Coins and Historical Medals

GERMAN EAST AFRICA, The Establishment of German East Africa, 1890, medals by O. Oertel (3), in silver, bronze and white metal, bust of Major Hermann von Wissmann three-quarters left in hat, revs. robed female holding German flag over a flat landscape, trees and radiant sun at left, all 38mm (BDM IV, 303; cf. Baldwin St James’s 40, 549) [3]. All extremely fine, an attractive and very rare group £500-£600

Major Hermann Wilhelm Leopold Ludwig Wissmann (1853-1905), a career officer in the German army, first travelled to East Africa in 1880 and, through his association with Leopold II of Belgium, helped to create Belgian Congo. In 1889 he was promoted to Reichskommissar for the German East Africa region and, together with his mercenary force of Sudanese and Zulus, suppressed the forces of Abushiri ibn Salim al-Harthi, retaking Dar es Salaam and the coastal area. Subsequently Wissmann became commissioner for the western region of German East Africa and became governor of the province in 1895