, 23 Apr. 1927, BArch R 1001/41, Bl. 144-5.

69 Ibid., Bl. 146-7.

70 Ibid., Bl. 147.

71 ‘aus Erlass I 9632 vom 7. Mai 1927 aus Kapitel XX 4 Tit. 17/1926 1,000,000 RM.’ ‘durch Kabinettsbeschluss vom 2. März 1932 1 750 000 RM, davon für südwestafrikanische Farmer abgezweigt 150 000 RM.’ ‘Zu AA 4303-1 I C. Vermerk’, BArch R 2/11639, n.p.

72 Hinnenberg, ‘Die deutschen Bestrebungen zur wirtschaftlichen Durchdringung Tanganyikas 1925 bis 1933’, 129–30.

73 John Iliffe, A Modern History of Tanganyika (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), 262.

74 Ibid., 303; Roland E. Richter, ‘Land Law in Tanganyika since the British Military Occupation and under the British Mandate of the League of Nations, 1916–1946’, in Land Law and Land Ownership in Africa: Case Studies from Colonial and Contemporary Cameroon and Tanzania, eds. Robert Debusmann and Stefan Arnold (Bayreuth: Eckhard Breitinger, Bayreuth University, 1996), 57–62.

75 Iliffe, Modern History of Tanganyika, 303.

76 Werner Biermann, The Tanzanian Economy, 1920–1985: Colonial Valorisation, Reconstruction, and Crisis (Münster: Lit, 1998), 26, 53; Ernst Weigt, Europäer in Ostafrika: Klimabedingungen und Wirtschaftsgrundlagen (Cologne: Geographisches Institut der Universität Köln, 1955), 48.

77 ‘Appendix B: Text of the Mandate for the Tanganyika Territory’, Michael D. Callahan, Mandates and Empire: The League of Nations and Africa, 1914–1931 (Brighton: Sussex Academic Press, 1999), 195.

78 Weigt, Europäer in Ostafrika, 55, 81; Hinnenberg, ‘Die deutschen Bestrebungen zur wirtschaftlichen Durchdringung Tanganyikas 1925 bis 1933’, 245.

79 Weigt, Europäer in Ostafrika, 76.

80 Iliffe, Modern History of Tanganyika, 302.

81 Michael Callahan, A Sacred Trust: The League of Nations and Africa, 1929–1946 (Brighton: Sussex Academic Press, 2004), 114; Copy of excerpt of minute by G.G. Fitzmaurice, 8 Nov. 1934, attached to letter from J.V. Perowne to G. F. Seel, 8 Dec. 1934, The National Archives Kew (hereafter TNA) CO 691/136/12, 43–7.

82 Southern Highlands of Tanganyika, Iringa Province (Colonists, Ltd., Iringa, Tanganyika Territory: 1925), 10, BArch R 1001/40.

83 ‘White Settlement in the Tanganyika Highlands’, East African Standard (6 Oct. 1926), BArch R 1001/40, Bl. 76–7.

84 Letter from the A.A. to the Finance Ministry, 30 Dec. 1926, BArch R 1001/40, Bl. 114-114RS.

85 John R. Davis, Stefan Manz, and Margrit Schulte Beerbühl, eds., Transnational Networks: German Migrants in the British Empire, 1670–1914 (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 9.

86 Ulrike Lindner, ‘German Colonialism and the British Neighbor in Africa Before 1914’, in German Colonialism: Race, the Holocaust, and Postwar Germany, eds. Mohammad Salama and Volker Langbehn (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011), 255. See also Ulrike Lindner, Koloniale Begegnungen: Deutschland und Großbritannien als Imperialmächte in Afrika, 1880–1914 (Frankfurt: Campus Verlag, 2011).

87 Memo from Speiser to A.A., 14 Nov. 1925, BArch R 1001/533, Bl. 110.

88 Letter from Speiser to Gunzert, 2 Apr. 1927, BArch R 1001/41, Bl. 167.

89 Letter from Gunzert to Speiser, 25 Aug. 1927, BArch R 1001/42, BL. 77-77RS.

90 Ibid.

91 Gunzert, ‘Aufzeichnung’, 26 Nov. 1927, BArch R 1001/18, Bl. 169.

92 Hinnenberg, ‘Die deutschen Bestrebungen zur wirtschaftlichen Durchdringung Tanganyikas 1925 bis 1933’; BArch R 1001/45, BArch R 1001/46, BArch R 1001/47.

93 See, for example, Blanke, Richard, Orphans of Versailles: The Germans in Western Poland 1918–1939 (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1993), 146–61Google Scholar; Hiden, ‘The Weimar Republic and the Problem of the Auslandsdeutsche’, 274.

94 Theodor Gunzert papers, 1902–1933 (inclusive), Yale University Library [microfilm], 54.

95 ‘Notes on the Activities of German Companies in Tanganyika Territory’, 6 June 1934, TNA CO 691/139/7, 19–20.

96 Notice, 10 July 1929, Politisches Archiv des Auswärtiges Amt (hereafter PA AA) RAV Nairobi, 18, S 20 Schriftwechsel mit General Investment and Development Company Ltd. in Daressalam. ‘Betrifft Rundschreiben No. 7 Nachkriegsfirmen. Bericht über Firma No. 4, Uhehe Comp Ltd Iringa’, BArch NS 9/301.

97 BArch R 1001/8002; BArch R 1001/8017; BArch R 1001/8018; BArch R 1001/8019.

98 See, for example, ‘Aufzeichnung betr. Kaffeekompensation Ostafrika 1936’, 12 Feb. 1936, BArch R 1001/8029, Bl. 67–8.

99 Letter from Brückner to German Consulate, Mombasa, 17 Aug. 1927, BArch R 1001/41, Bl. 372–3.

100 Letter to Herr Reutter, 15 Aug. 1927, BArch R 1001/42, Bl. 33/2.

101 Ibid.

102 Letter from Speiser to A.A., 19 Feb. 1927, BArch R 1001/41, Bl. 73.

103 Ibid.

104 Letter from William Ormsby-Core to Captain A. Evans, M.P., 8 Nov. 1927, TNA CO 691/91/11, 7; TNA CO 691/91/11, 22; ‘German Settlers in Tanganyika’, The Times (12 Apr. 1927): 7.

105 Callahan, A Sacred Trust, 67–8, 116, 121–2.

106 Letter from Gunzert to Speiser, 21 July 1927, BArch R 1001/41, Bl. 278.

107 Letter from Speiser to A.A., 29 Aug. 1927, BArch R 1001/42, Bl. 169.

108 Ibid.

109 ‘Aufzeichnung’, 12 Dec. 1927, BArch R 1001/43, Bl. 29–30.

110 Pedersen, The Guardians, 197–8.

111 Hinnenberg, ‘Die deutschen Bestrebungen zur wirtschaftlichen Durchdringung Tanganyikas 1925 bis 1933’, 141, Appendix 4, 271–3.

112 Theodor Gunzert papers, 1902–1933 (inclusive), Yale University Library [microfilm], 55.

113 Ibid.