Hans Egede

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Hans Egede

Hans Poulsen Egede [hans pɒʊ̯lsn̩ eːjəðə] (born January 31 . Jul / 10. February  1686 greg. In Harstad , Norway ; † 5. November 1758 in Stubbekøbing on Falster , Denmark ) was a Norwegian pastor Danish descent. He is also known as the "Apostle of the Greenlanders ".

family

Hans Poulsen was the son of the Justice of the Peace ( Sorenskriver ) Poul Hansen Egede and Kirstine Hinds.

His father was the son of the parish priest Hans Jensen Ravn of the parish Vester Egede in Haslev in today's Vestsjællands Amt . His sons took the place name Egede as a family name. According to a family legend, they did this to differentiate themselves from schoolmates, who also had the surname Ravn.

His mother was the daughter of the Sorenskrivers of the Bailiwick of Senja ( Troms Fylke). Its district was subordinate to the judicial district of Hans Egede's father, i.e. his son-in-law. Kirstine Hind's brother was the parish priest in that bailiwick.

In 1707 the clergyman married Gertrud Rask . Several descendants were born from the marriage, including Paul Egede and Niels Egede .

Act

Statue in front of the church in Vågan (Lofoten)
Statue of Hans Egede in Nuuk

Egede was a Protestant pastor in Lofoten in northern Norway when he heard about Greenland , the legendary green country in the north that had been settled by the Vikings , but with which contact had long been broken. Assuming that the originally Christian settlers had fallen away from the faith again, he decided to look for this land and do missionary work. The Danish King Frederick IV gave him permission, not without interest in colonizing the country.

Hans Egede set out for Greenland on May 12th, 1721 and landed on the west coast on July 3rd of that year. However, he found no more Vikings, but Inuit . Egede learned their language, examined the structure of the language and translated essential Christian content into Greenlandic, not without imagination. So the passage in the Lord's Prayer - "give us today our daily bread" - was completely incomprehensible to the Inuit, they knew no bread. Egede found a solution: In the Greenlandic Our Father, it was then “give us today our daily seal”.

Egede founded the first colony on the island of Illuerunnerit and named it Håbets Ø ("Hope Island "). In 1728 he moved it 17 km inland and thus founded Godthåb - today's capital Nuuk . Egede had his son draw biblical stories, cared for the sick and converted the first Inuit to Christianity. Egede was able to baptize the first Greenlandic children in 1724. In the same year he sent the Inuit Pooq and Qiperoq to Copenhagen. Pooq returned the following year and was the first to report to Inuk from Europe.

In 1729 Egedes published his book Det gamle Grønlands nye perphia , The old Greenland's new pearls, or A brief description of the old Nordic colonies ... in Greenland about the Inuit life, the history and the nature of Greenland, which was translated into several languages .

The new King Christian VI. called back all Europeans from Greenland in 1730, but Egede stayed, encouraged by his wife Gertrud. In 1733, Moravian missionaries were also allowed to travel to Greenland. They built Neu-Herrnhut south of Nuuk.

In 1734 a smallpox epidemic broke out in Egedes colony Godthåb , to which all Inuit and in 1735 also Egede's wife Gertrud fell victim. Hans Egede left his son Paul in Greenland and traveled to Copenhagen on August 9, 1736 with his daughters and son Niels . There he buried his wife and trained catechists for work in Greenland until 1747 . In 1741 he became superintendent of the Greenland Mission Church.

Honors and commemorations

Egede became the "national saint " of Greenland, the place Egedesminde (memorial for Egede) is named after him. Egedesminde was founded in 1759 by Niels Egede, the second son of Hans Egedes, on the Eqalussuit peninsula and moved to the island of Aasiaat in 1763, a historic place that dates back to 2500 BC Was settled by Inuit. Furthermore, Hans-Egede-Land , a region in Northern Greenland, bears his name.

In 1922 a large statue of him was erected on a hill on the outskirts of the capital. In June 2020 it was smeared with red paint by activists in protest because he had campaigned to wean the Inuit from their traditional way of life and to make them settled. Subsequently, some Greenlanders requested that the statue be relocated to a less dominant location.

Two of four ships in the Greenland merchant navy were named after Hans Egede and his wife Gertrud Rask. Both were lost in World War II (see Hans Egede (ship) ).

The lunar crater Egede was also named after him.

The Evangelical Church in Germany commemorates Egede on November 5th with a memorial day in the Evangelical Name Calendar . A bronze relief commemorating him and his wife was attached to the Kreuzkirche in Bergen, where Egede was also a pastor. Hans Egede is also shown on the Sjømannsmonumentet in Bergen .

Works

  • The rationale for the Greenland Mission. In: From Greenland to Lambarene. Travel descriptions by Christian missionaries from three centuries. Edited by John Paul . Evangelische Verlagsanstalt Berlin 1952 (pages 11-30) = Kreuz-Verlag Stuttgart 1958 (pages 9-27).
  • Description and natural history of Greenland. Translated by Joh Ge. Krünitz. Berlin 1763.
  • Exploring Greenland. Selected and edited from the first version from 1740 by Martin Heydrich. FA Brockhaus Verlag Leipzig 1923.
  • Detailed and truthful news of the beginning and progress of the Greenland Mission. 1st edition 1740.

literature

Web links

Commons : Hans Egede  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Hans Steen book Gravskrift over Salig Biskop Egede (2 pages), are listed later in the book: Jacob Johan Lund, Første missionary på Grønland, Biskop Hans Egede LevNet , Copenhagen 1778 (Danish).
  2. ↑ The missionary who came into the cold sueddeutsche.de , June 25, 2020, accessed on July 17, 2020
  3. ↑ Hans Egede in the Ecumenical Lexicon of Saints
personal data
SURNAME Egede, Hans
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Egede, Hans Poulsen (full name)
SHORT DESCRIPTION Norwegian pastor, apostle of the Greenlanders
DATE OF BIRTH February 10, 1686
PLACE OF BIRTH Harstad , Norway
DATE OF DEATH November 5, 1758
PLACE OF DEATH Stubbekøbing on Falster , Denmark