Life in Europe
The Ruetes settled in Hamburg, where they had another son and two daughters. They were:
- Antonia Thawke Ruete (24 March 1868-?), who married Eugene Brandeis (1846–1919) in 1898 and had two daughters.
- Rudolf Said-Ruete (13 April 1869- 1 May 1946). A journalist and author, with the rise of the Nazi Party, he resigned his German citizenship in 1934 and settled in London, becoming a British subject and dying at Lucerne, Switzerland after World War II. In 1901, he married Mary Therese Matthias (1872-?) and had a son and a daughter, Werner Heinrich (1902-1962) and Salme Matilda Benvenuta Olga (1910-?). Through his marriage, he was a cousin of Alfred Moritz, 1st Baron Melchett, who became the first chairman of Imperial Chemical Industries.
- Rosalie Ghuza Ruete (16 April 1870-?), who married Major-General Martin Troemer of the Royal Prussian Army.
Her husband died in 1870 after a tram accident, leaving Ruete in difficult economic circumstances because the authorities denied her heritage claims. Partly to alleviate these economic problems she wrote Memoirs of an Arabian Princess from Zanzibar, first published in the German Empire in 1886, later published in the United States and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. The book provides the first known autobiography of an Arab woman. The book presents the reader with an intimate picture of life in Zanzibar between 1850 and 1865, and an inside portrait of her brothers Majid bin Said of Zanzibar and Barghash bin Said of Zanzibar, the later sultans of Zanzibar.
After the death of her husband, Emily Ruete was caught up in the colonial plans of Otto von Bismarck. There were speculations that Bismarck wanted to install her son as Sultan of Zanzibar. She revisited Zanzibar in 1885 and in 1888. Between 1889 and 1914 she lived in Beirut, Lebanon and Jaffa. She died in Jena, Germany, at the age of 79, from severe pneumonia.
In 1992 An Arabian Princess Between Two Worlds was published, making her letters home, with her reactions on life in Europe, finally available to the public.
There is a permanent exhibition about Emily Ruete in the People's Palace in Stonetown, the palace constructed by her brother, Sultan Barghash.
Read more about this topic: Emily Ruete
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