Alexandre Douala Manga Bell
Alexandre Douala Manga Bell (3 December 1897 – 19 September 1966 in Douala) was head of the Duala people in Cameroon, German officer and French politician. Biography Youth in Germany Alexandre Douala Manga Bell - then named Alexander Duala Manga Bell - was born on 3 December 1897 in the Douala area as the eldest son of King Rudolf Duala Manga Bell. Cameroon was a German colony at that time. At the age of four Alexander was brought to Germany for education. In the First World War, in 1915, he fought against the British and the French as a German officer at Gallipoli in Turkey, which was allied with Germany. One year before in Cameroon, his father, Rudolf Manga Bell, had been executed after a conflict with the German colonial administration on charges of high treason. In 1919 in Hamburg Alexander Douala-Bell married Andrea Jimenez Berroa. She was the daughter of the Afro-Cuban pianist Jose Manuel Jimenez Berroa, professor at the Hamburg Music Conservatory, and Emma Mina Filter, descending of an old-established Hamburg family. They had two children, son Jose Emmanuel, born 1920, and daughter Andrea Tüke Ekedi, born 1921. Life in France and Cameroon Cameroon became French in 1919