Asfa-Wossen Asserate

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Asfa-Wossen Asserate (born October 31, 1948 in Addis Abeba, Ethiopia), Imperial Highness, is a management consultant and an author writing in German. He is a grandnephew of the last Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie and a son of the former governor and viceroy of Eritrea, Li'ul Ras Asserate Kasa (Asserate-Maryam Kasa).

Lij ('prince') Asfa-Wossen went to a German school in Addis Abeba, before studying law, economics and history in Tübingen and Cambridge. In 1978, he earned a PhD in Ethiopian history in Frankfurt am Main. In 1974 a Communist revolution in Ethiopia made impossible his return to his homeland: his father and sixty other dignitaries of the Haile Selassie regime were executed without a trial. The Asserate family was held under house arrest for years without knowing when and if they would be released. His younger brother Mulugheta Asserate was spared from arrest and worked for the Ethiopian State Television. Prince Asfa-Wossen Asserate who learned of the fate of his father over the radio has been living in Germany ever since and became a German national in 1981.

Since 1983, he has been working as a management consultant and author. He dedicated much of his energies campaigning against the Communist dictatorship in Ethiopia, and above all, he pulled all diplomatic strings to help his incarcerated family. After the fall of the Communist Mengistu regime in 1991 he has been striving to improve the foreign trade relations of his native country. Furthermore, he has been committed to human rights. In 1994 he founded „Orbis Aethiopicus“, a society that holds scientific congresses with a focus on Ethiopian culture, history and other matters.

[edit] Literary work

In 2003, his book "Manieren" ("Manners") was published. It deals with the topic of manners in the context of sociology and cultural history in European societies. It is not meant to be a guide of good manners, but tries to give a rather descriptive approach. But as the author often also reveals his opinions on certain problems of behaviour, the book does give some orientation.