Marshall Islands
The Marshall Islands, officially the Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI), is a Micronesian nation of islands in the middle of the [Pacific Ocean], just west of the International Date Line and just north of the Equator. This nation of roughly 60,000 persons is located north of Nauru and Kiribati, east of the Federated States of Micronesia, and south of the U.S. territory of Wake Island, to which it lays claim.
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The Marshall Islands in the German New Guinea Protectorate
- The Marshall Islands are in the Western Pacific. The archipelago was part of the South Sea colonies of the German Empire between 1885 and 1914. The largest island Jaluit, on which Eugen Brandeis also worked, formed the administrative centre. In order to cut costs, the Marshall Islands were annexed to the German New Guinea Protectorate in 1906, which included northeastern New Guinea, the Bismarck Archipelago, the northern Solomon Islands, the Caroline Islands, Palau, Nauru and the northern Mariana Islands. The colonisation of the South Seas by the German Empire was preceded by a long period of increased trade activity by German and international companies. The competitive battles between the major European powers, but also Japan and the USA, and the local population repeatedly led to military conflict. In 1914, the Marshall Islands were occupied by Japan, which was granted the archipelago as a League of Nations mandate after the First World War. In the Second World War, the USA occupied the Marshall Islands. The Marshall Islands only regained independence as a republic in 1979 through a compact of free agreement with the USA, formal independence was only recognised as recently as 1990.[1]
Imperial Commissars
In 1884, the German Empire claimed Jaluit Atoll, along with the rest of the Marshall Islands, and the Germans established a trading outpost. Jaluit became a German protectorate on September 13, 1886, and had several Imperial Commissars (Kaiserliche Kommissare):
- 1886–1888 Dr. jur. Wilhelm Knappe (1855–1910)
- 1888–1888 Dr. Franz Leopold Sonnenschein (1857–1897)
- 1889–1891 Friedrich Louis Max Biermann
- 1891–1894 Dr. Karl Wilhelm Schmidt (b. 4 March 1859 in Braunschweig)
- 11 May 1894 – March 1898 Georg Irmer (b. 1853 – d. 1931)
- 24 March 1898 – 18 January 1906 Eugen Brandeis (b. 1846 – d. 1919) (acting to 22 February 1900)
- 18 January 1906 – May 1906 Ludwig Kaiser (acting) (b. 1862 – d. 1906)
- 1 April 1906 – 3 October 1914 the governors of German New Guinea; afterwards the jurisdiction was downgraded to district, under a Bezirksamtmann
