Heinrich Rudolph Wahlen | German Business Tycoon and Ethnographic Collector
Heinrich Rudolph Wahlen
German Business Tycoon and Ethnographic Collector
By Rainer F. Buschmann
Heinrich Rudolph (also Rudolf) Wahlen (1873-1970) became a prominent businessman in German New Guinea. Shortly before the First World War, he purchased “Queen” Emma Kolbe’s E. E. Forsayth Company. He also collected several thousand artifacts, which he supplied to German but primarily Swedish museums in return for consular titles and medals.
Born in 1873 near Hamburg, Wahlen decided early on in his life to become a businessman in the newly acquired German colonies. In 1895, he arrived in German New Guinea to take on a clerical appointment for the Hernsheim Company. After seven years with the company, Wahlen rose to Hernsheim manager Max Thiel’s (see Provenience biography—Jon Add Link Here) main confidant. In late 1902, he decided to establish his own economic venture in the western isles of the Bismarck Archipelago, which Wahlen purchased from Thiel. In addition, he acquired trade and fishing monopolies from the German colonial authorities. Before departing to assume his new role, “Sultan” Thiel hosted for Wahlen a customary lavish feast on Matupi that brought together close to 40 Europeans and lasted well into the early morning hours. Wahlen finally departed the following day, taking four Europeans, four Chinese carpenters, and 100 indigenous laborers with him.
Max Thiel throwing a party for his former employee H. R. Wahlen in 1902. Wahlen is at the head of the table while Thiel is standing behind him.
Courtesy Michael Duttge
According to Manus Island colonial official Georg Zwanzger, before German annexation, Hernsheim opened a lone station in the Hermit Islands to extract copra, seashells, and trepang. For the next twenty years, this station contributed little to the wealth of the overall company’s economic health. Still, Wahlen, who visited this station from time to time with the company schooner, realized the region's untapped potential. However, he kept his insights to himself and left the station in its "sleeping beauty slumber" (Dornröschen Schlaf) until Hernsheim faced a severe cash flow crisis. He then approached Max Thiel to sell the trade monopoly in the western isles. "What fool would spend money on this area?" Thiel asked. "Maybe I would," Wahlen retorted.
Thiel then mockingly promised: "Very well, you can have the whole junk for 100,000 mark." Wahlen asked for some time and raised the money in Hamburg, which included his father. When he delivered the sum to Thiel, the manager became suspicious of the speedy transaction and attempted to back out of the deal. Wahlen insisted, however, and quickly turned the economic impact of the western isles around. Within a year, he was able to repay his Hamburg loan.
After acquiring the monopoly from Thiel, Wahlen started planting his first coconut trees on Wuvulu and Aua. He also quickly expanded his plantations from western isles to the Kaniet Islands, the Hermit group, and the Ninigo Islands. In addition to his ability to raise capital, Wahlen successfully exported trochus shells, a much sought after commodity for the European button industry. He poured all profits from the trochus shell exports into his coconut plantations. By the time the war broke out, Wahlen oversaw an estimated 3.7 million coconut trees with a net worth of roughly 45 million marks. With increasing wealth came rising status in the small colonial society followed by the almost obligatory conspicuous consumption. In 1903, he commissioned the construction of a large villa, the Wahlenburg, on Maron Island located in the Hermit group. It is conceivable that, like Thiel in Matupi, the Wahlenburg had one room set aside for displaying and ultimate sale of ethnographic objects. The excesses at the Wahlenburg became the stuff of legends. Besides the ubiquitous noisy parties that lasted well into the early morning hours, the Wahlenburg became famous for a harem of young indigenous girls catering to the owner's needs.
the Wahlenburg from Chinnery 1925
Due to its increasing economic status, Maron was soon incorporated in shipping lanes of the territory with steamers of the Norddeutsche Lloyd making regular stops at the island. Wahlen was also among the first Europeans of the German colony to import a passenger car. Between 1906 and 1907, the business tycoon solidified his commercial empire in the western isles through several treaties with the colonial government. In 1910 he turned his commercial holding into a limited liability company and raised money to purchase the E. E. Forsayth Company from “Queen” Emma Kolbe. Out of this expanding business empire emerged the Hamburgische Südsee Incorporated in 1913, which, under Wahlen’s control, became the second-largest enterprise in the colony after the New Guinea Company. He also invested in several other business ventures throughout the German colony, including gold digging along the Waria River.
On a British steamer en route to Wuvulu Island with labor recruits. In front, Wahlen, Captain Macco, and Friedrich Thiel (father of Max). One can only hopes that the little girl depicted in front of the Europeans was not a recruit for the Wahlenburg’s harem. Courtesy Dieter Klein Collection
Wahlen became interested in ethnographic collecting as well. Before he left the Hernsheim employ in 1902, Thiel and Wahlen had made a specific deal surrounding the ethnographically significant islands of Wuvulu and Aua. As a result, F. E. Hellwig, who traveled with Wahlen to his new domain, received a virtual monopoly over ethnographic artifacts and information on these two islands. Hellwig’s collection was to become the exclusive property of the Hernsheim Company, which Thiel then sold to the Hamburg museum for 20,000 marks.
While Wahlen forwarded some artifacts to Dresden and the Stuttgart museums, he mainly concentrated on Scandinavia. Through the promise ethnographic donations, Wahlen would become Swedish Consul for German New Guinea, including the island territory of Micronesia. In addition, he would further cement his connection to this European country through a relationship with a Swedish noblewoman, Thyra Erdfass. Presumably leaving his Wahlenburg harem behind, the two would eventually marry in 1913. Wahlen commissioned the construction of a new motor schooner in Sydney to allow him the desired independence: the Möwe (Seagull). Wahlen hoped the steamer would be ready in 1909 to explore the Sepik River that was fast developing into an ethnographic hotspot. Besides providing much-needed transportation for passengers and cargo, Wahlen traveled up the Sepik River while recruiting laborers for his plantations and loading his hull with ethnographic treasures.
Thyra and H. R. Wahlen from Birger Mörner, 1914
Before acquiring the Seagull, Wahlen’s first artifacts arrived in Stockholm in 1908. Unfortunately, only two artifacts made up this first shipment: the characteristic Wuvulu canoes. A year later, another collection arrived in Stockholm, numbering close to 140 objects. Wahlen had dug deeper into his groups as artifacts from Wuvulu and Aua were now augmented by acquisitions from elsewhere in the Bismarck Archipelago and the Solomon Islands. There were also a handful of objects that hailed from Australia. These ethnographica were probably odd mementos from Wahlen’s collection, exhibited in his residence on Maron.
A Wuvulu canoe donated by Wahlen, Världkultur Museerna, Carlotta Database, 1908.04.0002
Between 1909 and 1911, two prominent collections arrived at the Gothenburg collection in Sweden. While Wahlen donated the 1909 collection, the Swedish Count Mörner probably influenced his 1911 donation. These collections reflect the extension of Wahlen's ethnographic reach through his motor steamer Seagull. However, a closer look at the 1911 collection reveals more traditional collection fields. While the assembly included artifacts from the coastal regions of New Guinea, most of its objects still hail from the Bismarck Archipelago (mostly from Wuvulu, St Matthias, and the Admiralty groups) and the northern Solomon Islands.
Between 1913 and 1914, Wahlen hosted and financially supported Count Birger von Mörner, a Swedish diplomat and writer, in German New Guinea. Mörner had served as a Swedish Consul in Sydney, where he had met the German tycoon. Through the intervention of Thyra Wahlen, Mörner would arrive at the Wahlenburg to collect, with Wahlen's assistance, for the Stockholm museum. Wahlen probably appreciated the Swedish count's presence in the German colony to perform more targeted ethnographic collections than those emerging as a byproduct of the trader's economic activities. The exact agreement between Wahlen and Mörner is murky at best, but the existing correspondence in the Stockholm museum sheds some light on their relationship. In a letter written to the director of the Ethnographic collection of the Swedish Museum of Natural History shortly before the outbreak of the First World War, Wahlen wanted to prevent Mörner from selling the collected artifacts to museums other than the Stockholm institution: "As I already communicated to you, I have personally funded a great part of the required capital, above all the money required for the voyage home [presumably for the count as well as the collections], under the condition that the ethnographica would arrive at the Reichsmuseum." The correspondence further reveals what Wahlen expected in return for his artifacts and support of Mörner: a Swedish decoration, the receipt of which Wahlen had to postpone until the end of the First World War. Newspapers list Wahlen in receipt of both the Royal Order of Vasa and the Great Linne Medal for Science, indicating that he must have received his reward in the end. Furthermore, the Stockholm Riksmuseets displayed Wahlen and Mörner's donations in two halls dedicated to the Sepik and the Bismarck Archipelago. A strategically placed plaque readily acknowledged Consul Wahlen's gift.
The Bismarck Archipelago Room at the Stockholm Riksmuseet in 1917, Världkultur Museerna, Carlotta Database, 0149 0047
The Mörner/Wahlen collection miraculously managed to reach Stockholm after the outbreak of the First World War. It was probably the last large ethnographic assembly to leave the German territory. With close to 1,400 objects, it assembled all the critical ethnographic hotspots throughout the colony: the Sepik and Ramu Rivers, the coastal areas of the German colonial part of New Guinea, and the Bismarck Archipelago, including the islands under Wahlen's control. Famed German expressionist painter Emil Nolde, who accompanied a demographic-medicinal expedition to New Guinea, became witness to Mörner/Wahlen's exploits. He wrote a concerned letter to his supporters back in Germany: "Count Mörner is currently collecting for Swedish museums in the protectorate. He told me that he had already sent 80 crates of indigenous objects to Sweden. Moreover, Count Mörner traveled yesterday from Kavieng to Rabaul and has, so I am told, taken along many crates of indigenous products from northern Neu Mecklenburg [New Ireland]." Nolde's statement indicated how the Swedish count's collection's visibility raised some eyebrows. Still, any objection to its export would have been in vain since it was clearly protected by Wahlen's socio-economic status in the territory.
The New Guinea Room at the Riksmuseet in 1917, Världkultur Museerna, Carlotta Database, 0149 0048 and 0149 0048
The onset of the First World hit Wahlen hard. Following the arrival of Australian troops, he and individuals associated with his company attempted to relay military intelligence to Germans in neutral America by concealing the information in merchandise destined to the United States. Local Japanese trader Isokichi Komine reported this clandestine activity to Australian authorities and, for his loyal service, Komine was rewarded Wahlen’s extensive pearl monopolies. The end of the war brought further struggle, as Australian authorities expropriated Wahlen’s extensive holding in the former German colony. The business owner fought the decision, and his increasing frustration and resentment drove him to join the Nazi Party, which he joined in May of 1933. He had high hopes for Hitler and expected the German Führer to annex, especially after the successful campaigns against France and the Netherlands in 1940, the whole island of New Guinea. The defeat of Germany in 1945 put an end to such imperial dreams. Wahlen, however, lived to the ripe age of 97, presiding over a Stammtisch (regulars' table) of old colonial hands from the German Pacific and spinning tall tales about his glory days for local Hamburg newspapers.
The New Guinea Room at the Riksmuseet in 1917, Världkultur Museerna, Carlotta Database, 0149 0048 and 0149 0048
Plaque honoring Consul H. R. Wahlen, Världkultur Museerna, Carlotta Database, 0149 0052
