Franz Ludwig Stuhlmann - 1863-1928 - Collectors in East Africa - 13.

By Bernard Verdcourt

In previous biographical notes I have dealt with collectors who in reality collected but little, but the present account deals with one of the most important biological collectors to visit Africa who made large collections of plants and animals. He was also an important man in the German Colonial Service and more akin to Sir John Kirk than anyone else dealt with so far. Stuhlmann’s mollusc collections were in fact one of the mainstays of E. von Martens’ great work ‘Beschalte Weichethiere Deutsch-Ost-Africas’. A great many East African plants and animals bear the specific epithet stuhlmannii.

Franz Ludwig Stuhlmann was of an old Hamburg family and born in that city on 29 October 1863, his father being the architect Rudolph Stuhlmann and his mother Emilie (née Krämer) having close connections with the House of Hansing. He attended a local grammar school (Realgymnasium des Johanneums) where he laid the foundations of his later profound and extensive scientific erudition; later he studied at Tübingen and Freiburg choosing Natural Science. Natural history had dominated his interests at an early date and its further study became one of the main aims of his life. His doctoral thesis at Freiburg (1886) concerned the development of arthropod eggs (Ber. d. Natf. Ges. Freiburg 1, 1886). He also studied at the Zoological Institut of the University of Kiel producing a work ‘Zur Kenntnis des Ovariums der Aalmutter’ (Abhandl. Geb. Naturwiss. Hamb. vol. 10 [1887]). The Aalmutter is the viviparous blenny. After a short stint as a demonstrator at the Zoological Institut in Würzberg he began his travels at the age of 25; his mother’s relationship with the Hansing family proved invaluable in this respect.

In 1888 he left for Africa in one of the ships of their line, presumably travelling virtually free. He visited Alexandria and Cairo in March where he met his illustrious compatriot George Schweinfurth and formed a lasting friendship. Stuhlmann finally arrived in Zanzibar on 17 April and stayed with Justus Strandes, the Hansing representative there, with whom he made friends. The Hansings had had business interests in Zanzibar since 1850 or so. It may well have been German business interests in Zanzibar which warned Sir John Kirk of Germany’s growing desire to colonize the mainland and prompted him to continually needle the British Government to forestall it. They, however, were so busy appeasing Bismarck that Sir John was not re-appointed to Zanzibar and was not there when Stuhlmann arrived. Kirk went on leave to England in July 1886 shortly after being awarded a G.C.M.G. as a sop. There is little doubt that the two would have been friends joined by natural history interests.

This voyage to Africa was decisive for Stuhlmann’s whole life; as was the case with so many others, Africa immediately fascinated him and became the centre of his life. This first voyage was basically a zoological collecting trip for the Prussian Academy of Sciences. Until the end of 1888 he was collecting at various localities on Zanzibar and in January 1889 went down the coast to Mozambique, certainly on 9–13 January 1889 he was in Quelimane but back in Zanzibar on 6 and 7 of February and again in Quelimane on the 11th.; again in Zanzibar at the beginning of March and in Quelimane on 10–16 March, May and June in Zanzibar, mid-July in Quelimane and August to October in Zanzibar. He was certainly in Pangani in November 1889 and January 1890 and is known to have collected at Bagamoyo in February 1889 and at Dar es Salaam in 1888. As J. Gillett states (MS itinerary at Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew) ‘It seems certain he did visit Quelimane in Mozambique and yet at certain periods plants said to be from Quelimane are dated so close to others from Zanzibar that it seems possible either that there is another Quelimane on Zanzibar Island, or that he was incorporating in his collections specimens sent to him by some unnamed correspondent in Quelimane, Mozambique’. Nevertheless, although transport on land at this time was so slow, by sea it was much faster and Zanzibar to Quelimane might be done in four days by a boat capable of 10 knots.

Stuhlmann rapidly became a leader in colonial natural history work and its practical applications. These were the years of developing colonial policies in East Africa under Karl Peters, Hermann von Wissmann and Emin Pascha (Pasha in English). The quiet scientific researches which Stuhlmann wished to pursue were soon interrupted. He joined the German Protectorate Force (deutschen Schutztruppe) as a reserve officer under von Wissmann and became a Lieutenant. This force had been set up after the Arab revolt in 1888. After he had recovered from a wound (severe according to Uhlig) received in January 1890 in a small engagement at Lembula, he started in April 1890, with Emin Pasha* as leader, on his first great journey into the interior of Africa which lasted over two years. In December 1889 Emin Pasha had been rescued by Stanley and was in Bagamoyo recovering from an accident. Emin had been ordered by the German authorities to explore the hinterland, particularly the Great Lakes area to the north-west; the 49-year-old leader made a great impression on Stuhlmann who leapt at the chance to join him. Even at that comparatively late date the difficulties of such a journey into almost unknown regions are difficult to imagine.

They left Bagamoyo on 26 April and went** via Morogoro, Kilosa (27 May), Mpwapwa (22 June), Tabora (28 August and by which time he had collected over 500 plants), Selaue about 30 km south of southern tip of Lake Victoria (20 September) arriving in Bukoba on 16 November. Whilst in Bukoba he made a trip by boat across Lake Victoria to the Sesse (Sese) Islands and Uganda (6 December 1890 – 25 January 1891). The expedition continued on through Karagwe (as did Speke and Grant) and was at Lake Albert Edward on the Zaire side on 13 May. Between 8 and 15 June Stuhlmann made an ascent of Ruwenzori, then they continued on via the Semliki R. to the southern end of Lake Albert, thence to the Ituri River (15–20 September). The end of November 1891 was spent around Lake Albert. Next month smallpox broke out in the camp and Emin asked Stuhlmann to return with the still healthy part of the party to Bukoba. Stuhlmann was not anxious to do this but Emin made it a military order which could not be refused, so on the 10th. he left Emin who continued on further into the NE. Congo and due to insufficient equipment met a tragic end, being killed by slavers. Stuhlmann arrived back in Bukoba on 15 February and had a troublesome journey back to the coast, arriving there on 12 July 1892. During this expedition he had collected 4362 plants which made him by far the most prolific collector so far. Unfortunately his plant material was often not duplicated and much of the original collection was destroyed at Berlin—Dahlem during World War II. The mollusca are fortunately still extant and I examined them all during a visit to the Zoological Museum of the Humboldt University in East Berlin in 1959. That they are still in good order is thanks to the heroic efforts of Prof. Siegfried Jaeckel who carried the immense collections down to the basement of the Museum by himself during the war; all would have been destroyed had he not done so, save for a few duplicates which found their way into other museums, e.g. British Museum (Nat. Hist.). Apart from being a botanist and zoologist during the expedition Stuhlmann was also a linguist and ethnologist; but above all he laid the foundation for his later very comprehensive cartographic researches since he was to become more and more involved with geography and official mapping.

The physical and mental exertions of the journey had sapped his strength and hardly had he returned to the coast when he was ill for several weeks with black-water fever and only saved by a blood-transfusion from his faithful servant Kombo, a Comoro Islander (one wonders about blood groups about which presumably nothing was known).

Later the expedition was immortalised in one of the classic African travel books ‘Mit Emin Pascha ins Herz von Afrika. 1893’ in which, as one obituary writer has it, he confines himself to sober and correct truth (nüchterne und sachliche Wahrhaftigkeit) a characteristic from which he never deviated throughout his life; he never embroidered anything and wrote in a simple factual style. Reading the book one is impressed with the breadth of his knowledge, manifold interests and great powers of observation. Little wonder then, he was to become the scientific backbone of the German colonial administration. The official map of Deutsch Ost-Afrika owes a very great deal to Stuhlmann’s careful observations during the expedition.

Stuhlmann was in hospital for 7 weeks before he was fit enough to go home on leave to Germany. During this time his collector Mabruk who had previously worked for J. M. Hildebrandt (see no. 10 in this series) and for G. A. Fischer (not yet dealt with (now completed, see no. 17 of this series [Ed.])) was killed in the streets of Dar es Salaam from the kick of a ‘tame’ ostrich. On 20th. Oct. 1892 he reached home and whilst in Germany he published several works. He came back as a colonial offical based on Dar es Salaam, his duties enlarged to take in land registry and geodesy, the cultivation methods of the local people, agricultural policy and map-making. He had to organise the surveys on which the 1:300,000 series of maps was based and in the course of this work he surveyed the Uluguru Mts. and adjacent areas making extremely valuable biological collections (see appendix for itinerary). Some 3000 plants were collected between January and December 1894. Between 3 and 19 February 1895 he was on a survey expedition at the mouth of the Rovuma R., the boundary between German and Portuguese territories.

After this Stuhlmann became an increasingly senior official and was twice acting governor, if not more often, certainly when Graf Von Götzen took his first home leave. His identity with his work is well shown in his published economic debates in Deutsch Ost-Afrika ‘Die wirtschaftliche Entwicklung Deutsch-0stafrikas’ (Verh. der Abt. Berlin-Charl. der D.K.G. 1897/98). From February until June 1901 he made a journey to India and the Dutch East Indies to study the organisation of agricultural research, much of which was written up in reports in ‘Der Tropenpflanzer’ between 1901 and 1903. In 1903 he became Director of the research station at Amani [Biologisch-Landwirtschaftlichen Institutes Amani] which engaged in basic agricultural research; it had in fact been founded on his recommendation, partly as a result of his Indian study tour. The institute remained very active until the First World War and was in fact looked after until 1920 by Prof. A. Zimmermann.

Here it will be interesting to digress. Germany left the development of her East African Protectorate to great corporations (we of course did much the same) and the East Usambara Mountains in which Amani was situated was given to the Deutsch-Ostafrikanische Gesellschaft. The D.0.A.G. handed some of the territory to subsidiaries, some to the Royal House – the Prinz Albrecht family – and a small area of 741 acres was set aside for scientific research. Prof. A. Zimmermann, a botanist of world renown and great experience in Java, was appointed Deputy Director in September 1902; it was in the middle of the rainy season when he walked from Mnyusi station on the Usambara Railway wading up to his waist across mountain streams and he must have wondered on his arrival what could possibly be made of an area of primary rain forest. Actually the estate extended from the Sigi valley at 1300 ft to the summit of Bomole at 3600 ft and eventually this range of climate allowed some 4000 different useful plants to be grown but the land was all on slopes. It was clear the D.0.A.G. had off-loaded what it considered the most difficult terrain on the scientists, more as a salve to conscience than anything else. Nevertheless, under skilled guidance, hundreds of Wanyamwezi, believed to be the best workers, cleared the forest, blasted stone from the rivers for building, established plantations and even pastures. The resulting station became one of the best in the world with a magnificent library and laboratories for chemistry, botany and entomology etc.. Between 1920 and 1928 it was merely looked after by a caretaker whilst the vacillating British made up their minds. With the all too frequent brainlessness which characterises British administration in any scientific matters, moves were actually made to close the institute. In 1927, partly due to Lt. Col. Sir David Prain*, a far-sighted and much underrated Director of Kew, Amani was taken over by the British and became the major research station of the tropics which I am certain would have pleased Stuhlmann had he still been alive. The East African Agricultural Research Station, later Institute, moved to Muguga near Nairobi, Kenya in the early 1950s and became the East African Agriculture and Forestry Research Organisation**. Still later on after the sad break—up of the East African Community it was taken over by the Kenya Agricultural Department. The old Amani Herbarium, later the East African Herbarium (of which I was Director between 1958 and 1964) became part of the Kenya National Museum in 1984 (it had absorbed the botanical collections of that Museum (then the Coryndon Memorial Museum) in late 1950). That it is now one of Africa’s largest would surely have delighted its original Director.

Under Stuhlmann’s directorship the Amani Institut developed into a magnificent and world-famous centre for tropical agricultural research. The extensive plantations were suitable for trying out a vast range of crops and exotic trees. Most of them were still in good order when the station at Amani was handed over to the Institute for Insect-Borne Diseases when E.A.A.F.R.O. finally left. They had survived the 1920–1928 caretaker period. From the 1950s maintenance came under the Forestry Department and international interest is now at long last being shown. Stuhlmann wrote numerous papers during his time at Amani on geography, botany and colonial economics and edited the house journal ‘Der Pflanzer’; during his last year there he gathered materials for what is probably his best-known and still invaluable work, volume X in the superb Deutsch-Ost-Africa series ‘Beiträge zur Kulturgeschichte von Ostafrika. 907 pp. Berlin, 1909’. During this last year his first work on Tsetse-flies also appeared. There is no doubt that he had happy years in East Africa. With great regret in 1908 he had to give up all his activities in East Africa due to a deterioration in his health, the result of 20 years in the tropics. Back in Hamburg the municipality made him general secretary of the Central Office of the newly founded Colonial Institut and his aim was to process information for colonial instruction, essentially different from his work in East Africa and removing him from the scientific studies so close to his heart. Still, characteristically, he immersed himself completely in his new work and evaluated the German and foreign daily press for all he considered of value and established the basis of the Hamburgischen Welt-Wirstschafts-Archivs, the director of which he later became and the development of which occupied the last years of his life.

In 1911 and 1913 he visited Algeria and Tunisia and produced reports in the Abh. des Hamburg. Kolon. Inst.; also a report concerning Britain and Turkey in Arabia. One can imagine how deeply he felt the loss of Germany’s colonies after the war, particularly Deutsch Ost-Afrika (later Tanganyika Territory, now Tanzania). Africa remained his first interest and he continued to publish about it; his last scientific work led him back to his first days there. He had preserved and brought back to Hamburg the diaries of the murdered Emin which he now edited; 5 of 6 volumes planned were published. It is interesting to compare Stuhlmann’s great respect for Emin (‘like a son for his father’) with the irritation Emin engendered in his ‘rescuer’ Stanley. Stanley had little time for natural history and was annoyed by Emin’s delays poking about under stones for molluscs and other specimens. I would much rather believe Stuhlmann’s account of Emin than Stanley’s. Alan Moorehead agrees and says ‘Emin’s certainly was the most intelligent brain in Central Africa since Burton’s time’ and Harry Johnston rated him highly.

One obituary refers to a period of problems brought about by a short joyless marriage which depressed him but he recovered completely after the divorce!

Stuhlmann was a man of great human kindness and not a severely strict disciplinarian, very modest and never idle (Raslos war er tätig), witty and humorous but not a lover of parties, a well-groomed slender charming man with slightly dreamy eyes, very sensitive and in many ways very reserved. He had a well-balanced but fatherly attitude towards native peoples. He was not really a politician nor an empire-builder but certainly filled with enthusiasm for German ways of thinking and working and a pioneer of German colonial activity at its best – a noble human being and eminent scientist. From his signature it looks as if his handwriting was even worse than mine!

On 29 October 1928 Stuhlmann attained his 65th year, thus reaching the age when all civil servants were expected to retire, but, having regard for his vigour and great talents, the Senate were asked to keep him in office, a request which was granted. At the September meeting of the Hamburg Geographic Society he spoke about Burgermeister Schtamms and was in excellent health but he soon became unwell. It seems that a few days before an impending operation necessitated by his illness he discussed with colleagues the future of his institute in case the operation did not go according to plan; he had a premonition of his death. The operation did not succeed and he died of cancer on 19 November 1928.

My thanks are due to my colleague Dr. Edmund Launert for translating the obituaries for me sufficiently slowly for me to scribble many notes which partly form the basis for the above account which is greatly expanded from part of my second Presidential Address given in 1972. I am also grateful to another colleague, Jan Gillett (who has also been a director of the East African Herbarium) for the use of his itinerary of Stuhlmann prepared from many sources.

List of molluscs described from material collected by Dr. F.L. Stuhlmann in Tanzania, Uganda and Zaire *

Inserted in the front of the copy of Beschalte Weichtiere in the British Museum (Nat. Hist.) set of Deutsch-Ost-Afrika at 74 Dbq & fD, is a letter from von Martens to E. A. Smith which accompanied about 30 lots of specimens collected by Stuhlmann sent for Smith’s expert opinion. Some of these had been identified with Smith species and others were tentative new species. Smith has summarised his reply to von Martens on the letter, crossing out where the identifications are wrong and agreeing that some were also new to him. It follows that some of these specimens are paratypes but I have not had time to hunt for them all in the general collection, although some have come to light in the past (e.g. one of Helix butumbiana – see J. Conch. 31: 179 [1983]). Some of the specimens which Smith informed Martens were not correctly identified were later described as new and one can work out what they are from the localities given and genera used. One at least, von Martens finally published under a different name from that used in the letter – this is Subulina columellaris, finally published as bicolumellaris. I found this specimen and the original label had the bi added by Smith.

Itinerary of Franz Stuhlmann

Incomplete itinerary of F. Stuhlmann based mainly on one compiled by J. B. Gillett mainly from enumerations of Stuhlmann’s plant collections in various works and Stuhlmann’s own books and papers augmented by records from papers by E. von Martens.

One of the most detailed sources of place names current at the time is undoubtedly the map given in Stuhlmann’s own book describing his journey with Emin Pascha. This map (Übersichtskarte der Expedition des Dr. Emin Pascha 1890—1892. Gezeichnet von Dr. Richard Kiepert.) gives an enormous number of names. Pilsbry (1919) and Pilsbry and Bequaert (1927) give gazetteers and maps which are essential for interpreting the many different spellings.

There are fairly frequent errors in the literature where either the wrong year has been cited or a wrong month. Several of these probably still remain in this list. Records said to be from Zanzibar, Ms Chaiyu on 12 Jan. 1888 and Msul Bani on 22 Mar. are clearly in error. The first might be 1889 but would then refer to Mozambique; the second is clearly a place in Egypt near Cairo. The locality Matthews which appears on several mollusc labels probably refers to the house of Sir Lloyd Mathews (1850–1901) First Minister in Zanzibar about that time. Stuhlmann used a multitude of different spellings for places, a fact already commented on by Pilsbry. Zanzibar has been kept separate from Tanzania for convenience; in those days it was much the more important place.

References and Bibliography of Franz Stuhlmann

B. Verdcourt