German Cameroon Passport – Colonial Germany

THIS passport of the German colony in Cameroon is a travel document that I love to have in my collection but another collector had deeper pockets so I was outbid. Congratulation to the seller and buyer (a fellow collector) for this great result. A fantastic item and a super rare treasure when it comes to passports.

German Cameroon (German: Kamerun) was a West African colony of the German Empire from 1884 to 1916 in the region of today’s Republic of Cameroon. German Cameroon also includes northern parts of Gabon and the Congo with western parts of the Central African Republic, southwestern parts of Chad, and far eastern parts of Nigeria.

The protectorate of Kamerun was established during the period generally known as Europe’s imperialist “Scramble for Africa”. The German explorer, medical doctor, imperial consul, and commissioner for West Africa Gustav Nachtigal was the driving force toward the colony’s establishment. By then well over a dozen German companies, based in Hamburg and Bremen, conducted their trading and plantation activities in Kamerun.

At the outbreak of World War I, French, Belgian and British troops invaded the German colony in 1914 and fully occupied it during the Kamerun campaign. The last German fort to surrender was the one at Mora in the north of the colony in 1916. Following Germany’s defeat, the Treaty of Versailles divided the territory into two League of Nations mandates (Class B) under the administration of Great Britain and France. French Cameroun and part of British Cameroons reunified in 1961 as Cameroon.