Albert Hahl

After the sudden death of Curt von Hagen, Albert Hahl served from 15 August 1897 to 11 September 1897 as acting governor of the German New Guinea Company.

After a short period of employment in the colonial department of the Foreign Office, he was entrusted in 1899 as Lieutenant Governor of the Eastern Caroline Islands based in Ponape(Pohnpei) with the administration of the island territory of German Micronesia,[2] newly acquired by the German-Spanish Treaty of 1899 this territory located east of the 148th degree longitude, including the Marshall Islands and Nauru.After the resignation of Rudolf von Bennigsen, Albert Hahl served as deputy governor on 10 July 1901.

He returned to Germany in June 1902 because of a disease of blackwater fever, where he was finally appointed governor of German New Guinea on November 20, 1902.

During his service as Governor of German New Guinea Hahl had a relationship with a local Tolai woman, with whom he had a single child.

This form of indirect administration reduced the influence of traditional powers and tied the native population to the colonial economic system.

The later addition of several government stations to the Luluai system was intended to reduce punitive expeditions, as was customary with Hahl's predecessor Rudolf von Bennigsen.

The real potential for conflict, however, lay in the vast territories that had been acquired by the German New Guinea Company, which were never officially surveyed or evaluated to what extent the acquisition had curtailed local rights.

In this way, Hahl wanted to ensure that the New Guineans themselves could participate in the colonial economic system and were not forced to work on European plantations.

In 1914, almost half of the Copra exports came from the cultivation of the natives from the Gazelle Peninsula, while the mainland population around Madang was forced to work on the plantations of the German New Guinea Company due to the loss of their lands.

However, Hahl was never able to fully enforce the detailed regulations that had been established for local workers regarding wages, duration of work and medical care, as well as the abolition of female forced labor against the New Guinea Company and other German plantation owners.