“ Berking served the german government of samoa and then lived on to see the arrival of the nation ’ s self-government in 1962 .”
It was no surprise that one of the five men who organised the Mulinu ’ u ceremony at the German memorial was Mr Rudolf Berking . You won ’ t find much mention of him in the history books of Samoa but he was arguably the most prominent German Samoan of the 20th century . He never held high office and his life was marked by dislocation and adversity , but Rudolf Berking was a generous and public spirited man who commanded broad community respect .
He outlived all but one of his German contemporaries , dying in Apia in 1972 at the age of 92 . Berking had served in the German government of Samoa and then lived on to see the arrival of the nation ’ s self-government in 1962 . Independence for the Samoans must have seemed a distant prospect in the horse-and-buggy days at the turn of the century when Berking stepped off his ship .
Klaus Berking Collection
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