Groß Friedrichsburg
The headquarters, on the hill at Pokesu. The Dutch later called it Fort Hollandia. It still stands on its hill.
Ghana-Net.com · Forts & Castles · Western Region · Ahanta
Two centuries before Germany took Togoland, a German state already had forts in Ghana. From 1682 Brandenburg-Prussia held a stretch of the Ahanta coast near Cape Three Points, built Groß Friedrichsburg and Fort Dorothea, and shipped Africans to the Caribbean. Then a Prussian king sold it all for 7,200 ducats and twelve enslaved boys in gold chains, and an Ahanta merchant named John Conny held the fort against the buyers for seven years. This is the hub for Germany's first African colony, and its oldest link to Ghana.
In May 1682 Frederick William of Brandenburg, the "Great Elector", chartered the Brandenburg African Company. The driving force was Benjamin Raule, a Dutch shipowner who had become the Elector's naval director. Like the Swedish Africa Company before it, it was a way into the Atlantic trade for a Baltic state with Dutch know-how.
The first expedition, under the young officer Otto Friedrich von der Groeben, reached the coast near Cape Three Points at the turn of 1683. The Brandenburgers made a treaty with Ahanta chiefs, raised their red eagle flag on the hill above the village of Pokesu, and began building a fort. The village is Princes Town today.
The headquarters, on the hill at Pokesu. The Dutch later called it Fort Hollandia. It still stands on its hill.
The second German fort, at Accada (Akwida), named after the Elector's wife. The Dutch seized it twice. Little remains.
Smaller Brandenburg trading lodges, including one at Takrama and one near Takoradi, disputed with the Dutch and long gone. See Sekondi-Takoradi.
Our correction: the Groß Friedrichsburg page keeps its original address, which calls it "the only German fort in Ghana". It was not. Fort Dorothea was the second, and the lodges were German too.
The Brandenburgers came for gold, ivory and gum, and found, like everyone else, that the real money was in people. In 1685 Brandenburg leased part of the Danish Caribbean island of St Thomas, and Brandenburg ships carried Gold Coast captives there to be sold on to plantations across the region. The trade was small next to the Dutch and English, and estimates of its size vary, but the ships, the chains and the dungeons were the same.
A German slave trade. Germany long told itself that it came late to colonialism and had nothing to do with the Atlantic slave trade. Groß Friedrichsburg says otherwise. Read Who sold whom? and The Forgotten Giants of the Atlantic Slave Trade.
In 1701 Brandenburg became the Kingdom of Prussia, and the colony became the Prussian Gold Coast. It never paid. The soldier-king Frederick William I had no interest in it, and by 1717 Prussia had effectively abandoned its forts.
In 1721 he sold the whole colony to the Dutch West India Company for 7,200 ducats and twelve enslaved African boys in gold chains. The price is the clearest summary of what the colony was for.
The Dutch had bought a fort they could not enter. John Conny (Jan Konny), an Ahanta merchant and chief who had worked closely with the Brandenburgers, took over Groß Friedrichsburg when the Prussians left in 1717. He flew the Brandenburg flag, traded on his own account, and fought off the Dutch when they came to claim their purchase.
For seven years the fort was known on the coast as Conny's Castle. Only in 1724 did the Dutch finally drive him out and rename it Fort Hollandia. Conny disappeared from the record; in Ahanta he is remembered as a hero of resistance.
Ahanta against the Dutch, again: a century later the Dutch hanged the Ahanta king Badu Bonsu II in 1838 and took his head to the Netherlands. It was returned in 2009. See also the Ahanta festival Kundum.
Nobody ever got anything back by writing a letter. How restitution actually happens.
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Germany's colonial story in Ghana did not begin in Togoland in 1884. It began at Princes Town in 1683, with a fort, a flag and a slave trade. It ended with a king selling the colony for gold coins and twelve children. The most admirable figure in the whole story is not a German at all but John Conny, the Ahanta merchant who kept the Dutch out for seven years. Groß Friedrichsburg is still there on its hill. Every German visitor to Ghana should go, and read the price on this page before they do.
Verified: 28 September 2026. The May 1682 charter, the 1683 arrival, the dates of Fort Dorothea, the 1701 renaming, the 1717 abandonment, the 1721 sale for 7,200 ducats and twelve boys, and John Conny's hold until 1724 follow standard histories of the Brandenburg Gold Coast. Corrections welcome and will be published in full.