Bismarckburg was a colonial station in the German colony of Togo.
It was named after the founder of the German empire,
Otto von Bismarck
Otto, Prince of Bismarck, Count of Bismarck-Schönhausen, Duke of Lauenburg (, ; 1 April 1815 – 30 July 1898), born Otto Eduard Leopold von Bismarck, was a conservative German statesman and diplomat. From his origins in the upper class of J ...
.
History
The station was founded in June 1888 by the explorer
Ludwig Wolf
Heinrich Ludwig Wolf (29 January 1850 – 26 June 1889) was a German doctor and anthropologist.
Early years
Heinrich Ludwig Wolf was born on 29 January 1850 in Hagen, Osnabrück, Germany.
He studied Medicine at the University of Greifswald and ...
.
It was one of the first permanently inhabited European stations in the interior of West Africa and was located on the 750 meter high Adadoberg.
In the years 1889–90 the station was headed by Erich Kling and was the starting point for several expeditions to explore the hinterland and to expand German influence in the area.
Kling and his successor
Richard Büttner Oskar Alexander Richard Büttner (28 September 1858 – 1927) was a German botanist and mineralogist who was involved in the exploration of the Congo Basin.
Life
Büttner was born in Brandenburg on 28 September 1858.
He studied in Berlin, where h ...
had a palisade fence built for fortification.
At that time, the station consisted of nine adobe buildings arranged in a rectangle.
The built-up area was .
The station was manned by two Germans - the station manager and a mechanic.
Outside the palisades were agricultural areas on which cultivation trials with European crops and tropical crops were carried out.
Around 1900 a
cola and
coffee plantation was still in operation.
The Imperial Commissariat under
Jesko von Puttkamer was skeptical of the station due to its remoteness and economic inefficiency.
Instead of directing trade to the coast of German Togo, it strengthened the existing connections to the British
Gold Coast.
As early as 30 June 1894, the status as a European station was revoked.
Between 1888 and 1897, a weather station of the was active in Bismarckburg.
The colonial station was still under the control of a German district manager in Kete Krachi as a secondary station until 1914.
It remained economically important as African traders came to the area to buy rubber.
Notes
Sources
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Weblinks
Photo of the Bismarckburg Station in TogoBismarckburg Großer deutscher Kolonialatlas, Archivführer Deutsche Kolonialgeschichte
* Mèhèza Kalibani
Zwischen "Bismarckburg" und "Nachtigalplatz". Die Kolonie als politisches Symbol des Kaiserreichs anhand der 'Musterkolonie' Togo Munich, GRIN Verlag 2019, https://www.grin.com/document/477611.
Further reading
*Bismarckburg. In: Heinrich Schnee (Hrsg.): Deutsches Kolonial-Lexikon. Quelle & Meyer, Leipzig 1920, Band I, S. 217 (online).
*Meyers Enzyklopädisches Lexikon.
*Der große Weltatlas, Kartographisches Institut Bertelsmann, Gütersloh 1963.
*Peter Sebald: Togo 1884–1914. Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 1988, S. 82ff
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Populated places in Togo