Eugen Wolf

Eugen Wolf (born 24 January 1850 in Kirchheimbolanden; died 10 May 1912 in Munich) was a German journalist and traveller.

Life

He devoted most of his life to travelling, first within Europe and then to the New World, Africa, and the Far East. In 1873 he journeyed to South America, followed by trips to central Africa (1884-1885), the United States (1887), East Africa (1889- 1890), South Africa (1891-1892), Madagascar (1895). Between August, 1896, and June, 1898, he travelled extensively in China, Japan, and Siberia. In 1909, three years before his death, he visited Oceania.

Both in Germany and abroad, Wolf, a polyglot, met with politicians, businessmen, and diplomats to promote an expanded

role in world affairs for the newly founded German Empire. He envisioned international trade as a key element in Germany's development as a world power and lobbied for increased exchange of German manufactured goods for raw materials from other countries, particularly China.

An ardent nationalist, he feared that the growing presence of Russians, Americans, and Japanese in China would limit the possibilities for German expansion there. He expressed his concerns to former Chancellor Otto von Bismarck during a series of meetings before departing for China in 1896 and repeated them in his account of his travels, Meine Wanderungen, I: Im Innern Chinas ("My Travels, I: In Inner China"), published in 1901. While in China he visited many foreign concessions, and, based on this firsthand experience, he developed a plan for German expansion there, which he proposed to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Berlin upon his return (Wolf, 1904)

Works

Vom Fürsten Bismarck und seinem Haus: Tagebuchblatter von Eugen Wolf

Meine Wanderungen: Im Innern Chinas

Wolf was a prolific writer, publishing narratives of travels in several books and in a number of newspaper articles, which appeared primarily in the Berliner Tageblatt.