There is a whole Wikipedia written in Basic English. This leads to the question if something similar exists for German. Maybe a type of controlled language for teaching aboriginals a simplified German at the time of colonialism?
What would be/was the basic vocabulary of this simplified German?
Around the years 1915-1916 there were plans for a constructed/planned German language called Weltdeutsch.
In the same years Oswald Salzmann created das "vereinfachte Deutsch" on the basis of standard German.
Also in 1915 Adalbert Baumann proposed a solution for the world language problem and named it Wede. Baumann was convinced that a universal auxiliary language was necessary. He critisized the previous solution attempts like Esperanto and suggested developing an artificial language based on a modern language (German or English).
The goal of these planned languages was to spread German language in the world, or at least in the German sphere of influence, especially in the colonies. The theoretical concepts never went realized though.
There are also some Pidgin-variants of German: Küchendeutsch/Namibian Black German (Namibia) and Unserdeutsch/Unserdeutsch_language (Papua New Guinea).
They are not really a controlled language, but at least Küchendeutsch seems to be a kind of simplified German.
You may find a German article about the topic at einestages.spiegel.de
Emil Schwörer published in 1916 a language Kolonial-Deutsch. The language was planned as a language for the German colonies. The original article is published as two pdf, the grammar is defined on page 29--54 of the document.
It was never realized, it is only a proposal.
