Item: i92190


Authentic Coin of:

Samoa – 80th Anniversary of the Dr. Wilhelm Solf Administration
1980 Gold 100 Tala 28mm (7.50 grams) 0.917 Gold (0.2211 oz. AGW)
Reference: KM# 42
Certification: NGC  MS 67 2860671-009
SAMOA I SISIFO FA’AVAE I LE ATUA SAMOA $ 100, National Coat-of-arms.
DR. WILHELM SOLF GOVERNOR OF WESTERN SAMOA 1900·1910 ER *1980*, Uniformed bust left flanked by palm trees.

You are bidding on the exact item pictured, provided with a Certificate of Authenticity and Lifetime Guarantee of Authenticity.

Wilhelm Heinrich Solf (5 October 1862 – 6 February 1936) was a German scholar, diplomat, jurist and statesman.

Wilhelm Solf was born into a wealthy and liberal family in Berlin. He attended secondary schools in Anklam in western Pomerania and in Mannheim. He took up the study of Oriental languages, in particular Sanskrit at universities in Berlin, Göttingen and Halle, earning a doctorate in philology in the winter of 1885. Under the supervision of the well-known Indologist Richard Pischel, he wrote an elementary grammar of Sanskrit.

He then found a position at the library of the University of Kiel. While residing there he was drafted into the Imperial Navy to serve his military obligation. However, he was deemed medically unfit for military service and discharged.

After his return from Samoa, Solf became (1911) Secretary (Staatssekretär) of the German Colonial Office (Reichskolonialamt) to 1918, travelling extensively to the German protectorates in West and East Africa in 1912 and 1913. In the spring of 1914 Solf designed coats of arms for the various German colonies, a project which found enthusiastic favour with Wilhelm II, but his efforts were foiled by the outbreak of World War I a few months later, and the arms were never officially used. The outbreak of World War I caused Germany’s colonial possessions to be invaded by Britain (including Dominions), Belgium, France and Japan.

Solf lobbied for a negotiated peace settlement in 1917 and 1918. He opposed the implementation of unrestricted submarine warfare, a policy which eventually contributed to the entry of the United States into the war in 1917.

With the defeat of Germany imminent and the likelihood of revolution growing he was appointed as what turned out to be the last of the Imperial Foreign Ministers in October 1918. In this capacity he undertook negotiations for the armistice that took effect on 11 November 1918.

He resigned his post as Foreign Minister on 13 December 1918 with the onset of the German revolution after news about the payment of about 1 million Mark and a 10.5 million Russian ruble mandate for a bank account at Mendelssohn & Co by the Russian ambassador to Germany, Adolph Joffe, to Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany-politician Oskar Cohn became public. Solf refused a further cooperation with the USPD.

Between then and 1920 he served as Vice President of the Deutsche Kolonialgesellschaft. From 1920 to 1928 he served as the German chargé d’affaires and then ambassador to Japan; his tenure proved to be fruitful, as he was instrumental in restoring good relations between the two World War I enemies, culminating in the signing of the German-Japanese treaty of 1927. On Solf’s return to Germany and retirement from government service he became the Chairman of the Board of the Deutsches Ausland-Institut based in Stuttgart.

Solf held centrist political views; he joined the German Democratic Party (Deutsche Demokratische Partei). However, with its dissolution in 1933 he planned with others to form a new moderate party. With the National Socialist (Nazi) reality of that time it was unsuccessful, if not impossible. In 1932 he supported the election of retired Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg as German President.

Solf wrote Weltpolitik und Kolonialpolitik (Foreign policy and colonial policy, 1918) and Kolonialpolitik, Mein politisches Vermächtniss (Colonial policy, my political legacy, 1919).

Samoa (/səˈmoʊə/), officially the Independent State of Samoa (Samoan: Malo Saʻoloto Tutoʻatasi o Sāmoa; Samoan: Sāmoa, IPA: [ˈsaːmoa]) and, until 4 July 1997, known as Western Samoa, is a country consisting of two main islands, Savai’i and Upolu, and four smaller islands. The capital city is Apia. The Lapita people discovered and settled the Samoan Islands around 3,500 years ago. They developed a unique Samoan language and Samoan cultural identity.

Samoa is a unitary parliamentary democracy with eleven administrative divisions. The country is a member of the Commonwealth of Nations. Western Samoa was admitted to the United Nations on 15 December 1976. The entire island group, which includes American Samoa, was called “Navigator Islands” by European explorers before the 20th century because of the Samoans’ seafaring skills.

After repeated efforts by the Samoan independence movement, the New Zealand Western Samoa Act 1961 of 24 November 1961 granted Samoa independence, effective on 1 January 1962, upon which the Trusteeship Agreement terminated. Samoa also signed a friendship treaty with New Zealand. Samoa, the first small-island country in the Pacific to become independent, joined the Commonwealth of Nations on 28 August 1970. While independence was achieved at the beginning of January, Samoa annually celebrates 1 June as its independence day.

Travel writer Paul Theroux noted marked differences between the societies in Western Samoa and American Samoa in 1992.

In 2002, New Zealand’s prime minister Helen Clark formally apologised for New Zealand’s role in the events of 1918 and 1929.

Early Samoa

New Zealand scientists have dated remains in Samoa to about 2900 years ago. These were found at a Lapita site at Mulifanua and the findings were published in 1974.

The origins of the Samoans are closely studied in modern research about Polynesia in various scientific disciplines such as genetics, linguistics and anthropology. Scientific research is ongoing, although a number of different theories exist; including one proposing that the Samoans originated from Austronesian predecessors during the terminal eastward Lapita expansion period from Southeast Asia and Melanesia between 2,500 and 1,500 BCE.

Intimate sociocultural and genetic ties were maintained between Samoa, Fiji, and Tonga, and the archaeological record supports oral tradition and native genealogies that indicate inter-island voyaging and intermarriage between pre-colonial Samoans, Fijians, and Tongans. Notable figures in Samoan history included the Tui Manu’a line and Queen Salamasina (15th century). Nafanua was a famous woman warrior who was deified in ancient Samoan religion.

Contact with Europeans began in the early 18th century. Jacob Roggeveen, a Dutchman, was the first known European to sight the Samoan islands in 1722. This visit was followed by French explorer Louis-Antoine de Bougainville, who named them the Navigator Islands in 1768. Contact was limited before the 1830s, which is when English missionaries and traders began arriving.