Welcome to Noon Misma Talks every second and fourth Thursday of the month at Noon Mountain. We will be here with a new presentation. During this presentation, you may come up with questions. If you do, please use the Q&A button on your screen.
to send in your questions as you are all muted during this presentation. Doug will address those at the end. Now I would like to introduce you to today's presenter, Douglas Mudd.
Doug is the curator director of the American Numismatic Association, Edward C. Rocha Money Museum in Colorado Springs, Colorado. He is responsible for developing planning and content of the museum's exhibition program and the organization and care of the ANA collections. He has created dozens of numismatic exhibits, apparently, I can't speak today, for the museum and for the ANA semi-annual conventions.
His recent work has expanded the museum's exhibits into the virtual world. Doug will be presenting Colonial Currency, German East Africa, and Doug, it's all yours. Thanks very much, Paula. Let me see if I'll start sharing the screen. So yeah, welcome everybody.
We'll be talking about a subject which I find very interesting and discovered about, geez, nearly 20 years ago, and started really looking into. So this is one of those areas of numismatic history that are so frequently touched upon when you see some unusual piece or something like that. And then.
If you spend the time to start looking into it, you find out there's a whole story. Well, German East Africa has fascinated me because of its location in one of the last regions of Africa to be explored. The old phrase, darkest Africa, referred to Central Africa and East Africa equally for many decades.
And its exploration was the stuff of legends. The search for the source of the Nile, Henry Morton Stanley, David Livingston, Richard Burton, John Speak, Samuel Baker, all of these... famous names played a part in developing my interest in the region.
When I discovered the numismatic background of what was to become Tanzania, my interest was piqued yet again. So I ask you today to follow me on this numismatic exploration of a fascinating region of the world. So prior to the mid-19th century, the coast of East Africa was colonized by Arab slave traders.
Islam was busily spreading from across the Sahara and into Central Africa and along the Gold Coast. Primarily, it began with Arab slave traders to feed the very strong market for slaves within the Arab world. Now, these Arabs on the East African side settled along the coast, venturing into the interior with their caravans in search of these slaves. As they began to penetrate further into the interior, they also discovered ivory, which in time became as important to their commerce as the slave trade. Tabora and Ujiji on Lake Tanganyika became the most important trading posts along these routes.
In East Africa during the early to mid-19th century, there was no central authority large or powerful enough to establish a universal currency standard. Nevertheless, people needed money, and there appeared an ad hoc monetary standard of sorts. over the course of the century as Arab slavers, Indian merchants, and Omani Zanzibari sultans increased their influence in the area.
This standard was based on the use of cowrie shells, Indian rupees, and Maria Theresa Tollers. All three were introduced from abroad through trade. Cowrie shells from the islands of the Indian Ocean, Maria Theresa Tollers through Arab traders, and there's a fascinating story that goes with those because these are all dated 1740, and they all date from the time of Maria Theresa, 1780, I'm sorry, Maria Theresa, and were issued by Austria, the Austrian-Hungarian Empire. They all reached the area of East Africa through Arab traders and Indian rupees through Indian merchants during the last quarter of the 19th century.
It's an interesting... story that goes behind these because when the British started going into East Africa, they were shocked when the natives were unwilling to take British gold sovereigns. They wanted to have cowries or they wanted these Maria Theresa Tollers and the English were insulted.
One of the explorers apparently went to the local British consul and complained that The natives wouldn't take the good British coinage and created a little bit of a furor. Eventually, London actually created its own tollers to make sure that they were acceptable within the region. The first Europeans to show interest in East Africa were missionaries of the London-based Church Mission Society.
At this time, other explorers were active in their attempt to locate the source of the Nile River, thus stimulating more interest in the region. These geographical explorations probed deeper and deeper into the interior, eventually leading to the discovery of Lake Victoria and Lake Nyasa by Richard Burton and John Speake. These men were soon followed by such well-known adventurers as David Livingstone and H.M.
Stanley. The Germans, though late comers to colonialism, were able to stake claims to huge areas of the southwest, east, and west. and the Gold Coast of Africa during the last decades of the 19th century. They acquired these territories with the approval of the great powers, the European great powers, who met at Berlin in 1884-85.
In 1884, at the request of Portugal, German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck called together the major European powers to discuss control of Africa. Fourteen countries were represented at the conference, and on November 15, 1884, They joined together to discuss the fate of this whole continent. Of course, very few Africans were even aware that this existed.
And I believe only the king of Ethiopia was actually involved in any way at all. So these countries were Austria-Hungary, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy. The Netherlands, Portugal, Russia, Spain, Sweden, Norway, Turkey, and the United States.
France, Germany, Great Britain, and Portugal were the major players in the conference as nations that already had large colonies within the continent. At the time of the conference, 80% of Africa remained under local rule. What ultimately resulted was a hodgepodge of geometric boundaries that divided Africa into 50 countries.
This new map of the continent was superimposed over the old tribal and cultural boundaries and regions of Africa. The new countries divided coherent groups of people and merged together disparate groups with results that are still felt today. We hear it in the news even on a yearly basis, even monthly basis sometimes.
German East Africa was located in Eastern Africa in what is now part of Tanzania, Rwanda, and Burundi. The Germans first laid claim to these territories in 1885 when the Deutsches Ostafrikanische Gesellschaft, the German East Africa Company, was formed to colonize and exploit the resources of the region. Germany, together with Great Britain, focused its interest upon East Africa. These efforts began in 1884 when Dr. Karl Peters, one of the founders of the German Colonization Society, with an aim to bring Germany into the light of leading powers by having colonies, just like the other major countries such as Great Britain, set out for East Africa in search of a suitable colony. In November of that year, Peter succeeded in concluding a series of so-called treaties with the local chiefs.
Kaiser Wilhelm II accepted these somewhat spurious claims as valid, whereupon the German government declared a protectorate over the region in 1885. The German East Africa Company was organized to administer the newly acquired colony. At the time, the Sultan of Zanzibar also held a vaguely substantiated claim to much of the territory on the mainland. They were in charge of the island of Zanzibar. They were originally Omani sultans that had transferred from Oman due to Saudi Arabian pressure on their original homeland.
They decided to... relocate their capital to Zanzibar and began exploiting the coastal area of what became Tanzania. In 1891, after several native uprisings, Germany took direct control of the colony and made it a crown colony of the German Empire.
By 1898, Germany succeeded in occupying all of the interior, and the Sultan of Zanzibar's claims were repudiated when a joint German and British agreement was reached to end the Sultan's claim within Germany's Africa in 1914. for a payment of 200,000 pounds to the sultan who was not allowed to take part in the decision itself. And here you can get an idea of the terrain. Basically it's hot savannah bounded by coastal swamps in the east temperate central highlands which were a prime area for colonization because they were much like the European areas of the lower parts of Switzerland or the high parts of Italy in the north. The lake region in the west was bordered by a jungle in the north and forest in the south.
This also was a popular area for European settlement where they were able to survive without some of the disease issues and heat that you had in other parts of the colony. The German East Africa Company quickly set about establishing plantations, improving coastal harbors and building railroads. The most important of these works involved the development of the port of Dar es Salaam and the building of a railroad from there through Tabora in the central eastern or the western central parts of the colony to Ujiji, which was a port on Lake Tanganyika.
Other lines were built connecting the northern port of Tanga along the coast to the plantations near Mount Kilimanjaro. At first, sisal was the most valuable crop, soon to be followed by coffee, rubber, and cotton. All of these activities helped swell the young country's economy. The natives'situation was improved by the abolition of slavery, the establishment of a police force, the Schutz Troop, mainly staffed by native tribesmen, a postal system, compulsory education for the natives, and the elimination of smallpox and other disease through an intensive program of vaccination for the native population. This is actually quite progressive for the time, especially when you compare what was going on there against, say, Belgium and in the Congo and what Portugal was doing in Mozambique.
In April of 1888, the company leased the coastal strip opposite Zanzibar. from the Sultan Khalif bin Said for 50 years. Its attempt to take over the administration led to a general revolt along the coast of what is now Tanzania.
The company could only hold Dar es Salaam and Bagamoyo with the help of the German navy. In 1889 it had to request the assistance of the German government to put down the rebellion. So with that the Germany uh took over direct control in 1891 so that they could manage the place better than the company had.
Soon after the organization of the German, now we're going to talk about the numismatics of the region. Soon after the organization of the GEA company, it was realized that a more diversified pointage than the Maria Theresa Thaler was required to grow commerce in the colony. In order to facilitate international trade, the Thaler-Zenen circulation were fixed at three German marks. In order to create a colonial currency, the German East Africa Company in 1890 established an exchange rate based on the Pesa. The Pesa, derived from the Indian denomination of the Pais, was long familiar to Arab and Indian traders and thus was assigned the value of 64 Pesa to 1 Rupee.
This coin was minted for three years before being dropped in favor of a new currency tied to the German mark. So here is the initial coinage of the German East Africa Company. It's got Arabic on the reverse and then proclaims the German East Africa Company with the German Imperial Eagle at the center. In 1891, the relationship between the German East Africa Company rupee and the German mark was fixed at one rupee.
was equal to 1.33 marks or in other words four marks was equal to three rupees The name rupee was adopted for colonial use to distinguish the coinage from the Indian and other rupees then in circulation. This is rupee spelled with r-u-p-i-e instead of r-u-p-e-e as the English would spell it. Silver coins in the denomination of quarter, half, one, and two rupees were struck between 1892 and 94. They were minted in Berlin of .917 silver and to a common design. The obverse featured Wilhelm II in military uniform, wearing a helmet with the German eagle perched on top. The legends surrounding the bust of William reads, William II, Emperor.
The reverse bears the arms of German East Africa Company, consisting of a lion and palm tree with a date beneath. The inscription surrounding the central shield reads, Deutsche Ostafrikanische Gesellschaft, with the value expressed in rupees below. So this is a two-rupee piece, the key piece in the series, the rarest and hardest to get of the collector series.
The production of this series commenced in 1891 and lasted until 1904, when the final company of rupee coins were struck. Some years saw no mintage figures as the coins were struck only to meet the demands of existing commerce. Mintage figures for German East African Company coins are low as compared to the later government issues, making them relatively expensive today. So here you have the full range of the silver with the rupee. You saw the two rupee on the other slide, the half rupee and the quarter rupee.
By 1981, the German government realized that the East African Company was unable to manage the colony. The imperial government, anxious to exploit the colony's potential and to develop railroad communication, declared a protectorate over the region formerly ruled by the company and settled financial accounts with colonists and natives and then took over the colonial administration. In 1897, the imperial government renamed the region as the Colony of German East Africa, Deutsch Ostafrika, a.k.a. the DOA.
as it was known in short. Shortly afterwards, a colonial department was set up in Berlin to assist in the development. From 1904 onwards, financial management of the colony was taken over by the imperial German government centrally. And this is what the new coins looked like.
So William II, emperor, and German East Africa with one rupee that kept the old standard. and the date 1905 with a mint mark J. And this is what the new coins looked like.
So you had a one rupee, they abolished the two rupee piece, then you had a half rupee, a quarter rupee, and then copper or bronze, one heller and half heller coins. The heller was valued at 100 heller to the rupee, thus decimalizing the rupee. DOA coins eventually consisted of 12 types.
The first of the new DOA coins were minted starting in 1904 in the following denominations. As we said, they were initially supplemented by a bronze half and one heller. The obverse of the silver coins was unchanged from the old company issue. The new dyes were cut for the reverse consisting of the value in the center surrounded by a cross palm fronds with Deutsche Ostafrika above and the data mint mark below. The bronze Heller denominations depicted the imperial crown at the center with Deutsch-Ostafrika above and the date below on the obverse and values surrounded by cross-laural branches on the reverse.
New 5-Heller and 10-Heller copper nickel coins were added in 1908. In 1913, the bronze 5-Heller was replaced by a much smaller copper nickel type with a center hole. a similar ten heller copper nickel piece was struck from nineteen o nine to nineteen fourteen all pre war war all pre world war one coins were minted at the berlin and hamburg mints in germany coins minted in berlin carried the a mint mark while those made in hamburg were struck with the mint mark j in some years production was assigned to both mints for the same coin to keep up with demand mintage figures for heller coins ran into the millions per year for each denomination while the silver rupee issues seldom exceeded 500,000 in any given year. That gives you an overview of what the... coinage looked like during the period of the colony of German East Africa.
Now we'll move on to some of the paper currency. Private paper money was issued from the beginning of the colony to make up for the lack of small change. As usual in most colonies, small change was always difficult to come by.
Private notes were issued by the German firms in Bagamoyo, Dar es Salaam, and Zanzibar. Emergency notes were issued during the Maji Maji Rebellion of 1903 to 1904, including postal currency, ship money for the squadron which patrolled the coast, and military credit notes along with private plantation notes. All of these are rare, and we won't be talking about them much today.
The Deutsche Ostafrikaansche Bank was formed to serve the colony in 1904. 15th January 1905, and soon after the first paper money was introduced, the first official paper money. These notes were produced by the Leipzig firm of Geisig and Devrient on special paper with the company's cross and star watermark pattern. Five, ten, fifty, and one hundred rupian notes were issued.
In 1912, a five hundred rupian note was added as well. These were issued in Dar es Salaam and featured the following common elements. Red serial numbers, the words Deutsch Ostafrikanisch Bank at the top, the value in writing and numerals and the printer's name appearing in the lower right border of the front. The five rupian banknote was an engraving of a lion and lioness in the veld.
The ten rupian note shows a harbor view of Dar es Salaam with a ship at anchor. The 50, 100, and 500 rupian denominations carry the portrait of Kaiser Wilhelm II in military uniform. The reverse consisted of geometric patterns containing the bank name with the denomination words and numerals.
The notes mostly circulated in the coastal cities, though they could be found throughout most of the colony. The coins were preferred in the interior. The last shipment of banknotes arrived in Dar es Salaam aboard the blockade running.
Marie von Stetten just prior to the port's capture in 1916. So with the war starting in 1914, the British blockaded the colony, of course, and it made it very difficult for shipments of any kind to leave or enter the colony. But there were blockade runners, such as the Marie von Stetten, that were able to make it with needed supplies. Here's what the notes looked like. So here's the 100 rupee. As you see on the front, you see a nice image of the Kaiser and the design is attractive.
On the reverse, you had geometric designs all mixed in. A little bit busy, but an interesting note. Here's the five rupee note.
My favorite image of the note series, the two lions on a hillside overlooking the veldt, very nicely done. And the reverse with the geometric designs with some color added. Well, now we'll go on to some history.
Germany, East Africa. attracted my attention originally because of its role in World War I. This is one of the several colonies in Africa that the Germans had, but it was the only one to put up a prolonged resistance against the Germans. And it did so because the military commander of the troops in East Africa was very successful in conducting a modern-style guerrilla war that has since become a model of its type. At the outbreak of World War I, Lieutenant Colonel Paul Emil von Letoworbet, a member of the traditional Prussian officer corps, he was one of the landed gentry of the country, not wealthy, but... had a title and people from his class were the officers of the German army throughout this period.
He was commander-in-chief of the military forces in Germany and East Africa in 1914 at the start of the war. He had 218 white officers and NCOs with 2,542 Askaris, native troops, under his command. Von Lettow was a skin of a famous Prussian military family, and his military experiences included action in the Boxer Rebellion and in German Southwest Africa. today's Namibia during the Hattentot and Herero rebellion of 1904 through 1908. But it is his exploits in Germany and East Africa during World War I for which he is renowned.
He was one of the very few German leaders to be generally acclaimed a hero by both sides of the conflict, including those Allied generals who fought against him. And for over four years during World War I, he kept large Allied forces chasing him. but always succeeded in defeating or avoiding enemy attacks and evading capture or destruction. He was following his goal, which was to help the homeland by diverting as much allied manpower and resources as possible in order to enable a German victory in Europe. And here you have two great pictures of him and his Ascari, the native troops at rest.
One of the things that was outstanding about von Lettow was that he treated the native troops as regular European troops, in that he provided education and he provided support for them, and treated them as regular soldiers in a way that European colonial powers, other European powers, did not. So he created a force that was quite respectable. Van Lettel had only sporadic communication with his government after the commencement of hostilities in 1914, and no communication whatsoever after 1916 with the homeland. So his mission was to use hit-and-run tactics to tie down as many Allied troops in East Africa as possible, and over 130 different generals with troops from Britain, Belgium, Portugal, South Africa, and India, as well as African colonial troops, went into action against a maximum of 15,000 German soldiers during the course of World War I. At times, the Allied forces in the theater totaled over 180,000 men to try to locate and defeat this relatively tiny force.
That campaign took place over a vast stretch of East Africa, stretching from modern Kenya south to Mozambique, and west to the lakes of Central Africa, an area larger than the eastern United States, and resulted in amazing adventures which have since formed the basis for movies such as The African Queen. It was also fought in tremendously varied climates. resulted in a lot of destruction within the territory, as with all wars. But in the meantime, it was quite interesting to see some of the things that happened.
You'd have crazy things going on, like battles being interrupted by charging rhinoceri or wild African bees creating a truce as troops. tried to defend themselves from the bees as opposed to each other. Well, now we're going to go on to the wartime coinage.
Salvaging parts from the scuttled Königsberg and the wrecks of several blockade runners, during the war, the Germans produced a crude coin press. This press was set up in Tabora, which due to the threat of the impending German-British occupation of Dar es Salaam. became the administrative capital of german east africa they found enough dye makers among the merchant shops in dar es laum to design a new five and twenty heller coin for a provisional issue to meet the needs of the war since the machinery was so crude frequent breakdowns and delays were encountered the copper for this minute was obtained from spent cartridges and artillery shell casings And the gold from a limited local resource, they did have a small amount of gold that was mined in the region. And so that gold was actually used to produce these coins.
The 5 and 20 Heller. obverse depict an imperial crown with the date nineteen sixteen at the center and d o a below the reverse has the value at the center surrounded by two crossed laurel branches two types of the brass provisional five heller coins exist and thirty thousand of these were struck the twenty heller includes a total of twelve varieties six of brass and six of bronze a total of three hundred thousand of the brass and one point six million copper twenty coins were produced at the Tabor Mint before it fell to the invading Belgian army. The last coins to be struck at the Tabor Mint were the Tabor sovereigns. These gold 15 rupee coins were dated 1916 and were equivalent to the English sovereign which was legal tender in British East African Zanzibar.
So it was quite a useful denomination to have as it could be exchanged with natives. and they could directly exchange it for the equivalent sovereigns. Governor Schnee, the governor of German East Africa, authorized the use of the gold, which was available at the Sekele mine close to Tabor.
Bullion worth one million gold marks was available. So this is a substantial coinage for the time. The obverse of this gold coin depicts the crowned imperial German eagle within a circle of dots. Deutsche Afrika above and 15 rupiah below.
On the reverse is a trumpeting elephant with mountains for a background. The date 1916 and T countermark appear below. The T is the mint mark. At that time, Toboro was the center of the ivory trade, so the choice of an elephant for the reverse was appropriate for the obverse.
I mean, quite an interesting... series of coins and uh with the five and 20 heller pieces the shell casings used were uh came from the konigsberg as well and we'll we'll tell us some of the tale of the konigsberg coming up in a few minutes now wartime uh emergency currency was created and with the flow of money from germany having been cut off a shortage of coins quickly developed and hoarding became common by early nineteen fifteen the situation had become critical forcing governor chenille to order the bank to print an interim money supply in the colony the issue of these interim banknoten was restricted to the duration of the war how and where were the notes to be printed these were good questions with no local paper manufacturing and limited local printing capability, this was not something that was going to be solved easily. The paper supply problem was alleviated by one of the last of the blockade running ships to arrive in the colony. It brought a large supply of several different kinds of durable paper that could be used to print reasonably uniform bills of exchange.
Equipment already existed in the colony, which after adaptation could be used for printing paper money. This machinery belonged to the firm of Deutsch Oster. Ostafrikanische Zeitung, a newspaper that was produced in Dar es Salaam on a daily basis. A contract was then awarded to the newspaper to immediately commence printing the colony's bank notes.
The first of these 20 rupiah notes appeared in March 1915. Soon thereafter, the presses were busily engaged in running off series after series of 1, 5, 10, 50, and 200 rupiah interim bank notes as well. The Deutsche Ostafrikanische Bank decided to print interim notes at Dar es Salaam and Tabor simultaneously for security reasons, starting at Dar es Salaam. Between 1915 and 1917, emergency notes issued in denominations of 1, 5, 10, 20, and 50, and 200 rupiah were produced in large numbers in several different varieties. This is a nice example with the 20. Note done in 15 March, 15th of March, 1915. There's the back of the note.
Very simple, nothing fancy here. This is business-like, emergency-type issues. And you can see this is done August 15, 1915, for the five rupee, and the legal verbiage on the reverse, and a serial number. and one of the more common types the one rupee produced in february 1st 1916 and then a very crude note done in july of nineteen seventeen one among the very last of these pieces to be produced this series of emergency money produced while fighting the veldt were described as bush notes they were of four denominations only one five ten and fifty rupian and bore the inscription interim's bank note as did their predecessors All are dated 1st July 1917, except for the 50 rupian, which carries a date of 1st October.
The notes were hand-signed by bank officials, stelling and cursed, and meticulously numbered as before. They contain the simple phrase, Wir zahlen gegen Deiss note. We count this note as, with a value expressed below.
So this is a very, very simple development done in crude conditions very quickly. but they were accepted and used quite a bit. They show a lot of wear. There's not a huge number of them still around. There's the reverse, the back.
Now we'll move on to some of the stories from this period. The story of the Königsberg is really interesting. Here was a ship that basically got stuck in the area because at the time war was declared, the Königsberg, a light cruiser, was doing a world cruise and had reached East Africa and was involved in various celebrations and ceremonies during the time. In August 1914, the British made a preemptive strike against Dar es Salaam, the capital of the colony, hoping that the colony would surrender. Overruling the colonial governor Schnee, who was inclined toward a truce, von Lettow-Vorbeck took the flight to the British in East Africa, where he inflicted heavy losses.
In June 1914, the cruiser Königsberg had been sent out to German East Africa. She was modern and sleek and meant to serve as a symbol of naval power in the region. The arrival of the Königsberg posed a threat to the Royal Navy and to England's maritime trade should war break out.
To protect their interests, the British maintained three old cruisers on station at Simonstown in South Africa. They were to prove no match for Königsberg. They were old and slow, and even though they had heavier armor and bigger guns, they were unable to keep up with the Königsberg. Prepared for her role of sea raider, Captain Max Loof had no wish to be caught in the port should war be declared, so on. July 31 he put out to sea.
The next day, during a heavy rain squall, Konigsberg narrowly escaped the British Cape Squadron of the three cruisers which had been sent up to intercept her. War having been declared in the interim, Loof headed north to interdict the sea lanes in the Gulf of Aden. Within days she had captured and sunk the city of Winchester, the first merchant ship casualty of World War I. On 20 September 1914, she surprised and sank the British protected cruiser HMS Pegasus in the Battle of Zanzibar.
This, of course, created a great deal of anger and got the British upset enough to want to really go after the Königsberg. So new resources were sent. Scenes from the blockade.
Here we have scenes from the blockade and sinking of the Königsberg. Over the next few months, the British sent the first airplanes into the region in order to try to scout where the Königsberg was. And eventually, the Königsberg was trapped because they had to do repairs and cleaning of their engines.
and they had to stop at the east coast of the colony. Well, because the British were blockading so closely, they were forced to hide in the Rufiji River Delta, which was a huge area. You're talking about 100 square miles of delta in which they could hide.
So the Königsberg was trapped by British forces over a period of six months. the British finally were able to destroy the ship, but only by bringing extra cruisers and since they were unable to steam into the river and destroyer they set up a blockade after several attempts to sink the ship uh during their battle of the rufiji delta the british sent two monitors which are heavy uh basically barges not really intended for long distance uh cruising but they were set up with very large guns for their size and had a very shallow draft to operate in shallow coastal waters. They were sent from England, the Mersey and the Severn, to destroy the German cruiser. After months of sailing around Africa, the monitors got close enough to the Konigsberg to finally destroy her on July 11, 1950. They severely damaged the cruiser, forcing her crew to scuttle the ship. The surviving crew salvaged all 10 of her main guns, which became part of von Lettow-Vorbig's artillery, and joined the campaign in East Africa.
The Königsberg was partially broken up in 1963 to 1965 for scrap, and the remains sank into the riverbed. So the remains of the ship were on view for... many decades after the war. The guns were managed to be used during the war and several of our guns still are on display at various places in South Africa and in modern Zimbabwe and other places. Now, General von Lothar Leto Vorbeck was never defeated in battle and only surrendered his troops after learning about the armistice three days after the cessation of fighting in Europe.
Von Leto finally surrendered on 25th November 1918, two weeks after the official armistice of 11th November 1918 at Abercorn in modern Zambia. At the time of the surrender, 155 Germans and 1168 Asgaris laid down their arms and were granted full honors of war. The British repatriated the white German soldiers but confined their scaries in squalid camps.
General von Lettoworbeck refused to leave Africa until he had won promises of decent treatment for his troops and their early release. One of the things that he managed to do throughout the war was inspire the loyalty and admiration of his troops, which is why they were They were willing to follow him through thousands of miles of marching back and forth across the colony under the hardest of conditions. But right up to the end of the war, he was being chased and the British had to send out bicycle couriers to try to find him in order to give him a copy of the newspaper that announced the peace.
and the surrender of Germany before he would actually surrender. Returning to Germany as a national hero, von Lettow-Vorbeck became active in politics and tried to establish a conservative opposition to the Nazis. He was able to bring some of his Black officers with him to serve in the German Freikorps, which was the militia that was activated in order to stabilize the the German riots and everything that was going on in the immediate aftermath of World War I. When Hitler offered him the ambassadorship to the court of St. James in 1935, he, I won't tell the quote completely, he told Hitler to go f himself, obviously not making himself popular with the Nazis.
Although repeatedly harassed by the Nazis, he survived their regime due to his popularity. as a genuine hero of the old school. He was remembered as a national hero, as being the only German general undefeated during the war and as the leader of the last of the German forces to actually surrender. The old general never forgot his Askaris and he returned to East Africa in 1953 where surviving soldiers tearfully welcomed him by carrying him through the streets of Dar es Salaam. upon returning to Europe he campaigned to provide for their welfare and when when he died at the age of 93 in 1964 the West German government and the Bundeswehr flew two former Oscars as state guests so they could attend the funeral of their general.
One of the things that made him interesting was this is the fact that he did care for his troops as much as he did. The story goes that when he went in 1953 that he got off of the ship and a lot of natives were standing near their dock. near the British Reception Committee. The British Colonial Administration was planning to have a party for von Leto to welcome him. But as he came down the dock, he recognized some of his former troops and yelled out in Swahili, what you've forgotten your old general and the troops, the veterans.
knew he was going to be there, came up to him, grabbed him, and carried him on their shoulders into their part of the city. He finally reappeared at the British governor's palace several hours later after having been greeted by all of his former troops. So quite a story.
After the war, The German colonies were remembered by the Germans. And one of the things they did was issue this badge that was issued to colonial veterans that fought during the war in the Pacific, in Africa, and in China. It's called Kaucho or Kiaocho in German.
It's known as Singtau. This is where the beer came from. If you've heard of Singtau beer, it was actually a German beer produced in the old colony and continues to this day. And there we have a picture of the German Ascari on the march during the war.
After the war. germany experienced a period in the 1920s when cities and small towns all issued their own emergency money called notgeld berlin notgeld in the amount of 75 pfennig dated uh 31st march 1922 is shown here where it's celebrating a german haziatic colonial remembrance day this series was quite popular as a reminder of the great days of the German colonies. All of the obverse in this series are alike, just like this Africa one. And they celebrated the famous characters of the German colonial experience, Karl Warman, von Bismarck, who reluctantly sent Germany on the colonial expansion, but he He was forced to by popular opinion that in order for Germany to be great, they must have colonies.
Dr. Carl Peters, who founded the East Africa colony. Von Wissmann, who in retrospect was a brutal colonialist. He was a military leader who was known for being quite brutal.
but he did contribute to the formation of the colony. Luderitz, another early colonial leader, he was a preacher and converted many of the natives, created churches, et cetera, along with schools. He thought it was very important to develop a school system. and then von Lettow-Vorbeck himself, the military hero. Here's another example of this Notgeld, the Deutsch-Hansiater colonial Gedanktag again.
And these were issued by the Hansiatic company, which was a cruise company. in order to encourage germans to go visit the old colonies i guess so you have one for german east africa southwest africa cameroon togo and Kaochao in China, and then Sudsi, where the Germans had a colony that was later taken over by the U.S. A few months after von Lotto Vorbeck's death, the old warrior's fondest wish became reality when the West German Bundestag voted to deliver back pay to the 350 surviving Ascari veterans in Africa.
The Weimar Republic had provided pension payments to the these Askaris. Due to interruptions during the Great Depression and World War II, the parliament of the Federal Republic of Germany voted in 1964 to fund the back pay of the Askaris still alive. The West German embassy at Dar es Salaam identified approximately 350 Askaris and set up a temporary cashier's office at Wannsee on Lake Victoria. The British at the time were making fun of them saying that any old beggar would come out of the jungles and claim the pay, but only a few of the claimants, the actual veterans, were able to produce the certificates given to them in 1918. Others provided pieces of their old uniforms as proof of service.
The banker who had brought the money came up with an innovative idea in order to have each of these veterans prove that they were veterans. they should step forward. And he handed them a broom and ordered them in German to perform the manual of arms.
Not one of them failed the test to the chagrin of the British that were looking on. And with that, we end our story. And I hope you enjoyed our little safari into a little known piece of numismatic history.
along with some history of World War I. Thank you. And as Paula said, we will entertain some questions at this point, and I'm going to get out of the share here, just a second. So I'll give everybody a couple of seconds to post any questions in their Q&A while I kind of wrap up and just let everybody know what happens here normally. So I just want to thank you, Doug, very much, and thank everybody who joined us today.
Our new MISMA talks are being recorded and are available to our members on our new eLearning Academy. Please be sure to check back for future programs on our website under money.org and the education tab. So first question, what was the T mint mark?
The T mint mark was the emergency mint mark used for Tabora. So the coins for the T mint mark are pieces that were actually produced during World War I at... to Bora in the western central part of the colony.
All right. Give it a minute, and then if not, we will wrap up. Thank you, Doug.
Yeah, I hope everybody enjoyed the story. There's some really interesting pieces to be collected, but to me, what makes them even more interesting is the stories that go with them because There's quite a bit of literature available on this period. And if you go into it, there's some very interesting stories that go along with things.
Like if you've seen the movie Out of Africa, it turns out that the heroine of the movie actually met Van Leto Vorbeck just before World War I when she was going to Kenya. became a lifelong friend of his and the British generals, for example, that fought against him actually helped him survive the period of before World War II because the Nazis were harassing him for his anti-Nazi stance and they even cut down his pension. So he was surviving in a very small apartment with limited food and several of his enemies actually sent care packages to him and assisted him to to survive during that period which is very interesting it's very rare that you have an enemy uh having such a close relationship with you for sure so i just want to thank you again doug and thank everybody that joined us i hope you check back to see what's upcoming everybody have a great day