Background
Wilhelm Solf was born in Berlin on October 5, 1862, the son of a wealthy merchant.
Wilhelm Solf was born in Berlin on October 5, 1862, the son of a wealthy merchant.
He attended secondary schools in Anklam in western Pomerania and in Mannheim. He took up the study of Oriental languages, in particular Sanskrit at universities in Berlin, Göttingen and Halle, earning a doctorate in philology in the winter of 1885. Under the supervision of the well-known Indologist Richard Pischel, he wrote an elementary grammar of Sanskrit.
He entered the colonial section of the Foreign Office in 1896, then was posted overseas to Calcutta, Dar-es-Salaam, and Samoa (governor from 1900 to 1910). In 1911, after the second Moroccan crisis, Solf was appointed state secretary of the new Colonial Office, where he sought to reach an understanding with Britain over the future of Portugal's African holdings. Solf was able to win several prominent Social Democrats over to colonialism; above all, he sought to create a German colonial empire in central Africa stretching from the Indian to the Atlantic oceans.
The rapid seizure of most German colonies by, especially, Britain and Japan during the opening months of the Great War basically left Solf without official duties. As a result, he entered the war aims debate, stressing time and again the need for German naval bases and for a colonial empire in Africa. Solf regarded the German-occupied territory in the west as basically a "pawn," to be released at the peace table in exchange for the return of Berlin's colonies and for additional African real estate; as late as September 1918 he expected not only the return of lost colonies but also additional Belgian, French, and Portuguese lands in Africa!
Solf favored reform of the antiquated Prussian three-class franchise, and he adamantly opposed the resumption of unrestricted submarine warfare in January 1917. Early on in the war he saw the need for a negotiated peace, and in October 1917 he was mentioned in parliamentary circles as a possible successor to Chancellor Georg Michaelis.
Chancellor Prince Max von Baden on October 3, 1918, appointed Solf state secretary of the Foreign Office. Solf's actions over the next month were generally weak, vacillating, and poorly defined. On October 2 he had supported Prince Max in cautioning against General Erich Ludendorff's demand for an immediate cessation to hostilities; yet a fortnight later, when Ludendorff was again ready to continue the struggle, Solf opposed resuming the bloodbath at the front and instead asked that other military advice be solicited. In the end, it fell to Solf to initiate a series of peace notes with President Woodrow Wilson, but when rumors were cir-culated to the effect that the state secretary planned to sabotage the German evacuation of the Ukraine, the American leader lost confidence in the new German government. Apparently, Solf never quite realized in his haste to accept Wilson's Fourteen Points that to do so would entail the loss forever of Germany's former overseas possessions.
Wilhelm Solf stayed at the Wilhelmstrasse until December 1918; he departed from the Colonial Office in February 1919. Solf joined the German Democratic party after the revolution of November 1918, and from 1920 until 1928 served as German envoy to Japan. Upon his return, he headed the Overseas Institute in Stuttgart and attempted to rally the political center in Germany against both right and left extremism. Solf died in Berlin on February 6,1936. His wife Hanna became an active member of the German resistance and after the unsuccessful attempt upon Adolf Hitler's life in July 1944 was arrested until the end of the war.
Wilhelm Solf was married to the former Johanna Dotti, who later formed the anti-Nazi Frau Solf Tea Party get-togethers with their Samoan-born daughter So'oa'emalelagi, also known as Lagi. Solf was the author of Weltpolitik und Kolonialpolitik (Foreign policy and colonial policy, 1918) and of Kolonialpolitik, Mein politisches Vermächtniss (Colonial policy, my political legacy, 1919).