1 Tala - Tanumafili II Dr. Wilhelm Solf

Dr. Wilhelm Solf served as Germany's colonial governor of Samoa from 1900 to 1911, an unusual figure by the standards of the era — he learned Samoan, opposed the brutal labor practices common elsewhere in the Pacific, and maintained genuinely cordial relations with the chiefly class. This coin was issued under Malietoa Tanumafili II, who would go on to become the world's first head of state to convert to the Bahá'í Faith, a detail that adds an odd historical texture to what is otherwise a commemorative pairing of colonial administrator and post-independence monarch.