Wilhelm Heinrich Solf (5 October 1862 – 6 February 1936) was a German scholar, diplomat, jurist and statesman. Early life Solf was born into a wealthy and liberal family in Berlin. He attended secondary schools in Anklam, western Pomerania, and in Mannheim. He took up the study of Oriental languages, in particular Sanskrit, at universities in Berlin, Göttingen and Halle and earning a doctorate in philology in the winter of 1885. Under the supervision of the well-known Indologist Richard Pischel, Solf wrote an elementary grammar of Sanskrit. Solf 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. Early diplomatic career Solf joined the German Foreign Office (Consular Service) on 12 December 1888 and was assigned to the Imperial German Consulate General in Calcutta on 1 January 1889. However, he resigned from the consular service after three years to study law at the University of Jena, where he obtained his doctorate in law (Doktor juris) in September 1896. Solf's advanced degrees qualified him for higher positions in the diplomatic service. He joined the Colonial Department of the Foreign Office (Kolonialabteilung des Auswärtigen Amtes) and in 1898 was assigned as district judge in Dar es Salaam in German East Africa for a short period. In 1899, he was posted to the Samoan Islands, where he served as council chairman in the provisional government of the municipality of Apia, Samoa. Governor of Samoa The division of the Samoan Islands as a result of the Tripartite Convention of 1899 assigned the western islands to Germany (independent Samoa today) and Eastern Samoa to the United States (American Samoa today). Wilhelm Solf, at age 38, became the first Governor of German Samoa on 1 March 1900. "Solf was a man of quite unusual talent, clear-thinking, sensitive to the nuances of Samoan attitudes and opinion." He was known as a liberal, painstaking and competent administrator. Solf included Samoan traditions in his government programs but never hesitated to step in assertively, including banishment from Samoa in severe cases, when his position as the Kaiser's deputy was challenged. Under Solf's direction, plantation agriculture was further encouraged,which in his judgment provided the soundest basis for the colony's economic development. In turn, tax revenues were enhanced, making the establishment of a public