Africa of the beginning of the 20th century in the notes and epistolary of the German physician Ludwig Kühlz

The article analyzes the notes and letters of the doctor of medicine Ludwig Külz, who from 1902 to 1913 worked as a doctor in the West African German colonies of Togoland and Cameroon. The methodical and methodological bases of the work are theories and research tools of relatively new disciplines of intelligentsia studies and imagology. L. Kühlz is considered by the author as a typical representative of the autonomous social and intellectual colonial community, and the images formed around him about Africa and its inhabitants as a result that reflects the complex processes of modernization of the German Second empire and personal education, which were significantly influenced by education and medical practice the activities of the author, the source studied. The article concludes that the views of L. Kühlz fit into the colonial discourse traditional for his time. The readiness of this doctor of medicine to endure the hardships of African service in the name of the German Empire, to bear the burden of culture of the white man through the treatment of the natives and their enlightenment, was combined with paternalism towards local residents and a sense of superiority over them, in which grains of racism were sometimes seen.