This picture was taken in 1908 when King (Mfon) Njoya of Bamum travelled to the Cameroon coast. Although the photographer Robert Lohmeyer sold the picture to the then Royal Museum of Ethnology in Berlin, it is not clear that Lohmeyer took the picture. Today, the museum has three different versions of this picture in its collection. In Duala and Buea, the king met with members of the German colonial administration and presented the throne richly decorated with pearls and cowries (pictured here) to the German colonial governor as a birthday present for the German Kaiser Wilhelm II. King Njoya reigned between around 1885 and 1933. His kingdom, whose capital was Fumban (Foumban), was the largest and most powerful kingdom in the so-called Cameroon Grasslands in the late 19th century. King Njoya remains a controversial figure in Cameroon to this day. As ruler, he preserved the relative independence of his kingdom through an alliance with the Germans as colonial rulers. Inspired by international and regional influences, he modernised his country technologically, spiritually and intellectually. Among other things, he invented a writing system and developed new agricultural technologies. However, he did not raise his voice against the German colonial government when it expropriated other rulers in the region. When Cameroon was divided between Great Britain and France after the First World War, the Kingdom of Bamum fell under the French mandate. Due to his alliance with the Germans, the French colonial administration did not trust him. He was sent into exile in Yaoundé, where he died in 1933. (JF 08.01.2019)