Several Ethiopian students were then brought to Jerusalem to stay at a German-directed school “Das Syrische Waisenhaus”. Later a number of them continued their education in St. Chrischona near Basle and also in Württemberg (see Smidt 2004). Among the most prominent of those was Mika’él Aregawi, who in 1873 continued the Béte-Isra’él mission under the direction of Flad. Also another historical figure, the above-mentioned kentiba Gebru Desta, was a student of St. Chrischona. Starting from 1877 he was working as a German missionary, and from the late 1880s as a diplomat and administrator in Menilek’s services, and after the establishment of the German Legation in 1905 as their official interpreter. The Hamasen priest qeshi Welde-Sillase Kinfu, attending the theological courses at St. Chrischona in the 1870s, worked on the Amharic bible together with Krapf and was then in 1874 sent as a missionary to Tse`azzega in today’s Eritrea. “Scholarship programmes” thus started very early, even if interrupted again after 1877. The first Ethiopian following studies in Germany in the early 20th century was the artist, poet and singer Tesemma Eshete, later an influential friend of the heir to the throne lij Iyasu.

Ethiopians appear at German universities at a comparatively early stage. The first academic of Ethiopian origin, studying in Germany, was Ingdashet, also known as Wilhelm Schimper junior (son of the above-mentioned German immigrant to Tigray), who after visiting theological courses in St. Chrischona in 1872-73 studied at the Polytechnicum at Karlsruhe until 1877. Later he worked as an engineer in Eritrea and then served, among others, as the interpreter of the scholarly important Deutsche Aksum-Expedition to Eritrea and Tigray in 1906, at the Legation and at the court of atse Menilek II in 1907. When Germany formally established permanent diplomatic relations with Ethiopia in 1905, atse Menilek II also sent a university teacher to the Oriental Seminar at Berlin University, the Protestant aleqa Tayye Gebre-Maryam. His only student, Lorenz Jensen, later served as German diplomat in Addis Abeba, Harar and Desé (the only diplomat residing at the court of nigus Mika’él and lij Iyasu). The Africanist chair of Hamburg University also employed Ethiopian lecturers already starting from the 1920s.