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Abstract
The history of the North German Mission Society (established 1836 in Hamburg) and its activity on the West African coast (from 1847 onwards among the Ewe, in what is now Ghana and Togo where it was and still is known as the ‘Bremen Mission’) mirrors neatly the various phases of the idea of ‘mission’: its composite motivation (Enlightenment, humanism and Pietism); the rejection of a narrow denominationalism (though the management of the mission was from 1850 onwards in the hands of the society’s Bremen branch which belonged to the Reformed tradition); the entanglement of mission and overseas trade; the ambivalent attitude towards imperialism; the shaping of the missionary process as a profoundly educational one; the growing independence of the African church when the German missionaries were imprisoned (World War I) and prevented from returning to their posts (one of the consequences of the Treaty of Versailles); the mission’s eventual loss of usefulness to the African church after 1945, its attempt at re-inventing itself as an agency for development and inter-church aid; and, finally, the Pentecostal rebellion of African Christians (church schisms) against the new theological orthodoxy of inculturation and Africanisation. The focus of the present article is on only one of the facets of this complex narrative – the remarkable attempt of the Bremen Mission actively to transform Africans, through a highly distinctive process of educational intervention, into African Christians. The design of this intervention was drafted by Franz Michael Zahn, the mission’s Director from 1862 to 1900.
Notes
1. An overview of the history of the Bremen Mission is contained in Ustorf (Citation2002).
2. Ludwig Zahn’s educational ideas can be found in the issues of the journal he founded, the Schulchronik (see Horn Citation1905).
3. This document is Der Seminarplan von 1863; Bremen State Archives (StAB) 7,1025-38/1. Quotes are from this document unless indicated otherwise. Zahn frequently placed the word ‘seminary’ in quotation marks, because he considered the term an exaggeration. While the Basel Mission’s ‘middle schools’ were already offering a course in Greek in 1863 and its preachers’ seminary of Akropong was also offering Hebrew, Bremen’s seminary in Ho provided English as the only foreign language. The programme was deliberately run non-academically.
4. Socially accepted institutions along the coast were polygamy and concubinage, often flanked by matrilineal traditions which meant that the mother’s brother had the father’s role in relation to his sister’s children – in any way, institutions that could not be accommodated within the ideal of the European nuclear family.
5. Already at the first of the Continental Mission Conferences (1866) the general principle had been approved of bringing the gospel to each people ‘in their own local language’ – interestingly in order to avoid the cultural alienation of ‘national teachers’, i.e. indigenous catechists (cf. North German Mission Society Citation1868, 7–11).
6. Letter from J. von Puttkamer to Caprivi, the Imperial Chancellor, 22 April 1894 (Zentrales Staats-Archiv Potsdam [ZStA] RkolA no. 4078: 94–104).
7. Letter from J. von Puttkamer to Hohenlohe-Schillingsfürst, Imperial Chancellor, 15 November 1894 (ZStA RkolA no. 4078: 169–77).
8. Letter from Zahn to the Colonial Department through von Jacobi, the retired Secretary of State, 25 July 1894 (ZStA RkolA no. 4078: 156).
9. For instance, Zahn wanted to keep ‘Renan’s writings and even worse things’ out of the reach of congregations overseas; cf. his contribution to the discussion at the Sixth Continental Mission Conference (Zahn Citation1884, 312).
10. Letter from Zahn to Imperial Chancellor Caprivi, 5 July 1894 (ZStA Rkola no. 4078: 132).
11. Spieth’s diary (in the possession of the author), 10 April 1899; quotes from pages 332 and 335.
12. Circular from Zahn, 3 September 1872 (StAB 7, 1025-85/3).
13. Inevitably this statement was unsatisfactory because it left open why no ‘degeneration’ was to be found in the linguistic field among other non-Christian but ‘civilized people’ (e.g. in Asia). At all events Zahn did not have recourse to the reason as given by Fabri, according to which racial (physical) and linguistic and intellectual ‘degenerations’, of the Africans above all, were the consequence of a divine punishment for particular involvement in the project for building the Tower of Babel. Fabri conversely derived a justification from this for European imperialism (the white race’s non-involvement in building the Tower and hence their not being marred culturally and materially); cf. Fabri (Citation1859, 3, 4, 7–9, 39f, 41). Zahn doubtless knew of this theory. At the Second Continental Mission Conference (in Bremen, 1868) there had already been a clash between Zahn and Fabri when the latter had propagated his thesis that no people outside Europe would again be in the van of humanity’s progress in the realms of world history and the history of civilisation. Zahn, however, did not want to let these ‘heretical ideas on mission’ be accepted, and insisted that ‘the future of the heathen world’ was uncertain (cf. North German Mission Society Citation1868, 73).
14. To Zahn it was clear that, for instance, in music, Chinese and Indians ‘must also learn from us in this matter’ (Zahn Citation1896, 55).
15. Letters from Zahn to Hess, 19 November 1864; and from Zahn to Weyhe, 19 November 1864, 20 May 1864 and 20 July 1866 (StAB 7, 1025-39/3).
16. ‘Bestimmungen für die Stationsschulen der Norddeutschen Missionsgesellschaft auf der Sklavenküste, Oktober 1882 (aufbauend auf dem Plan von 1867)’. In Zahn, Überschau über unsere Schulen, 15 July 1886 (StAB 7, 1025-38/1).
17. See his Lehrbuch der heiligen Geschichte (1843), Lehrbuch der Kirchengeschichte (1849) and Christliche Religionslehre (1844). All of these publications went through numerous editions.
18. See North German Mission Society (1873, 1231, 1875, 1359 – this also had a general summary of the teaching material at the seminary). According to Debrunner (Citation1965, 1227, 275), the black evangelist Joseph Reindorf and missionary E. Bürgi translated parts of Kurtz’s opus into the Ewe language.
19. Quotations from Lehrbuch der heiligen Geschichte (1847 – 3rd edition, vi); Lehrbuch der Kirchengeschichte (1860 – 4th edition, 633); and Abriss der Kirchengeschichte (1871 – 7th edition, 184f). In line with this Napoleon then appeared as ‘the Scourge of God’ against the Revolution and the Enlightenment; the French Revolution showed ‘what is bound to happen to the modern world without God and Christianity’ (Abriss der Kirchengeschichte 1871 – 7th edition, 184f).
20. Quotation from Lehrbuch der heiligen Geschichte (1847 – 3rd edition, vi, 28ff).
21. F.L. Zahn’s Biblische Geschichte (Citation1841) is a popular résumé and also a substitute for the out-of-print Part 3 of his work, Das Reich Gottes auf Erden. Handbuch zur biblischen und Kirchengeschichte für Lehrer und reifere Schüler, und zum Selbstunterricht, Part 1 (1830), Part 2 (1834). On the position of Africa see Part 1, 74–87ff.
22. ‘In the final years of the eighteenth century, a dismal unbelief called the Enlightenment spread over the Christian church’. The ‘fruit’ of this was, accordingly, the French Revolution (‘rejection of God’s Word’), Napoleon (the ‘Scourge of God’) as punishment (Zahn Citation1841, 525).
23. Contribution by Zahn to the debate – see minutes of the transactions of the Continental Mission Conference in Bremen (9–12 May 1893; Verhandlungen der Kontinentalen Missionskonferenz zu Bremen, Gütersloh, 17).