Hans von Ramsay
Hans Gustav Ferdinand Ramsay, from 1911 von Ramsay was an officer in the Imperial German Army and explorer of Africa.
Early life and education
Hans Gustav Ferdinand Ramsay was born in Tinwalde on 18 May 1862.He graduated from high school in Königsberg.
Career
Ramsay embarked on a military career and in 1882 became a second lieutenant in the Foot Artillery Regiment No. 11 in Thorn. In 1891 he was ordered to serve at the Foreign Office and then assigned to the Schutztruppe for German East Africa. In 1893 he was promoted to first lieutenant and in 1899 he was again assigned to the service at the Foreign Office under the position of the Schutztruppe. In 1900 he was given a statutory pension and permission to wear his previous uniform.Activity in the colonies
Ramsay gained his first experiences in German East Africa. In 1886, before he was transferred to the local Schutztruppe, he accompanied the Denhardt brothers to Lamu and Wituland. From February 1889 he was an officer in the so-called Wissmanntruppe. In 1890 he was station chief in Bagamoyo, and from April 1891 district magistrate in Lindi. After his transfer to Kamerun, Ramsay succeeded as head of the Cameroon Northern Expedition in 1892. For financial reasons, his engagement in Kamerun was not renewed in August 1892. Ramsay therefore moved back to East Africa in 1893 and worked as station chief in Kisaki in 1893, in Iringa and Ulanga in 1894, in Lindi in 1895 and from May 1896 as head of the Ujiji station he founded, the first German base on Lake Tanganyika. Numerous cartographic photographs of the lake area were taken here from 1896 to 1898, and in 1898/99 he was called back to work at the Foreign Office in Berlin.After leaving active military service in 1900, Ramsay took a position with the Northwest Kamerun Company, for which he managed business in Kamerun as general representative from 1901 to 1903. To explore and map the concession, he undertook several expeditions through the area between Cross River and Adamawa. Among other things, he is said to have been the first European to visit the Bamum Chiefdom on this occasion in July 1902. In 1906/07 he also made maps of the area of the Southern Kamerun Society to determine the boundaries of the concession area.