99
point during this trip Conrau likely also met with
Felix von Luschan, then curator at the Königliches
Museum für Völkerkunde in Berlin, who commissioned
him to collect ethnographic objects.28
It should be noted that Conrau was a goaldirected
researcher during his time in Africa. He
engaged in his own research and published several
accounts about the way of life in the Cameroonian
interior. He also sent sketched maps of his travels
to a periodical called Mittheilungen aus den
deutschen Schutzgebieten (News from the German
Colonies) (fi gs. 23 and 24), as well as botanical
and geological fi ndings to the relevant museums
in Berlin. In addition to his lay ethnological work
and observations, he also collected zoological and
botanical specimens for the Berlin museums, making
a name for himself in the fi eld of zoology.29
Conrau was accompanied by Africans on his expeditions
into the hinterlands, and some of them
became longstanding employees, as he mentions in
one of his letters to Hassert.30 In it, he especially
praises the courage of a Bali elephant hunter, who
was about fi fteen years old.
Conrau even brought him to Germany on this
1898 visit and apparently introduced him to Hassert.
31 Despite this, Conrau’s comments in this letter
reveal that he did not have a very positive view
of the indigenous people.32 He certainly did not
question colonialism and its injustices and repression,
nor the right of Europeans to occupy territory,
annex it, and exploit it commercially. Since
he often found himself in the situation of being the
only white man among Africans, he depended on
the goodwill of the local inhabitants, but despite
the consideration he must have received from the
chiefs, he found the demands they made in return
excessive and presumptuous. “I lost a lot of gear
to these greedy chiefs, because they required payment
for every little service they rendered.”33
BANGWA
When he returned to Cameroon from Germany
toward the end of 1898, Conrau decided to visit
the area of the Highlands inhabited by the peoples
who had come to be known as the Bangwa.34 At a
market in Tale in upper Banyang country on December
1, 1898, Conrau encountered a Bangwa
individual present there who spoke Banyang and
appeared to Conrau to be of high rank. He had
written about this type of market some years be-