After the failure of Bismarcks Charterplan-Concept, due to the inability and reluctance of the trading companies, the German Reich had to send out civil servants to the protectorates, in order to secure their international right to the claimed territories. As no plan for the practical realization of the colonial occupation existed, the administration acted in a purely functional manner. The ultimate aim of the occupation was defined, but not the actual course of action. The colonial civil servants in Togo were thereby presented with a lot of scope in matters of trade and structure, which on the other hand led to problems of direction and control becoming more relevant. Against the backdrop of these difficulties, the paper dealt with the following questions: Firstly, which deficits in management and control arose within the colonial administration of the protectorate of Togo? And secondly, how and with what objectives did the colonial society, the Reich government, the supervisory colonial headquarters in Berlin, as well as the Berlin parliament and the German public use social, legislative and political measures to work against the tendencies towards independence of the colonial administration and its civil servants? It must be stressed that, while the question refers to tendencies towards independenceÆ, there were in fact no separatist efforts in Togo. The minority colonial society, which reached a peak of 428 in 1914, saw their connection to the Reich as being fundamental to psychologically support their claim to power over nearly one million Africans. The competition in Togo actually lay between the self-conceptions of the loyal Prussian civil servants and the perceptions of the colonial practitioners. The civil servants considered themselves to be history-makers because they were putting the imperialist dreams of the Reich into practice and thereby derived from this a certain claim to power for themselves. The German Reich largely gave the civil servants a free reign up to 1892. The Reich Government only began to increase its control after the colonial business suffered damage through the public debate concerning the colonial scandal in Cameroon. At first this increased control was kept to single enactments, as the unprofessional work ethic of the civil servants and the embroilment in numerous corruption scandals meant that the colonial headquarters in Berlin were not in a position to develop a concept regarding colonial policy for the running and control of the local protectorateÆs administration. It was first under Dernburg that the direction and control (as regards financial and personnel policy, bureaucracy and legislature) was systematised. Measures concerning personnel policy played a key role in DernburgÆs reform policy. This was due to the fact that, through a colonial civil servant training programme and the end of the colonial civil servant law, Dernburg was aiming to professionalize the colonial civil service. One important means of leverage in direction and controlling the civil service was thereby the promotion policy. However, the deciding factor in intensifying the efforts towards more control was not the protection of the natives but rather a domestic motive.    «

After the failure of Bismarcks Charterplan-Concept, due to the inability and reluctance of the trading companies, the German Reich had to send out civil servants to the protectorates, in order to secure their international right to the claimed territories. As no plan for the practical realization of the colonial occupation existed, the administration acted in a purely functional manner. The ultimate aim of the occupation was defined, but not the actual course of action. The colonial civil servan...    »