Wilhelm Knappe’s photo album as an early testimony of German colonization of the Marshall Islands1

Abstract

Wilhelm Knappe (1855–1910), the first German administrator (imperial commissioner) assigned to the newly acquired Marshall Islands in 1886, created a photo album with pictures, presumably taken by New Zealand photographer Thomas Andrew in the same year. There are at least three existing copies of these albums and a bundle of loose photographs identical to those in the album in question. At the time of Knappe’s arrival in the Marshall Islands, Germany was still in the process of consolidating its newest colonial acquisition. The photographs show both Marshall Islanders untouched by Christian missions and colonial influence, and already ‘civilized’ Indigenous people from various atoll islands of the Ralik- and Ratak-group. The importance of this album results from the fact that it is one of the earliest pictorial records of the Marshall Islands and it probably represents the first documentation of German activities on the eastern Micronesian archipelago. This article highlights the history of the album and the photographs as well as their importance for a reconstruction of Marshall Islands’ history in the late nineteenth century.