Bruno Gutmann

Bruno Gutmann (born July 4, 1876 in Dresden ; † December 17, 1966 in Ehingen am Hesselberg ) was a German Evangelical Lutheran missionary of the Leipzig Mission in German East Africa and Tanganyika (now Tanzania ) and a scholarly researcher of Chagga culture .

Life

In 1895 Bruno Gutmann was accepted into the Evangelical Lutheran Mission Seminar in Leipzig . After studying Protestant theology , a one-year vicariate in Germany followed. In 1902 he was sent to East Africa. Until 1906 he was an assistant in several mission stations in the Kilimandjaro Mountains before he set up his first station in Masama . In East Africa he not only studied the language, but also the culture and customs of the Chagga. In 1908 he returned to Germany for health reasons. He married in 1909 and then traveled back to Africa. In 1910 he took over the Old Moshi mission station . In 1920 Gutmann was expelled along with the other German missionaries on the basis of the provisions of the Versailles Treaty (Article 122) by the British colonial administration of the " Tanganyika Territory "; he returned to Germany. From 1926 to 1930 he worked again in Old-Moshi. After a short vacation in Germany in 1930/31, he was again in Old-Moshi from 1931 to 1938. After that he lived in Middle Franconia until his death because the Leipzig Mission no longer wanted to send him out.

Act

Traditional chagga hut

In addition to his duties as a missionary, Bruno Gutmann researched and archived the oral tradition of the Chagga. After returning to Germany, he published basic scientific works on the Chagga culture. He is considered to be one of the strongest defenders of the Chagga culture against the influences of European civilization v. a. by the colonial powers. With great dedication he tried to convey Christianity through the traditional Chagga culture. Through Gutmann's written tradition, the Chagga have regained their long-forgotten oral tradition. Gutmann is still held in high regard by them, and they refer to him as their apostle , to whom they owe their evangelical faith and their regained cultural identity.

The anthropological and theological roots of his thinking and working were strongly influenced by Romanticism . From the sociologist Ferdinand Tönnies he adopted the distinction between community and society, from Friedrich Naumann a . a. the attitude that social change must be slow and not violent. Theologically he is the successor of the Leipzig Karl Graul and Gustav Warneck ; from them he took over the teaching of the Adiaphora and, as a mission goal, the foundation of a people's church.

Great-grandchildren

Gutmann's great-grandson Tillmann Prüfer published an experience report in 2015 in which he describes how the descendants went in search of traces of the work of Bruno Gutmann. Another great-grandson is his brother, author and journalist Benjamin Prüfer .

Honors

• 1924 Honorary doctorate from the theological faculty of the University of Erlangen
• 1926 Honorary doctorate from the Law Faculty of the University of Würzburg

Web links

• Tillmann Prüfer: Genealogy. I had an ancestor in Africa (ZEITmagazin No. 24/2015 - June 11, 2015.)
• Leipziger Missionswerk: Bruno Gutmann
• Primary literature and secondary literature in the joint union catalog GVK Enter "Bruno Gutmann" in the search.

literature

Primary literature (selection)

• Poetry and thinking of the Jaggans . Contributions to East African folklore. Publishing house of the Evangelical Lutheran Mission, Leipzig 1909.
• Letters from Africa. Verlag der Evangelisch-Lutherischen Mission, 3rd edition, Leipzig 1925.
• Congregation building from the gospel: Fundamentals for mission and home church , Evangelical-Lutheran Mission Publishing House, 1925
• The law of the jagga . Beck publishing house, Munich 1926.
• The tribal teachings of the jagga . 3 volumes: Verlag Beck, Munich. Volume 1 1932, Volume 2 1935, Volume 3 1938.
• Africans - Europeans in closest relation. Collected essays by Bruno Gutmann. On the occasion of the 90th birthday of Bruno Gutmann ed. by Ernst Jaeschke . Bibliography by Bruno Gutmann and bibliography on pages 215–231. Evangelical publishing work 1966.

Secondary literature (selection)

• Friedrich Wilhelm Bautz :  Gutmann, Bruno. In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). Volume 2, Bautz, Hamm 1990, ISBN 3-88309-032-8 , Sp. 405-408.
• Martin Küchler: D. Dr. Bruno Gutmann. CV and appreciation of life work D. Dr. Bruno Gutmanns. Publishing house of the Evangelical Lutheran Mission, Erlangen 1951.
• Klaus Fiedler : Christianity and African Culture. Conservative German missionaries in Tanzania, 1900-1940 (Missionswissenschaftliche Forschungen Vol. 16), Gütersloh 1983, ISBN 3-579-00236-8
• Ernst Jaeschke: Bruno Gutmann: his life - his thoughts - and his work; an early attempt at a theology in an African context. Publishing house of the Evangelical Lutheran Mission, Erlangen 1985.
• Christoph Bochinger : Wholeness and community. On the relationship between theological and anthropological questions in the work of Bruno Gutmann. (Religious Studies Vol. 3), Frankfurt / M., Berlin, New York, Paris 1987, ISBN 3-8204-0124-5 .
• Tillmann Prüfer : Saint Bruno: The incredible story of my great-grandfather on Kilimanjaro. Rowohlt, Reinbek near Hamburg 2015, ISBN 978-3499630576 .

archive

Since the spring of 2006, the majority of the archives of the Evangelical Lutheran Missionswerk Leipzig have been on permanent loan in the archive of the Francke Foundations in Halle. These include the personnel files of the deceased missionaries, mission teachers and nurses from the Leipzig mission - including the detailed documentation of their work.

Remarks

1. ^ Tillmann Prüfer: Ancestry research. I had an ancestor in Africa (ZEITmagazin No. 24/2015 - June 11, 2015.)
2. ^ Finding aids on the holdings of the Evangelical Lutheran Missionswerk Leipzig eV in the archive of the Francke Foundations (name register is at the end). (PDF; 509 kB)