Martin Dibobe

Martin Dibobe (31 October 1876 – 1922) was a Cameroon-born train driver in Berlin during the period of the German Empire. He was born in Bonaprise, Cameroon and is presumed to have died in Liberia sometime after 1922. His original name was Quane a Dibobe but he was christened Martin Dibobe by missionaries. At the age of 20 he went to Germany to represent Cameroon (then a German colony) at the Great Industrial Exposition of Berlin in 1896 where his role at the Treptower Park was to portray 'African daily life'. Together with many other Africans, all from the then German colonies, he spent six months at the exhibition as an 'exhibit'. When the exhibition ended he stayed in Berlin and started an apprenticeship as an industrial mechanic with the firm Conrad Schultz in Strausberg.