German New Guinea German New Guinea ( ) was the first part of the German colonial empire . It was a protectorate from 1884 until 1914 when it fell to Australian forces following the outbreak of the First World War . It consisted of the northeastern part of New Guinea and several nearby island groups . The mainland part of German New Guinea and the nearby islands of the Bismarck Archipelago are now part of Papua New Guinea . The largest part of German New Guinea was formed from the northeastern part of New Guinea was formed by Kaiser - Wilhelmsland . The islands to the east of Kaiser - Wilhelmsland , on annexation , were renamed the Bismarck Archipelago ( formerly the New Britannia Archipelago ) and the two largest islands renamed " Neu - Pommern " ( or New Pomerania , today ' s New Britain ) and " Neu - Mecklenburg " ( New Ireland ) . Due to their accessibility by water , however , these outlying islands were , and have remained , the most economically viable part of the territory . With the exception of German Samoa , the German islands in the Western Pacific formed the ' Imperial German Pacific Protectorates ' . These were administered as part of German New Guinea and they included the German Solomon Islands ( Buka , Bougainville and several smaller islands ) , the Carolines , Palau , the Marianas ( except for Guam ) , the Marshall Islands and Nauru . The total land area of German New Guinea was 249 , 500 km² . History . Early German South Pacific presence . The first Germans in the South Pacific were probably sailors on the crew of ships of the Dutch East India Company : during Abel Tasman ' s first voyage , the captain of the " Heemskerck " was one Holleman ( or Holman ) , born in Jever in northwest Germany . Hanseatic League merchant houses were the first to establish footholds : Johann Cesar Godeffroy & Sohn of Hamburg , headquartered at Samoa from 1857 , operated a South Seas network of trading stations especially dominating the copra trade and carrying German immigrants to various South Pacific settlements ; in 1877 another Hamburg firm , Hernsheim and Robertson , established a German community on Matupi Island , in Blanche Bay ( the north - east coast of New Britain ) from which it traded in New Britain , the Caroline and Marshall Islands . By the end of 1875 , one German trader reported : " German trade and German ships are encountered everywhere , almost at the exclusion of any other nation " . German colonial policy under Bismarck . In the late 1870s and early 1880s , an active minority , stemming mainly from a right - wing National Liberal and Free Conservative background , had organized various colonial societies all over Germany in order to persuade Chancellor Bismarck to embark on a colonial policy . The most important ones were the " Kolonialverein of 1882 " and the Gesellschaft für Deutsche Kolonisation founded in 1884 . Bismarck ' s initial response may be summed up by a marginal note he wrote in 1881 : " Colonies demand a fatherland in which the national feeling is stronger than the hatred of the parties [ for each other ] " . On 24 April 1884 , Bismarck signalled a change in policy by placing German trading interests in southwestern Africa under the protection of the German Empire . Bismarck told the Reichstag on 23 June 1884 of the change of German colonial policy : annexations would now proceed but by grants of charters to private companies . Australian aspiration and British disinterest . The 27 November 1882 edition of the Augsburg " Allgemeine Zeitung " carried an article which the Colonial Secretary of the British colony of New South Wales drew to the attention of the editor of the " Sydney Morning Herald " and , on 7 February 1883 , the paper published a summary of the article under the heading German annexation of New Guinea . The argument lifted from the German paper began by stating that New Guinea fell into the Australian sphere but had been neglected ; although the Portuguese had explored in the 16th century , it was the Dutch from the 17th century " who seemed better satisfied with the country than other European nations had been " but they had overreached themselves and had fallen back towards Java , Sumatra and Celebes . Recent explorations had given the basis for reconsideration : it " is considered useful by geology and biology people as holding in its forests the key to solve problems . . . a profitable field for cultivation " but London had only sent missionaries to save souls . " As we Germans have learnt a little about conducting colonial policy , and as our wishes and plans turn with a certain vivacity towards New Guinea . . . according to our opinion it might be possible to create out of the island a German Java , a great trade and plantation colony , which would form a stately foundation stone for a German colonial kingdom of the future . " The publication of the " Sydney Morning Herald " article caused a sensation and not just in the colony of New South Wales : over the border , in the British colony of Queensland where the shipping lanes of the Torres Strait and the beche - de - mer trade were of commercial significance , the Queensland Premier , Sir Thomas McIlwraith who led a political party " considered to represent the interests of the plantation owners in Queensland " , drew it to the attention of the Queensland Governor together with the general situation in New Guinea and urged annexation of the island . He also instructed the London Agent for Queensland to urge the Imperial Colonial Office to an act of annexation . " Impatient with the lack of results from this procedure " Premier McIlwraith on his own authority ordered a Queensland Police Magistrate in March 1883 to proclaim the annexation on behalf of the Queensland government of New Guinea east of the Dutch boundary at 141E . When news of this reached London , the Secretary of State for the Colonies , Lord Derby promptly repudiated the act . When the matter came before Parliament , Lord Derby advised that the British Imperial Government " were not ready to annex New Guinea in view of its vast size and unknown interior , the certainty of native objections and administrative expense " . German New Guinea Company . On his return to Germany from his 1879 – 1882 Pacific expedition , Otto Finsch joined a small , informal group interested in German colonial expansion into the South Seas led by the banker , Adolph von Hansemann . Finsch encouraged them to pursue the founding of a colony on the north - east coast of New Guinea and the New Britain Archipelago even providing them with an estimate of the costs of such a venture . On 3 November 1884 , under the auspices of the " Deutsche Neuguinea - Compagnie " ( New Guinea Company ) , the German flag was flown over Kaiser - Wilhelmsland , the Bismarck Archipelago and the German Solomon Islands . Albert Hahl ( 1868 - 1945 ) joined the German Colonial Office in 1895 and until 1914 played a major part in New Guinea ' s administration . He was an imperial judge at Herbertshoehe ( 1896 – 98 ) , deputy governor of New Guinea ( 1899 - 1901 ) , and governor ( 1902 – 14 ) As a judge he made three reforms : 1 ) the appointment of ' luluais ' [ village chiefs ] , 2 ) attempts to integrate the Tolais people into the European economy , and 3 ) the protection of village lands , which led him to recommend the ending of all alienation of native lands . After 1901 Hahl attempted to apply his system to the whole of New Guinea , and although his success was limited , exports rose from one million marks in 1902 to eight million in 1914 . He was forced to retire because of disagreements with Berlin officials , and became an active writer on New Guinea and was a leader in German colonial societies between the wars . Lutheran and Catholic missions . By the mid - 1880s German church authorities had devised a definite program for missionary work in New Guinea and assigned it to the Rhenish Mission , under the direction of Friedrich Fabri ( 1824 – 91 ) , a Lutheran . The missionaries faced extraordinary difficulties : repeated sickness from the unhealthy climate ; psychological and sometimes violent tensions and fights between the colonial administration and the natives . The natives rejected European customs and norms of social behavior ; few embraced Christianity . In 1921 the Rhenish Mission territory was handed over to the United Evangelical Lutheran Church of Australia . Missionaries sponsored by the Catholic Church in Germany had superior resources and influence , and proved more successful . They put more emphasis on tradition and less on modernization , and were more in line with native world - views and traditions , European morality and discipline were often adopted , as were notions of dignity and prestige . Imperial German Pacific Protectorates . In the German – Spanish Treaty of 1899 , the German government agreed to pay Spain 25 , 000 , 000 Pesetas ( equivalent to 16 , 600 , 000 goldmarks ) for the Caroline Islands and the Mariana Islands ( excluding Guam , which had been ceded to the USA after the 1898 Spanish - American War ) . These islands became a protectorate and were administered from German New Guinea . The Marshall Islands were added in 1906 . Forced labour policy . In order to expand the highly profitable plantations the Germans needed more native workers . The government sent military expeditions to take direct control of more areas 1899 to 1914 . Instead of voluntary recruitment it became a matter of forced mobilization . The government enforced new laws that required the tribes to furnish four weeks of labor per person annually and payment of a poll tax in cash , thereby forcing reluctant natives into the work force . The government did explore the alternative of voluntary recruitment of laborers from China , Japan , and Micronesia , but only a few hundred came . After 1910 the government tried to ameliorate the impact by ending the recruitment of women in some areas and entirely closing other areas to recruiting . The planters protested vehemently , and the government responded by sending troops to fresh areas to impose the labor policy . World War I . Following the outbreak of World War I , Australian troops captured Kaiser - Wilhelmsland and the nearby islands in 1914 , after a short resistance led by Captain Carl von Klewitz and Lt . Robert " Lord Bob " von Blumenthal , while Japan occupied most of the remaining German possessions in the Pacific . The only significant battle occurred on 11 September 1914 when the Australian Naval and Military Expeditionary Force attacked the low - power wireless station at Bitapaka ( near Rabaul ) on the island of New Britain , then Neu Pommern . The Australians suffered six dead and four wounded — the first Australian military casualties of the First World War . The German forces fared much worse , with one German officer and 30 native police killed and one German officer and ten native police wounded . On 21 September all German forces in the colony surrendered . However , Leutnant ( later Hauptmann ) Hermann Detzner , a German officer , and some 20 native police evaded capture in the interior of New Guinea for the entire war . Detzner was on a surveying expedition to map the border with Australian - held Papua at the outbreak of war , and remained outside militarised areas . Detzner claimed to have penetrated the interior of the German portion ( Kaiser Wilhelmsland ) in his 1920 book " Vier Jahre unter Kannibalen " ( " Four Years Among Cannibals " ) . These claims were heavily disputed by various German missionaries , and Detzner recanted most of his claims in 1932 . After the Treaty of Versailles of 1919 , Germany lost all its colonial possessions , including German New Guinea . It became the Territory of New Guinea , a League of Nations Mandate Territory under Australian administration until 1949 ( interrupted by Japanese occupation during the New Guinea campaign ) when it was merged with the Australian territory of Papua to become the Territory of Papua and New Guinea , which eventually became modern Papua New Guinea . Postage stamps . The first postage stamps of the colony were issued in 1897 , as overprint s reading " Deutsch – / Neu - Guinea " on the contemporary stamps of Germany . In 1901 , the Yacht issue included stamps for the colony , inscribed " DEUTSCH - NEU - GUINEA . " The 5pf , 10pf , and 5m values were reprinted in 1914 on watermark ed paper and inscribed " DEUTSCH - NEUGUINEA , " but these did not reach the colony before it was occupied and were never put in use , nor was the reprint of the 3pf value made in 1919 . The stamps are available to collectors today at prices ranging from about $ 1 US , up to $ 500 for a validly used 5m stamp . Very few stamps of the higher values were ever used , and their prices are 10 – 20 times higher than for mint copies . Fake cancellation s exist . After the Australian occupation , stocks of the unwatermarked stamps , along with some registration labels , were overprinted with " G . R . I . " and a value in pence or shillings ; see New Britain for further details .