"The Skull of Mkwawa" by Vincent C. Frank-Steiner, Basel frank.basel at freesurf.ch  has been added to the German version of the book by Rudolf Frank (his father) "Der Junge, der seinen Geburtstag vergass" (the boy who forgot his birthday) successfully published in Germany since 1982.

This addendum was caused because the book was a reprint of a practically lost book published in 1932 in Germany under a different title "Der Schädel des Negerhäuptling Mkwawa" (The skull of Chief Mkwawa). In this book as well as in the unchanged reprint of 1982 the skull of Mkwawa is mentioned quite often but the book does not explain who Mkwawa was and what happened to his skull and the historical importance of both . Therefore it became necessary to explain this with the said addendum opened to a larger audience in this website.

The book has also been translated into English and was published in 1986 in the US with Lothrop, Lee & Shepard and in England with J.M. Dent & Sons / Richard Drew Glasgow under the title "No Hero for the Kaiser".

While with the first publishing the book got quite a lot of attention but was no success at all. It was banned and burned in 1933 and  became a illustrious and important literary event only when republished in the 1980. The book was now translated also into French, Japanese, Danish, Dutch and Turkish. 5 literary awards in Germany and 2 in the US have been allocated.

The author Rudolf Frank (1886 - 1979) has a great literary oeuvre ranging from novels, poetry, plays, scientific and historic research as well as a great number of translations from English into German from authors like John Steinbeck, Pearl Buck, Thomas Wolfe, Nevil Shute, Erich Fromm, Louis Bromfield, Richard Wright, Henry Agard Wallace, Sinclaire Lewis, James Aldrige and many others. The book "No Hero for the Kaiser" formerly "The Skull of Chief Mkwawa" is his best known and the only one with worldwide success.