Basel Mission

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The Evangelical Mission Society in Basel (Basler Mission) is an ecumenical missionary organization from Basel , which was founded in 1815 and was operational in large parts of the world until 2001. Today it is the largest of three supporting organizations of Mission 21 and has handed over the entire operational level to Mission 21.

history

1815-1914

Foundation and organization

In the vicinity of the trading city of Basel and the southern German Pietism , the "Evangelische Missionsgesellschaft Basel" (Basler Mission) was founded as a subsidiary of the German Christianity Society by Christian Friedrich Spittler and Nikolaus von Brunn on September 25, 1815 . The Basel Mission benefited from the organizational talent and international contacts of the Basel retailers. The Württemberg Pietists provided more than half of the employees overseas until the 20th century and all full-time directors of the central office in Basel until the Second World War.

From 1816 seminarians were admitted who worked as missionaries from 1820. At first, they wanted to train missionaries at the Basel seminary, who would then work for other mission organizations overseas, such as the English “ Church Mission Society ”. Soon, however, people in Basel were thinking about their own missionary work.

Mission fields

House of the Basel Mission in Papar (Malaysia)

The first mission projects took place in the South Russian Caucasus and West African Liberia . West Africa , South India , China and Indonesia became important mission areas .

Gold Coast: In 1828 the first missionaries were sent to what was then the Gold Coast (today's Ghana ). The missionaries wanted to build up a Christian village community among the farmers and used the local languages ​​in church and school. In the first century of the Ghana Mission in Basel in particular, many missionaries died of disease.

South India: In South India, today's Karnataka and Kerala states , the Basel Mission began its work in 1834. Here too, the Basel Mission used the local languages ​​for the church and school system (see also Ferdinand Kittel ). “Mission industries” developed out of small workshops, as the Indians who converted to Christianity lost their caste membership and the associated occupation.

China: The Basel Mission began working in China, now Hong Kong and the opposite province of Guangdong, since 1847 . This was the only mission field that was not previously part of a German or British colony .

Cameroon: The Basel Mission took over the missionary work of the English Baptists in Cameroon from 1885. Baptist congregations split off from the Basel Mission and founded the "Native Baptist Church".

1914-1950

In 1913 the Mission had a budget of around 2,500,000 Swiss francs and, with its 635 active employees, was an institution of considerable proportions. With the outbreak of the First World War , however, the Basel Mission came to an abrupt end to its heyday. The Christian nations were in a war, which was also fought in the colonies. European great powers tried to expand their domains in Asia and Africa . This hindered or made impossible the work of the missionaries in almost all mission fields. The German employees of the missions were driven out by both the British and the French, or they had to obey the marching orders from their homeland. In addition, there was increasing poverty in Europe, which made fundraising very difficult. During the war, work in the fields almost came to a standstill.

In the interwar period, not much changed in the expansion policy of European nations in the colonies. This made it difficult to resume work in the mission stations. However, the Basel Mission succeeded in returning in almost all fields (except in French Cameroon ) and, as a result, an astonishing reconstruction of the missionary activity took place. In 1920 a new station was taken over in Kalimantan / Indonesia (South Borneo). But since there were hardly any missionaries in many areas during the war, there was an increased awareness of their own strength and autonomy in these local areas. Local churches were formed which incorporated the missions on their return. On their return, the missionaries encountered new, local churches as well as completely neglected stations.

However, this reconstruction was short-lived. The global economic crisis at the beginning of the 1930s again put the Basel Mission in its place. The situation worsened shortly afterwards due to the events in Germany. The Basel Mission was directly affected by the Hitler government insofar as the NSDAP made the international flow of money more difficult. Indirectly, but no less drastically, the Basel Mission was affected by the church struggle. In 1939 most of the German missionaries were interned and the Swiss missionaries were once again on their own. Relations between the Basel Mission and the Third Reich are controversial. The commitment of Alphons Koechlin , President of the Basel Mission from 1936 to 1959, for the cohesion of the transnational ecumenical movement in hostile camps is undisputed . It was not until the early 1950s that the Basel Mission experienced a renewed boom.

School of the Basel Mission in the Gold Coast Crown Colony

1950-2001

The economic upswing in post-war Europe meant that the Basel Mission was able to grow again. The mission counted just under 400 overseas employees in the early 1960s. The high number of employees can be traced back to the improvements in living conditions in the mission areas, on the one hand through technical progress, which replaced week-long ship journeys, on the other hand the further developments in medical treatment and research into tropical diseases made missionary work less health-related There were risks.

What was new was that the Basel Mission no longer sent missionaries on lifelong missions. The missionaries completed a “preparatory course for missions overseas” lasting several months in Basel, after which they were sent to a mission for a few years. In addition, missionaries were only sent to their areas of operation at the request of the partner churches.

Over the years, the work of the Basel Mission expanded to include South America, as a result of which the mission was active in almost all parts of the world. From the year it was founded until 2001, the Basel Mission sent more than 3,500 missionaries.

The Basel Mission worked with a concept of partnership, which sees the missions, in the classic sense, no longer as missions, but as partner churches. The partner churches are independent and can fall back on the know-how of the Basel Mission. So the missionary became a collaborator. Due to the diversity of the denominations of the partner churches, the Basel Mission acted as an ecumenical organization. She contributed to the establishment of two other organizations: the EMS ( Evangelisches Missionswerk in Südwestdeutschland ) and the KEM ( Cooperation of Evangelical Churches and Missions in Switzerland ), which together with the Basel Mission formed a mission community. Both new organizations were responsible for important publications and public relations.

Since 2001

In 2001, the Basel Mission founded mission 21 together with four other mission organizations and organizations , which took over the operational part of the activities of all mission organizations. The Basel Mission Association (officially: Evangelical Mission Society in Basel) continues the extensive archive of the Basel Mission under the direction of Karl-Friedrich Appl, as well as the collection association u. a. for the half-lump collection . The BMDZ - Basler Mission Deutscher Zweig, founded in 1954, continues to exist in Germany.

Ideas at the start

Mission societies emerged as a reaction of committed Christians in the West to reports of the existence of non-Western, non-Christian cultures. The awakening movement and the influences of Württemberg pietism can be seen as the driving forces behind the rise of the Basel Mission.

The seminary in Basel was originally founded with the intention of training missionaries who would then work overseas for other organizations. When the Basel Mission itself became active, its goal was to build a Christian village culture with farmers and to encourage them to lead a Christian life. The Basel Mission attached great importance to the fact that the schools built on site taught in the “native language” and not in the colonial language. However, the missionaries strove to shape the coexistence in the missions according to the South German, Pietist model.

Bible translation

Early Bible translators for the Mission Society were Johann Gottlieb Auer, Johann Gottlieb Christaller , Hermann Gundert , Christian Theophilus Hoernle, Rudolf Lechler, Johann Adam Mader, Martin Schaub, Eugen Schuler and Johannes Zimmermann .

people

Training or work at the Basel Mission

Presidents / Directors / Inspectors of the Basel Mission

  • Christian Gottlieb Blumhardt (1779–1838), inspector from 1815 to 1838
  • Ludwig Friedrich Wilhelm Hoffmann (1806–1873), inspector from 1839 to 1850
  • Joseph Friedrich Josenhans (1812–1884), inspector from 1849 to 1879
  • Adolf Christ (1807–1877), President from 1854 to 1877
  • Otto Schott (1831–1901), inspector from 1879 to 1884
  • Theodor Oehler (1850–1915), inspector from 1884 to 1904, then director until 1909
  • Friedrich Würz (1865–1926), inspector from 1898 to 1910, then director until 1916
  • Heinrich Dipper (1868–1945), inspector from 1910 to 1913, deputy director from 1913 to 1915, director from 1915 to 1926
  • Karl Hartenstein (1894–1952), director from 1926 to 1939
  • Alphons Koechlin (1885–1965), President from 1939 to 1959
  • Jacques Rossel (1915–2008), President from 1959 to 1979
  • Daniel von Allmen, President from 1979 to 1989
  • Wolfgang Schmidt, President from 1989 to 1998
  • Madelaine Strub-Jaccoud, director from 1998 to 2000

As of 2001, the operational work of the Basel Mission has been at Mission 21. The presidents of the Basel Mission and the supporting association of Mission 21 are:

  • Paul Rutishauser, President from 2001 to 2007
  • Karl-Friedrich Appl, President of the Board of Directors since 2007

Ethnographic collection of the Basel Mission

It is not a matter of course that mission houses set up ethnographic collections. The basis of the ethnographic collection of the Basel Mission goes back to Dr. Christian Barth from Calw, who in 1860 gave away around 650 objects he had collected to the newly built mission house in Basel. Just two years later, the mission had compiled a catalog , which listed a total of 1,558 objects of various kinds and is still considered a pioneering museum act today. The catalog, which the Mission revised twice, was structured geographically and comprised scientific as well as cultural , industrial and art objects. The original purpose of the collection was its didactic function, it served in the training of the new missionaries at the missionary school in Basel. Soon, however, the collection was supposed to present a "as faithful as possible picture of the state, especially the religious state of the peoples". Anna Rein-Wuhrmann (1881–1971), who documented her work and life with the Bamum tribe in Cameroon for two years, provided numerous photographs .

The first public mission exhibition dates back to 1908. Due to its great success, the collection became a traveling exhibition , which over a 50-year history could be seen at over 40 locations in Switzerland and neighboring countries. We know of over 250,000 visitors. The exhibition history of the collection ended in 1953 with the exhibition entitled: "Light of all peoples". In 1981 the entire collection, which until then consisted of 12,888 objects, was given to the Museum für Völkerkunde, today's Museum of Cultures in Basel, on permanent loan. In 2015 there was a special exhibition with these exhibits on the topic of Mission possible? The Basel Mission Collection - Mirror of Cultural Encounters .

literature

Movie

  • Kathrin Winzenried: God and his helpers. They set out to make the world a better place: men and women of the Basel Mission, who for the past 200 years preached Christianity in so-called heathen areas. What drove the missionaries then? What hardships did they accept and how much suffering was done in God's name? Swiss television SRF DOK , March 24, 2016

Web links

Commons : Basler Mission  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Basel Mission. ( Memento of January 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) In: Commercial Register of the Canton of Basel-Stadt. Retrieved July 8, 2011.
  2. ↑ KW Rennstich: Basel Mission . In: Helmut Burkhardt, Uwe Swarat (ed.): Evangelical Lexicon for Theology and Congregation . tape 1 . R. Brockhaus, Wuppertal 1992, ISBN 3-417-24641-5 , p. 186 .
  3. ^ Corinna Waltz: A global festival. In: One world. Magazine from Mission and Ecumenism. ISSN  0949-216X , Volume 2016, Issue 3, pp. 35-36, here p. 35.
  4. ↑ Basel Mission. ( Memento of May 19, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) Retrieved December 8, 2016.
  5. ↑ BMDZ . Retrieved May 2, 2015.
  6. ↑ Early Mission Bibles: Important Institutions - Württembergische Landesbibliothek Stuttgart (accessed on June 23, 2017)
  7. ↑ Alphons Koechlin in the Basel Mission Archive. Retrieved May 2, 2015.
  8. ↑ Museum der Kulturen Basel special exhibition Mission possible? Retrieved May 2, 2015.
  9. ↑ https://www.srf.ch/play/tv/dok/video/gott-und-seine-helfer?id=5be9ad59-8546-452d-9636-9a7010c048fd