Franz Vollrath Carl Wilhelm Joseph von Bülow (11 September 1861 – 18 October 1915) was a German author, soldier and homosexual activist.

Franz Vollrath Carl Wilhelm Joseph von Bülow was born on 11 September 1861 in the Free City of Frankfurt.

In the years that followed, he authored a book on his experiences in German South West Africa and Cecil Rhodes' politics, as well as the Herero and Namaqua genocide.

He counts his books, together with the writings of Kurd Schwabe, among the most important eyewitness accounts of the relations between German colonial power and the Herero in the 1890s.

[4] Historians have used von Bülow's detailed recounting of the brutal approach of the Schutztruppe in South West Africa as sources for reconstructing the prehistory of the Herero and Nama genocide.