Ernst Vohsen (April 19, 1853 - June 1919) was a German businessman, politician, colonialist, and publisher active in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Vohsen was born in Mainz. After a year of military service, he settled in Paris, where he worked in the grain business while studying economics at the Conservatoire Des Arts et Metiers. In 1875, he became involved with the Compagnie Francaise Du Senegal et de la Cote Occidentale l'Afrique, relocating to Sierra Leone, where he managed a trading depot on the Rio Nunez. When an 1877 outbreak of Yellow Fever killed most European officials in Freetown, Vohsen took over management of the entire company in Africa. In 1881, he was appointed the first German consul in Sierra Leone by imperial decree to promote German interests there. Vohsen returned to Germany in 1887 to study Arabic and Swahili at the Orientalischen Seminar Berlin. There, he connected with the Deutsch Ostafrikanischen Gesellschaft (German East African Society, DOAG), where he took over management when Carl Peters (1856 - 1918) retired. His leadership saw the suppression of a local uprising, leading to the takeover of the colony by the German Empire. Vohsen left the DOAG in 1891, returning to Germany. There, through the recommendation of German banker Adelbert Delbrück, who was on the company's advisory board, Vohsen took over management of the well-established publishing firm Dietrich Reimer, whose owner Hermann Hoefer was forced to retire due to old age. Vohsen was a keen businessman if inexperienced in publishing, but under Hoefer's tutelage, pushed Dietrich Reimer to new levels of success through a focus on colonial publishing and cartography. He changed the imprint to 'Dietrich Reimer (Ernst Vohsen)' and built up a cartographic department, which produced colonial maps and maps for the German navy and even sponsored exploratory expeditions. Vohsen died of heart disease in 1919 while under treatment in the spa town of Bad Nauheim.