»Die Polygamie bedeutet einen Krebsschaden für die deutschen Kolonien.«

Abstract In its African colonies, the German colonial authorities of ten encountered marriages among the colonized population that did not correspond to the European bourgeois ideal of monogamous marriage. Colonial government and Christian missions saw polygamy as an obstacle to their colonial or missionary project. Using files from the German colonial administration in Cameroon, documents from the archive of the Basel Mission, and texts from missionary and colonial magazines, the article examines what precisely the colonial government and missions saw as the dangers of polygamy and what challenges arose in dealing with it. Overall, it is shown how essential monogamy was for the self-definition of the German colonial power. Criticism of polygamy served to distinguish Germany from the colonial other and to devalue its culture. Polygamy was considered non-Christian, non-European, non-civilized. In practice, however, this clarity blurred in the face of diverse challenges, so that missions and the colonial government tended to seek pragmatic and temporary solutions.