Coins and Historical Medals

GERMAN EAST AFRICA, ‘Die Deutsche Emin Pasha Expedition’, 1890, medals by O. Oertel (3), in silver, bronze and white metal, bust of Dr Carl Peters three-quarters right in hat, revs. robed female holding German flag over a flat landscape, trees and radiant sun at left, all 38mm (BDM IV, 303; cf. Künker e63, 1085) [3]. White metal with trifling rim nicks, otherwise all extremely fine, an attractive and very rare group £500-£700

Dr Carl Peters (1856-1918), controversial colonial ruler, explorer and politician, founded the Gesellschaft für Deutsche Kolonisation pressure group, which agitated for the acquisition of colonies. Following a trip to East Africa he formed by the German East Africa company in 1885. Playing off Bismarck’s initial opposition by threatening to sell his African acquisitions to Leopold II of Belgium, he won over the pro-colonial element in the Reichstag and further expansion of German interests in East Africa followed. An agreement with the Sultan of Zanzibar in 1888 to lease coastal dominions in what became Tanganyika presaged an expedition to extend the area of German influence in Uganda, although as it was not sanctioned by the German government Peters later excused his venture as being for the relief of Emin Pasha. Meanwhile the British government had taken a dim view of Peters’ exploits and, by virtue of the Heligoland-Zanzibar Treaty of 1890, Uganda remained under British influence. In 1891 Peters was appointed Reichskommissar for the Kilimanjaro region in Moshi, and the following year was one of the commissioners for delimiting the Anglo-German boundary with the British East Africa Company in that region. But Peters, by his brutal behaviour against the local population, provoked a rebellion which was to cost him his office. He used local girls as concubines and, discovering that his lover Jagodja had an affair with his man-servant Mabruk, he had both of them sentenced for theft and treason, hanged by court-martial and their home villages destroyed. The incident, which Peters tried to keep from the authorities in Germany, provoked resistance by the local Chaga people and again necessitated costly military action. Peters was recalled to Berlin and was dishonourably discharged, although was pardoned by Kaiser Wilhelm in 1914