During his exciting creative life, Baron Anton Codelli (1875-1954), a nobleman, landowner, inventor, and politician, dedicated himself to a multitude of different things. As an inventor who became famous in the realm of radiotelegraphy, Codelli travelled to German Togoland where, between the years 1911 and 1914, he was in charge of building the wireless telegraph station Kamina to help establish a better connection between Togoland and Berlin. Due to the outbreak of the World War I, Codelli was forced to demolish the station, otherwise seen of as one of the great technical achievements of the time.
While living in Africa, Codelli got engaged in photography and managed to take a few hundred photographs documenting not only the process of building the wireless telegraph complex in Kamina but also the life he was surrounded with – the lives of German colonists as well as the habits and traditions of natives. In this collection we present 193 of Codelli’s photographs that are preserved by the National and University Library.