German South West Africa Deutsch-Südwestafrika |
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German colony | |||||
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Green: German South-West Africa Dark Gray: Other German possessions Black: German Empire Note: The historical extent of German territories are depicted over present-day political borders. |
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Capital | Windhoek (from 1891) | ||||
Political structure | Colony | ||||
Governor | |||||
- 1898–1905 | Theodor von Leutwein | ||||
- 1905–1907 | Friedrich von Lindequist | ||||
- 1907–1910 | Bruno von Schuckmann | ||||
- 1910–1915 | Theodor Seitz | ||||
Historical era | Scramble for Africa | ||||
- Established | 7 August 1884 | ||||
- Genocide | 1904–1907 | ||||
- Disestablished | 9 July 1915 | ||||
- Treaty of Versailles | 1919 | ||||
Area | 835,100 km2 (322,434 sq mi) | ||||
Currency | German South West African mark |
German South-West Africa (German: Deutsch-Südwestafrika, DSWA) was a colony of the German Empire from 1884 until 1915, when it was taken over by the Union of South Africa (as part of the British Empire) and administered as South-West Africa, finally becoming Namibia in 1990. With an area of 835,100 km², it was one and a half times the size of the mainland German Empire in Europe (without its colonies) at the time.
Initial European contact with the areas which would become German South-West Africa came from traders and sailors, starting in January 1486 when Portuguese explorer Diogo Cão, possibly accompanied by Martin Behaim, landed at Cape Cross. However, for several centuries, European settlement would remain limited and temporary. In February 1805 the London Missionary Society established a small mission in Blydeverwacht, but the efforts of this group met with little success. In 1840 the London Missionary Society transferred all of its activities to the German Rhenish Missionary Society. Some of the first representatives of this organization were Franz Heinrich Kleinschmidt (who arrived in October 1842) and Carl Hugo Hahn (who arrived in December 1842). They began founding churches throughout the territory. The Rhenish missionaries had a significant impact initially on culture and dress, and then later on politics. During the same time that the Rhenish missionaries were active, merchants and farmers were establishing outposts.
On 16 November 1882 a German merchant from Bremen, Adolf Lüderitz, requested protection for a station that he planned to build in South-West Africa, from Chancellor Bismarck. Once this was granted, his employee Heinrich Vogelsang purchased land from a native chief and established a city at Angra Pequena which was renamed Lüderitz. On 24 April 1884, he placed the area under the protection of Imperial Germany to deter British encroachment. In early 1884, the Kaiserliche Marine ship SMS Nautilus visited to review the situation. A favourable report from the government, and acquiescence from the British, resulted in a visit from the SMS Leipzig and SMS Elisabeth. The German flag was finally raised in South-West Africa on 7 August 1884. The German claims on this land were confirmed during the Conference of Berlin. In fact, the indigenous peoples never held the idea of individually held land as "private property": land could never be alienated by any individual, no matter what his rank. All German land claims were fraudulent. In October, the newly-appointed Commissioner for West Africa, Gustav Nachtigal, arrived on the SMS Möwe.[1]
In April 1885, the Deutsche Kolonialgesellschaft für Südwest-Afrika (German Colonial Society for Southwest Africa, known as DKGSWA) was founded with the support of German bankers (Gerson von Bleichröder, Adolph von Hansemann), industrialists (Count Guido Henckel von Donnersmarck) and politicians (Frankfurt mayor Johannes von Miquel). DKGSWA was granted monopoly rights to expolit mineral deposits.[2] The new Society soon bought the assets of Lüderitz's failing enterprises. Later, in 1908, diamonds were discovered. Thus along with gold, copper, platinum, and other minerals, diamonds became a major investment. Earlier, the colonial aim was to dispossess the indigenous peoples of their land, for use of German settlers, as well as be a source of raw materials and a market of German industrial products.[2]
Lüderitz drowned in 1886 while on an expedition to the Orange River. The company bought all of Lüderitz’ land and mining rights, following Bismarck's policy that private rather than public money should be used to develop the colonies. In May, Heinrich Ernst Göring was appointed Commissioner and established his administration at Otjimbingwe. Then, on April 17, 1886, a law creating the legal system of the colony was passed, creating a dual system with laws for Europeans and different laws for natives.[3]
Over the next several years relations between the Germans and indigenous peoples continued to worsen. Additionally, the British settlement at Walvis Bay as well as numerous small farmers and missionaries were all involved in the area. A complex web of treaties, agreements and vendettas increased the unrest in the area. In 1888 the first group of Schutztruppen—colonial protectorate troops—arrived (they were sent secretly) to protect the base at Otjimbingwe. The Schutztruppe detachment consisted of two officers, five non-commissioned officers, and 20 black soldiers.
By the end of the year, the German commissioner Heinrich Ernst Göring was forced to flee to Walvis Bay after negotiations failed with a local tribe. Also, by the late 1880s, the South West Africa Company was nearly bankrupt and had to ask Bismarck for help and additional troops. By 1890 the colony was declared a Crown Colony and additional troops were sent to the area.[4] At the same time the colony grew through the acquisition of the Caprivi Strip in the northeast, which promised new trade routes. This territory was acquired through the Heligoland-Zanzibar Treaty between Britain and Germany.[5]
Almost simultaneously, in August through September, 1892, the South West Africa Company, Ltd (SWAC) was established by the German, British, and Cape Colony governments, aided by financiers to raise the capital required in order to enlarge mineral exploitation (specifically, the Damaraland concession's copper deposit interests).
German South-West Africa was the only German colony where Germans settled in large numbers. German settlers were drawn to the colony by economic possibilities in diamond and copper mining, and especially farming. In 1902 the colony had 200,000 inhabitants, though only 2,595 were German, 1,354 were Afrikaner, and 452 were British. By 1914, 9,000 more German settlers had arrived. There were probably around 80,000 Herero, 60,000 Ovambo, and 10,000 Nama, who were disparagingly referred to as Hottentots.
Through 1893 and 1894, the first "Hottentot Uprising" of the Nama and their legendary leader Hendrik Witbooi occurred. The following years saw many further local uprisings against German rule. Before the Herero and Namaqua Genocide of 1904-1907, the Herero and Nama had good reasons to distrust the Germans. This is discussed in Khaua-Mbandjeru Rebellion. This rebellion, in which the Germans tried to control the Khaua by seizing their property by artificially imposing European legal views of property ownership, led to the largest of the rebellions, known as the Herero Wars (or Herero Genocide) of 1904.
Remote farms were attacked, and approximately 150 German settlers were killed. The Schutztruppe of only 766 troops and native auxiliary forces was, at first, no match for the Herero. The Herero went on the offensive, sometimes surrounding Okahandja and Windhoek, and destroying the railway bridge to Osona. Additional 14,000 troops, hastened from Germany under Lieutenant General Lothar von Trotha, crushed the rebellion in the Battle of Waterberg.
Earlier von Trotha issued an ultimatum to the Herero people, denying them the right of being German subjects and ordering them to leave the country, or be killed. In order to escape, the Herero retreated into the waterless Omaheke region, a western arm of the Kalahari Desert, where many of them died of thirst. The German forces guarded every water source and were given orders to shoot any adult male Herero on sight. Only a few Herero managed to escape into neighbouring British territories.[6]
The German official military report on the campaign lauded the tactics:
This bold enterprise shows up in the most brilliant light the ruthless energy of the German command in pursuing their beaten enemy. No pains, no sacrifices were spared in eliminating the last remnants of enemy resistance. Like a wounded beast the enemy was tracked down from one water-hole to the next, until finally he became the victim of his own environment. The arid Omaheke [desert] was to complete what the German army had begun: the extermination of the Herero nation.
—Bley, 1971: 162
In late 1904, the Nama entered the struggles against the colonial power under their leaders Hendrik Witbooi and Jakobus Morenga, the latter often referred to as "the black Napoleon". This uprising was finally quashed during 1907 – 1908 In total, between 25,000 and 100,000 Herero, more than 10,000 Nama and 1,749 Germans died in the conflict.
After the official end of the conflict, the remaining natives, when finally released from detention, were subject to a policy of dispossession, deportation, forced labor, and racial segregation and discrimination in a system that in many ways anticipated apartheid and even perhaps foreshadowed the industrial-scale killing in Nazi Germany. The genocide remains relevant to ethnic identity in independent Namibia and to relations with Germany.[7]
The Germans maintained a number of concentration camps in the colony during their war against the Herero and Nama peoples.
In the table below, Extermination camps are highlighted in light red; Concentration camps are highlighted in blue, Collection or Work camps are unmarked.
Name[8][9] | Est. deaths[10] | Notes |
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Bondelslokation | ||
Karibib | ||
Keetmanshoop | ||
Lüdertiz | ||
Okahandja | Four subcamps or kraals:[11] #1: Young children; #2: Prisoners of War; #3: Sick and dying; #4: Police camp (mostly Damara) |
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Okomitombe | ||
Omaruru | ||
Omburo | ||
Otjihaenena | ||
Otjozongombe | ||
Shark Island | 3,000 | (In Lüderitzbucht, 121.2% for Nama, 30% for Herero) |
Swakopmund | 74% | |
Windhoek | 50.4% | There were two lager (camps) at Windhoek. |
Besides these camps the indigenous people were interned in other places. These included private businesses and government projects,[12] ships offshore,[13][14][15]
Etappenkommando in charge of supplies of prisoners to companies, private persons, etc., as well as any other materials. Concentration camps implies poor sanitation and a population density that would imply disease.[16]
Prisoners were used as slave laborers in mines and railways, for use by the military or settlers.[17][18][19][20][21] [22]
Children were abused and exterminated; women and children were used as slave labor; women and children were used as 'comfort women' and sex slaves; and the entire object of gaining profit for the Second Reich was placed into doubt at home in Germany.
One of the following images has been censored, though it appears in many books and is in the public domain; see Jurgen Zimmerer, Joachim Zeller and E. J. Neather, "Genocide in German South-West Africa: The Colonial War of 1904-1908 and Its Aftermath", Merlin Press (December 1, 2007), p. 137.
The Herero and Namaqua genocide has been recognised by the United Nations and by the German Federal Republic. At the 100th anniversary of the camp's foundation, German Minister for Economic Development and Cooperation Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul commemorated the dead on-site and apologised for the camp on behalf of Germany.[23][24]
Children were abused and exterminated; women and children were used as slave labor; women and children were used as 'comfort women' and sex slaves; and the entire object of gaining profit for the Second Reich was placed into doubt at home in Germany.
One of the following images has been censored, though it appears in many books and is in the public domain; see Jurgen Zimmerer, Joachim Zeller and E. J. Neather, "Genocide in German South-West Africa: The Colonial War of 1904-1908 and Its Aftermath", Merlin Press (December 1, 2007), p. 137.
Rohrbach tried to establish an independent Ukraine in 1918[25]
Rohrbach was associated with the Reichsgau Wartheland during the Third Reich |- | Heinrich Schneem || member NSDAP, governor German East Africa,
president Deutsche Kolonialgesellschaft (DKG),
president Deutsche weltwirtschaftliche gessellschaft |- | Theodore Seitz || governor of German Kamerun,
governor German South West Africa,
president Deutsche Kolonialgesellschaft (DKG) |}
The bridge between the the Second Reich and the Third Reich was through Germany's African colonial empire! See German Ost (East).
There was at least one German citizen who visited German South West Africa during the period between 1904 and 1908, as well as working closely with the Nazi Party in Germany (straddling the Second Reich and Third Reich): Eugen Fischer, director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Anthropology, Human Heredity, and Eugenics (KWI-A). Fischer also worked closely for many years with his old friend Baron Ottmar von Verschuer, who was his successor at the KWI-A. It is indisputable that Eugen Fischer was fully apprised of the activities of the Nazis.[26][27][28][29][30]
Paul Rohrbach was the Settlements Commissioner in GSWA. Concerned with miscegenation, he is quoted as follows:
"In order to secure the peaceful White settlement against the bad, culturally inept and predatory native tribe, it is possible that its actual eradication may become necessary under certain conditions."[31]
Independent of what was happening in German South West Africa, in 1918 the Germans had invaded the Ukraine while people like Symon Petliura were also trying to establish an independent Ukraine. Rohrbach worked with Field Marshal Hermann von Eichhorn, commander of the German forces in the Ukraine, to install General Pavel Petrovitch Skoropadski as "Hetmann" of the Ukraine.[32]
During the Third Reich, German colonists from German East Africa were moved into Polish land "annexed" in 1939, displacing Poles (the indigenous population), Jews and Gypsies. This new settlement area was called the Reichsgau Wartheland; as the people in Poland and the Ukraine were considered inferior, they could thus be exterminated and replaced with Germans from the former African colonies and other places.
"... Hitler, Darré, and other Nazi ideologues played down overseas colonialism and concentrated instead on contiguous German settlements in Eastern Europe and especially Ukraine where the Aryan 'soldier-peasant' tilled the soil with a weapon at his side, ready to defend the farm from the 'Asian hordes.' As for the Ukrainians whom the Nazis pejoratively branded 'Negroes,' Hitler remarked that the Germans would supply them 'with scarves, glass beads and everything that colonial people like.'"[33]
Also active both in Deutsch-Südwestafrika and in Nazi Germany were two members of a well-known family: Heinrich Ernst Göring and Hermann Göring.
Franz Ritter von Epp also straddled both the Second Reich and the Third Reich. He served as a company commander in the German colony Deutsch-Südwestafrika, where he took part in the bloody Herero and Namaqua Genocide.[34] Von Epp also served as the NSDAP's head of its Military-Political Office from 1928 to 1945, and later as leader of the German Colonial Society, an organization devoted to regaining Germany's lost colonies.
Since several later NSDAP leaders were either active in, or informed about, the camp's operation, it has been described as an important predecessor of later Nazi extermination camps during the holocaust.[35]
Several other notable members of the NSDAP received their initial education repressing people in German colonies, including:
Franz Ritter von Epp | Reichsstatthalter of Bavaria, member of GSWA schutztruppen |
Heinrich Ernst Göring Hermann Göring |
Heinrich worked in German Southwest Africa, Hermann was a well known member of the NSDAP |
Hans Grimm | Originated the slogan Lebensraum while in GSWA in 1910 A sympathizer who influenced the NSDAP since 1923, and held many of the same beliefs[36] |
Eduard von Liebert | member NSDAP, governor German South West Africa |
Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck | joined NSDAP in 1928, German South West Africa German Kamerun and German East Africa, with General von Trotha |
Friedrich von Lindequist | member NSDAP, governor German South West Africa |
Karl Peters | member NSDAP in 1933, founder of German East Africa, (praised by Kaiser Wilhelm II and Hitler) |
Wilhelm Röemann | member NSDAP, in German South West Africa (under General von Trotha) |
Paul Rohrbach | Settlement commissioner in GSWA[37]
Rohrbach tried to establish an independent Ukraine in 1918[25] |
Heinrich Schneem | member NSDAP, governor German East Africa, president Deutsche Kolonialgesellschaft (DKG), president Deutsche weltwirtschaftliche gessellschaft |
Theodore Seitz | governor of German Kamerun, governor German South West Africa, president Deutsche Kolonialgesellschaft (DKG) |
The bridge between the the Second Reich and the Third Reich was through Germany's African colonial empire! See German Ost (East).
The objective of the policy of German South West Africa Governor Theodor von Leutwein was not to destroy the indigenous populations (Herero, Nama, Damara) in order to seize their land to encourage settlement of German farmers; nor was it to seize or kill the cattle. Leutwein's objective was not genocide, and he was wise enough to realize that the indigenous population could be used as a labor supply. However, such Flavian tactics left Leutwein open to attack at home, with a public who wanted the instant gratification of a decisive defeat of the indigenous peoples of German South West Africa. (This was the same problem Augustus Flavius had with the Roman public, who wanted him to quickly defeat Hannibal.) As a consequence, Leutwein was pushed aside by Kaiser Wilhelm II and replaced by Lothar von Trotha, already known for his brutality in China as well as German East Africa. The result was the genocide of the indigenous population, the economic ruin of German South West Africa, and the eventual loss of the German colonial empire.[38][39]
As a consequence of this failed, brutal policy, Trotha was forced to leave German South West Africa and replaced by Friedrich von Lindequist, who completed the genocide with the use of extermination camps and concentration camps. In order for this policy to be acceptable at home, propaganda was employed. The claim was made that the 'barbaric' indigenous population wished to murder defenseless women and children. In fact, only four German women were killed, and one German child.
During World War I, South African troops opened hostilities with an assault on the Ramansdrift police station on 13 September 1914. German settlers were transported to prison camps near Pretoria and later in Pietermaritzburg. Because of the overwhelming superiority of the South African troops, the German Schutztruppe, along with groups of Afrikaner volunteers fighting in the Maritz Rebellion on the German side, offered opposition only as a delaying tactic. On 9 July 1915, Victor Franke, the last commander of the Schutztruppe, capitulated near Khorab.
After the war, the territory came under the control of Britain, and then was made a South African League of Nations mandate. In 1990, the former colony became independent as Namibia, governed by the former liberation movement SWAPO.
Many German names, buildings, and businesses still exist in the country, and about 30,000 people of German descent still live there. German is still widely used in Namibia, with the Namibian Broadcasting Corporation operating a German language radio station, while the daily newspaper Allgemeine Zeitung, founded in 1916, remains in publication.
So they will be granted just that degree of protection which they need as a race inferior to us, in order to endure, no more and only as long as they are useful to us -- otherwise free competition, i.e. in my opinion, here downfall!
This last comment by Fischer reads like a retrospective justification of the war of extermination the German colonial troops had led against the rebellious Herero and Nama from 1904 to 1908. Fischer had profited from this genocide directly, for he apparently brought skulls and skeletons of "Hottentots" with him from Southwest Africa, which may have come from the internment camps on Shark Island, where people died like flies. The skeleton of the Nama leader Cornelius Frederiks (1907) also supposedly came into Fischer's collection in this way."
In repetition of earlier conversations, Prof. Eugen Fischer designated prof. von Verschuer in Frankfort as a suitable successor. [...]
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