| Styles of Prince Asfa-Wossen Asserate |
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|---|---|
| Reference style | His Imperial Highness |
| Spoken style | Your Imperial Highness |
| Alternative style | Sir |
Prince Asfa-Wossen Asserate (Amharic: አስፋ-ዎሠን አሠርዓተ; born October 31, 1948 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia), is a management consultant and an author writing in German, and a member of the Solomonic dynasty, the deposed royal family of Ethiopia. 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 the 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. 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 citizen 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.
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.