His killing in Kismayo at the end of 1886 by a Somali, who remains unnamed in sources, provoked strong government anger in Berlin where it was reported as a murder undertaken on instructions which came, it was not unreasonable to conclude, from the Sultan of Zanzibar.
[1][2][3] Karl Ludwig Jühlke was born at Eldena (Greifswald), where his father had recently resigned after twenty successful years as a high-profile educator at the Royal Agricultural Academy in order to accept a (more itinerant) government job.
[1] By the time Germany had become a "modern (Anglo-French style)" unified and increasingly centralised state most parts of the globe that in earlier centuries had been considered (in Europe) as suitable candidates for conquest had already been colonised.
On 24 September 1884 Jühlke and Carl Peters met up with another old school friend, Joachim von Pfeil, and the Austrian adventurer-businessman, August Otto.
[8] They stayed in town for just over a week, trying to ensure that their supplies and equipment were complete, and then on 12 November crossed the channel to the African continent itself and set off inland, following the Wami River towards Saadani in the Ussagara countryside.
The inland expedition had lasted only six weeks, but the German party had nevertheless laid the groundwork for future colonisation by "signing [twelve] contracts" with ten "independent chiefs".
[1][8] Responsible, at least notionally, to the German consul in Zanzibar, as far as the extensive - and largely "unexplored" territories on the African mainland across the channel were concerned, Jühlke exercised considerable powers on behalf of the company.
In April 1885, according to European belief, the sultan agreed to lease the mainland coastal strip to the company, but he also seems to have been under the impression that the territory "acquired" by the Peters expedition on the African mainland remained a Zanzibar protectorate: the arrival later that year of a German naval squadron under Admiral Knorr persuaded the sultan to understand - with considerable reluctance - that he had been incorrect about this: a treaty guaranteeing perpetual friendship and sincere peace was negotiated and, at the end of 1885, signed between Germany and Zanzibar.
[1][8][9] Chancellor von Bismarck was never a man to share his intentions indiscriminately, but during the course of 1885 it became very clear that he was no longer content to leave European imperial expansion to the French and the British.
The British had become increasingly isolated within Europe, but the German government nevertheless had reason to welcome - and quietly to endorse - Britain's obsessive concern over Russian expansionism which had been on display since before 1855.
However, if Bismarck's government remained diplomatic low-key over plans for colonising large parts of East Africa, Carl Peters was not operating under the same constraints.
[1][8] The sudden urgency arose when it became known that the Sultan of Zanzibar, thoroughly fed up with the behaviour of Peters and the German company, was launching his own expedition to Kilimanjaro, under the leadership of an Englishman, General Lloyd Mathews.
It involved forced marches along the southern side of the Pare Mountains and through Usambara, concluding with a rapid passage downstream along the Pangani River, most of which they were able to complete by boat.
Following an abrupt change of plan Jühlke nevertheless secured treaties with a number of "independent" chiefs along the Benadiri Coast between Makdischu and Warschekh, and then as far to the south as Witu, by the end of October 1886.
[1] Following protracted negotiations with the Ali ibn Ismail, the Sultan of Kismayo, which involved both Jühlke and von Pfeil, on 26 November 1886 the Germans were able to see the company flag raised over "Hohenzollernhafen", at Wubushi, a natural harbour at the mouth of the Burgabo River.
[citation needed] On 1 December 1886, with a large consignment of equipment for beginning work on the new port installations planned for "Hohenzollernhafen", and directly after an apparently friendly meeting with the Sultan of Zanzibar, Karl Ludwig Jühlke was "treacherously murdered" ("heimtückisch ermordet").