While Dernburg remained in office, the debate over the future of German East Africa did not produce any decisive answer, although his concessions to European pressure shifted the balance towards the right. Under his successors, the pendulum was to swing further towards the European position, towards the objective of creating in East Africa what contemporary Englishmen called a white man's country. Rechenberg resisted this shift of policy, and during the last year of his governorship his opposition led him into acrimonious dispute with all the forces of right-wing opinion, now for the first time under energetic leadership.

Friedrich von Lindequist, who had been Dernburg's Under-secretary since 1907, became Colonial Secretary on 9 June 1910. He was exactly a year younger than Rechenberg, and in several respects his earlier career ran parallel to that of the governor. Entering the consular service, he was posted to the South-West African administration in 1894. Six years later he became consul-general in Cape Town during the Boer War. Appointed governor of South-West Africa at the height of the rebellion in 1905, he saw European control restored to that country before returning to Germany and taking a leading part in the 1907 election campaign. Conspicuously the most able of Germany's colonial governors at that date, he was made Under-Secretary to the new Colonial Office and later succeeded Dernburg as an automatic choice.