Wilhelm Heinrich Solf, good

Yesterday

Wilhelm Heinrich Solf, good governor of German Samoa

JOSEPH THEROUX begins a two-part series on one of the most remarkable and successful of German colonial administrators in the Pacific, Governor WILHELM HEIN RICH SOLE of German Samoa.

George Orwell once wrote of British colonial rule as not much good, but preferable to “the new er governments that are going to supplant it”. In may ways he was right. One thinks of the chaos certain African nations were thrown into upon receiving inde pendence. And elsewhere, where there was little or no violence, inefficiency became the normal state of affairs, economic insani ty ruled with a will.

In the Pacific, island nations achieved independence gradually and with seeming peacefulness.

The one exception was Vanuatu, having struggled under two gov ernments, a condominium. With generous outside aid, many of the island nations have managed to hobble along.

But think of an island nation, tom by inter-district warfare, vil lage fighting village, three native leaders claiming kingship, and under the jurisdiction of not two foreign governments, but three; a tridominium. The battles which raged were political, obviously, but economic as well: German planters, American and British businessmen, joined in eagerly.

Its records read like the Hundred Years’ War.

When this intolerable situation was finally resolved, at the cost of countless lives, by the Tripar tite Decision of 1899, this island nation needed a hand so strong, a brain so understanding and a heart as full of right as intrigue, that one would have despaired of ever identifying such a leader.

He would need the wisdom of Solomon, the training of a ling uist, the insights of an an thropologist, the tact of a dip lomat, and the authoritarianism of a Bismarck. And the wondr ous thing was the man ap peared. He was the greatest ad

ministrator Western Samoa has ever seen.

Wilhelm Solf was a judge, was a linguist, was a student of culture, was a diplomat, and, in fact, looked like Bismarck.

C. Brunsdon Fletcher (in The Problem of the Pacific) tells us: “He was Bismarck’s counterpart in size and girth ... he was physically a man to appeal to the heroic in Australasian imagina tions. Standing four inches over six feet, he was proportionally broad and large.”

J.C. Furnas (in Anatomy of Paradise) agrees: “. . .a granite faced, monocle-eyed, rigidly hefty satrap of empire whom the islands still remember as a most considerable man.”

Nelson A. Rowe (in Samoa Under the Sailing Gods) adds: “Dr Solf took over a country where there were practically no public buildings, and but few roads, and which recently had been riven with civil war . . .

During (his) time roads were made, bridges built and public buildings erected. The administ ration appears to have been a model of quiet and easy-going efficiency.”

Strangely, Fletcher notes: “Before Dr Sol left Samoa, his name could be 1 >und in the Ger man Who’s Whi . but with no particulars. He was just Gover nor of Samoa. No dates or triumphs marked the line and a half of the announcement . . .”.

It was as if a man had merely surfaced, as often happens in history, to do a particularly dif ficult task, and then disappeared.

However the truth was not as simple as that. He was, among other things, decorated by the Kaiser and awarded honorary de grees. He was, briefly, his coun try’s foreign secretary, and the subject of a Nazi interrogation.

But few encyclopedias mention him, and no English biography of him exists. Who was this Dr Solf? • • • Wilhelm Heinrich Solf was bom in Schonburg, a suburb of Ber lin, on October 5, 1862, the son of a burgomaster, of a merchant family. He studied linguistics in Berlin, Kiel and Gottingen. His speciality was Sanskrit, but at the “Orientalischen Seminar, Berlin” he also studied Hindi, Urdu and Persian. In 1885, he earned his doctorate of philology. He work ed in the library at the university at Kiel for several years.

Then the Foreign Office took note of him and his special

abilities, and on December 10, 1888, he joined them. Less than a month later, on January 1, he was assigned to the German Em bassy in Calcutta as attache, and remained there for a year.

On February 28, 1891, he re signed from the Foreign Office and began to study law at the university at Jena. By 1893, he was a junior barrister. On March

Wilhelm Solf, a 1908 photo graph on the occasion of his decoration by the Kaiser. Oval shaped portraits were a fashion of the time, and this one was reproduced only a few years ago on a postage stamp issued by Western Samoa.

20 of that year, he took a job preparing legal briefs for the county judge. By 1896, he was an assistant judge and later that year he joined the Colonial De partment of the Foreign Office and was to be associated with it for much of the rest of his life, eventually becoming Foreign Secretary for Colonial Affairs in the government of Prince Max of Baden, and later the Weimar Republic’s Ambassador to Tokyo.

Prior to his Samoan assign ment, he was District Judge in Dar-es-Salaam (from April 5, 1898 to January 14, 1899). All his life up to this point seemed merely a prelude, a preparation for the onerous task ahead.

All he had learned in universi ty, in the colonies as attache, and as judge, he would need for what turned out to be his longest foreign assignment: 10 years as Imperial Governor in the strife tom islands of German Samoa. • • • He arrived in Apia, the capital, on May 3, 1899, only 36 years of age having stopped in Fiji to study the British methods of ad ministration. (“. . . a Prussian in Samoa ... the mildest of ad ministrators, British rather than German in mind and method . . Fletcher.) On August 6, he was elected President of the Municipal Council of Apia. But changes were swift. He was no longer the ruling consul by De cember. The Three Powers (Ger many, England and the U.S.) divided the Samoas, leaving Western, or German, Samoa, a new colony of the Kaiser. Solf announced his governorship in February 1900 and on March 1 the German flag was raised at Mulinu’u, the historic Samoan peninsula, “to the strains of ‘Heil Kaiser Dir’.” (Watson’s History of Samoa.) The islands of Upolu, Savai’i, Apolima and Manono, including the surrounding islets, were now under the Malo Kaisalika, “the Imperial Govem ment,” with Sold fa as Gouverneur.

Paul Kennedy (in The Samoan Tangle) wrote; “. . . the L.M.S. missionaries, who had originally feared the effects of the new arrangment, were soon praising the German administration and voluntarily started to learn Ger

man.” Fumas, writing as late as the 19305, said: “Samoan chil dren playing soldier in remote villages are heard to shout: ‘Ach tung! Ein, zwei, drei, vier 9 99 • • • Solf had learned his school les sons well. He set about learning the Samoan language and cus toms, and issuing regulations with the no-nonsense closing: “This is my word; everyone must obey it. Solf.” He forbade the sale of alcohol to the natives; he decreed that “all firearms in na tives’ possession must be turned in”; he fought the importation of both Chinese labor and small German planters. (The former would create, he said, “an unde sirable mixed race” and “and the Chinese would (eventually) dominate commerce there”; the latter he was against for they “were apt to become a burden on the little tropical colony”

Watson, History of Samoa.) Ger man was proclaimed the lan guage of education, and he in stituted the Malaga Regulation of 1903, “which forbade parties of more than eight persons to travel” between German and American Samoa (aslarge travel ling parties malagas were sometimes prone to reduce their hosts to paupers); and the 1902 Regulation, which required each chief to plant 50 coconuts per year.

His first act as governor, and perhaps his greatest, was to halt the alienation of land, for which every Samoan should be grate ful. Except for the area surround ing Apia (called the Plantation District, seven square miles), and government land acquired as freehold, no property could be “sold, mortgaged, leased or otherwise . . .”, “with the inten tion of saving for the natives their landed properties for them selves and their issue . . .” (quoted by Felix Keesing in his Modern Samoa.) The largest German plantation was originally founded by the commercial empire of Godeffroy and Sons in 1855. It eventually became the DH & PG. (Its land claims were among the few that had been adjudged legal by the Land Commission of 1891- 1894.) Its full name was Zweig niederlassung der Deutschen

Handels-und Plantagen- Gesellschaft der Sudseeinseln zu Hamburg, but was known as simply “the German Firm” or “the Long Handle Firm”. Part of Solf’s job was to encourage its successes in oil, copra and rub ber production. (The business still exists as the Western Samoa Trust Estates Corporation, or

W.S.T.E.C.)

As a student of Samoan cul ture, Solf had read Augustin Kramer’s exhaustive study, done in the 1890 s, Die Samoa Inseln (still unsurpassed as a sour cebook). Nevertheless, early in 1904 he issued a memo to his staff cautioning them not to rely too heavily on it and listing its errors. He also tried to correct what he saw as abuses in Samoan custom, such as excessive

malagas, or traditional punish

ments like banishments: Whereas many reports have reach ed me saying that some of the Sa moan people have been banished and forced away from their own homes and villages. It is also said that such is the Samoan custom.

I hereby make known to you that such custom is a very bad one, and I have now decided that I cannot up hold such a bad custom. I do there fore declare that if anyone, whether

he be a chief or a tulafale (orator) or a common person, whether he be a government official or not, again take the law into his own hands and remove a person away from his own home and family, he will be severely punished with imprisonment not less than six months.

That is my word; everyone must

obey it.

Solf, Governor.

Apia

16th September 1901 (quoted by Rowe)

Early on, Solf decided that the ali’i sili or “highest chief’ (then Mata’afa) was incompatible with the tupu sili or “highest king,” who for Solf, of course, was the Kaiser. Before Mata’afa’s inves titure as ali’i sili was held in June of 1901, Solf made a particular study of the intricacies of the ceremony. He realised the paramount function of the fine mats in the cultural economy and also that, as an old man, Mata’a fa had not long to live. Solf decided therefore, to let the in vestiture take place, with modifi cations, and to allow the title of ali’i sili to lapse upon the death of the old chief.

Keesing wrote: “(Solf) devised a scheme by which the mats should be gathered to do honor to the Kaiser and then redistributed by him (Solf) through the ali’i sili..” One thousand nine hundr ed and thiry-two fine mats took several months to distribute. It was a clever coup by Solf the tactician and Solf the student of culture. He had only been in Samoa two years. • • • In late 1902, he toured Savai’i.

There he visited chiefs and trad ers alike. “He would call upon the trader; and, if the trader were

at all a decent fellow, was not above sitting down with him to a meal. The traders were of course appreciative of this treatment, and were strong partisans of the government,” wrote Rowe, him self a trader at one time. (He also noted; “It was in Sili, Savai’i, that the old obscene dances and games were staged by the Deputy Administrator, for the informa-

This office with residence in Apia was built more than 100 years ago for Godeffroy and Sons, founding company of “The Long Handle Firm” which gained Solf’s official approval.

Western Samoa Trust Estates corporation evolved from “The Long Handle Firm.”

Spot the difference: Wilhelm Solf and his two-horse carriage in Apia about the turn of the century. The top picture is from the photographer’s original print. The smaller picture is from a published version which appears to have undergone editorial censorship in the inter ests of purity.

tion of the governor; probably for the last time.”) But the German planters, odd ly enough, were not “strong partisans”.

A certain Richard Deeken, an ex-lieutenant turned cocoa plant er, had published a book in 1902 of “travel sketches and observa tions” called Manuia Samoa! (sometimes translated as Heil Samoa!). He included inviting descriptions of the islands as a German settlement and alluring photos of scantily clad Samoan girls. He envisioned a “little Ger many”, ruled by German planters and worked by imported coolie labor from China. Solf, against imported labor and in favor of “the Long Handle Firm”, came down hard against him, and Deeken retaliated by beginning a long campaign to have Solf re moved by the Reichstag.

Keesing records the opinion of a mysterious “German official” (probably Solf) as to the ag ro/economic future of the islands: Samoa is not the country for small settlement and I cannot write too strongly against the emmigration of small settlers. The economic exploi tation of this well-promising colony shall and must be the task of the person of medium and great capital.

The work now done by small settlers traders, planters or craftsmen will need to be done by employees of individuals or companies with suffi cient means, selected people who by contract are entitled to leave for home after so many years.

Actually Solf failed to prevent the imporation of Chinese labor ers. In 1903, 208 of them ar rived. He sought, instead, three year contracts for them. They would then return to China. In 1905, 550 swelled the ranks.

Legislation was passed to keep Chinese laborers away from Sa moan women. It, too, failed. (“Race-contamination” was a common liberal belief in those days. Solf was not immune to it.

Rowe waxes indignant on the subject. So while many Chinese did return, some stayed and went into business and married Sa moan girls, who loved being treated like queens. And as for the races mixing, they produced beautiful families, girls like goddesses.) Solf also had run-ins with the Catholic clergy. Though he pre

ferred them generally to other missionaries, for their tolerance of Samoan customs, he disagreed on educational grounds. Bishop Broyer, as described in Hugh Laracy’s essay “The Solf-Broyer Dispute” (NZ Journal of His tory), sought an agricultural school supported by the govern ment but staffed by Catholics.

Solf wanted a religiously mixed school. Broyer, like Deeken, contacted his connections in the Reichstag, and he and Solf even tually compromised. It was to the ruling Central Party’s credit that they never lost faith in Solf.

“Old-timers in Apia still look back on his regime as a sort of grim Golden Age when, however arbitrary government was, every body knew just where he stood, or at least could rapidly find out,” Furnas wrote, “by stepping out of line ...” An example?

Once, as Solf rode his carriage through Apia, a Father Wilhelm Halles saluted Solf with his left hand. Halles later maintained that he was unable to salute with his right hand as he was carrying packages. Solf had Broyer trans fer (banish?) Halles to Leone in American Samoa. German jus tice could be harsh.

His relations with Samoans were generally cordial. Speaking toth eFono, or Legislature, . .

Dr. Solf is remembered to have said that he wished them to at tend their fonos attired in their tappa (sic) cloths and hung with their ulas of scented flowers, for so he could admire them; while dressed in imitation of white men they looked like apes; and with this dictum they are said to have been much pleased.” (Rowe).

After all, he was praising their native costume, at a time when few Europeans, let alone Ger mans, saw much to compliment in it.

“Dr Solf is about the best man that anyone could sit alongside at any function, as he knows every allusion in every language, and if his near neighbors are not so well versed as he is, he will willingly give them a helping hand so that they can understand the gist of what is going on.” ( Samoanische Zeitung, September 24, 1910.) o Next month: A revolt defused, achievements, departure from Samoa, and an old lady’s recollec tions of 1982.