German East Africa Askari Cap - Very Rare

The German Colonial Army () of the  employed native troops with European officers and  in its colonies. The main concentration of such locally recruited troops was in  (now ), formed in 1881 after the transfer of the Wissmanntruppe (raised in 1889 to suppress the ) to German imperial control.

The first askaris formed in German East Africa were raised by DOAG (Deutsche Ost-Afrika Gesellschaftthe ) in about 1888. Originally drawn from Sudanese mercenaries, the German askaris were subsequently recruited from the  and  tribal groups. They were harshly disciplined but well paid and highly trained by German cadres who were themselves subject to a rigorous selection process. Prior to 1914 the basic Schutztruppe unit in Southeast Africa was the Feldkompanie comprising seven or eight German officers and NCOs with between 150 and 200 askaris (usually 160)including two machine gun teams. They were successfully used in German East Africa where 11,000 askaris, porters and their European officers, commanded by ,  against numerically superior British, Portuguese and Belgian colonial forces until the end of  in 1918.

The  and pre-war  provided pension payments to the German askaris. Due to interruptions during the worldwide depression and World War II, the parliament of the  (West Germany) voted in 1964 to fund the back pay of the askaris still alive. The West German embassy at  identified approximately 350 ex-askaris and set up a temporary cashiers office at Mwanza on Lake Victoria.

Only a few claimants could produce the certificates given to them in 1918; others provided pieces of their old uniforms as proof of service. The banker who had brought the money came up with an idea: each claimant was handed a broom and ordered in German to perform the . Not one of them failed the test