Hendrik Witbooi

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Hendrik Witbooi (post-processed photo)
Hendrik Witbooi around 1900 (post-processed photo)

Hendrik Witbooi (also Hendrik Wittboy), actually ǃNanseb ǀGabemab (* around 1830 in Pella , Cape Colony , today South Africa ; † October 29, 1905 on pale grass, west of Koës , German South West Africa , today Kleinvaalgras, Namibia ), was since the end of 1888 Captain of the Orlam , the Witbooi , who are related to the Nama .

origin

Hendrik Witbooi's family belonged to the leading class of the Nama for generations, both his grandfather Kido Witbooi ( ǂA-ǁêib ) and his father Moses Witbooi ( ǀGâbeb ǃA-ǁîmab ) were Nama-capstones . From 1855, his grandfather led the tribe from the Cape Province north across the Orange River to what would later become the Nama Land. The family lived in the Christian faith after the grandfather was baptized in 1868. Hendrik Witbooi himself had twelve children: seven sons and five daughters.

The year of birth of Hendrik Witboois is unknown, the sources vary between 1824 and 1838. What is certain is that he grew up in Pella, the former settlement of the Witbooi, not far from the southern bank of the Orange River in the Cape Province. As a young man, he saw his tribe move north. The Witbooi-Nama settled about 160 kilometers north of the Orange River in the place named by them with the biblical name Gibeon . Since they had already been cared for by Christian missionaries in their former home , they asked the Rhenish Mission Society , which was active in South West Africa, to send a missionary to Gibeon. The task was assigned to Johannes Olpp in 1868. He established close contact with the Witbooi Kaptein family and baptized the entire family in the first year of his activity. For many years, Olpp was an important reference person for Hendrik Witbooi.

Ascent

Caption:
Captain Hendrik Wittboi with his staff .
Greetings from German South West Africa (post-processed photo)

Hendrik Witbooi dealt intensively with the Christian faith, in addition, he learned several European languages. In 1875, Olpp appointed him elder of the Gibeon parish. On the other hand, Hendrik Witbooi also had a pronounced striving for power, although he knew perfectly how to support his resulting actions with Christian arguments.

This became particularly clear when he tried to lead the Witbooi tribe further north against his father's wishes. He justified this plan by claiming that God had appeared to him and had given him the task of leading his people north. His plan not only opposed his father, who had meanwhile become a captain and saw his own authority waning through his son's actions, he also ignored the urgent warnings of the missionaries. These warnings were not unfounded, as the Witbooi migration to the north inevitably meant a conflict with the Herero who settled in the area.

Citing divine orders, Hendrik Witbooi set out north in May 1884 with most of the residents of Gibeon. The train advanced about 200 kilometers before being attacked by the Herero north of Rehoboth . When Witbooi recognized the superiority of the enemy, he asked the Herero chief Maharero in a letter to conclude peace and move on unmolested. Contacting his opponents via letters was again and again a typical Witboois behavior later on. Maharero accepted the peace offer, but refused to allow the Witbooi to march on, so Hendrik Witbooi had to return to Gibeon on July 14, 1884.

There he was again exposed to severe reprimand from the mission society, which on top of that removed him from his ecclesiastical offices and withdrew his admission to the Lord's Supper . Deeply affected by this, Witbooi wrote a long letter to the new mission leader Friedrich Rust, in which he justified himself with the divine instructions given to him, announced that he would be moving north again and asked Rust to accompany the train.

Rust refused the request, but Witbooi set out again in July 1885 with about 600 people northwards. This time the destination of the train was Okahandja , the seat of the Herero chief. There the Witbooi occupied a water hole and were then attacked again by the Herero, who this time did not accept any peace offers and brought Witbooi and his men a devastating defeat. Although Hendrik Witbooi had to pay for the lost battle with the death of two sons, he did not give up the fight. After he had to realize that the Herero had thwarted his divine mission, the punishment of the enemy was now his new goal. For years he waged a guerrilla war against the Herero.

In 1887 Witbooi's father Moses was deposed as captain by his rival Paul Visser and was murdered by him on February 22, 1888. Visser proclaimed Hornkranz, almost 200 kilometers north of the previous settlement of Gibeon, as the new seat of the Witbooi. There Hendrik Witbooi put him to fight on July 12, 1888 and killed him. The Witbooi then appointed him the new captain. In order to expand his power even further, Witbooi induced the other Nama societies, sometimes with the use of force, to recognize him as the ruler of the entire Nama people.

Conflict with the German colonial power

In the meantime Witbooi had grown into a new disruptive factor with the German immigrants. The Herero had already concluded a "protection treaty" with the German colonial administration in 1885 after Hendrik Witbooi's second march into Hereroland. When Witbooi continued his raids, the Herero invoked the assured German protection and demanded that Witbooi's attacks by the German protection force be stopped. However, this had too few soldiers to be able to intervene militarily, and mediation talks with the Reich Commissioner Ernst Heinrich Göring were unsuccessful.

Thereupon the German Reich strengthened its protection force in 1889 and appointed the captain von François as their commander. He, too, initially negotiated with Witbooi and also offered the Nama a protection contract, but Hendrik Witbooi rejected all offers with reference to the sovereignty of the Nama people. When François then announced military action, Witbooi thought about it and made peace with the Herero in November 1892.

Kaptein Hendrik Witbooi 1896 with Governor Leutwein and German administrative officials
War memorial for the fallen German soldiers in the war against the Witbooi tribe (1893 and 94) in today's Windhoek Zoo-Park (post-processed photo)

François came to the conviction that Witbooi would be an obstacle to the continuation of the German colonization in South West Africa in the long run and decided to finally break Witbooi's power. In the hope of catching him, he attacked the Nama camp in Hornkranz on April 12, 1893 and had fire opened on the residents ( Battle of Hornkranz ). Witbooi managed to flee with his warriors, but left women and children behind who were massacred in the hail of bullets from the protection force. François had Hornkranz occupied and initially hunted Witbooi in vain. This managed to hide for over a year or to escape further attacks, he in turn attacked German posts and farmers. It was only when François was replaced by Major Leutwein that Witbooi could be tracked down in the rocky Naukluft and, after two weeks of fighting, was forced to negotiate on September 11, 1894. In view of the German losses, Leutwein renounced the final annihilation of the enemy, but forced Witbooi to conclude a so-called protection treaty, which required the Nama to return to their original settlement area in Gibeon, to place themselves under the supervision of a German garrison and the German protection force To make military victories. Witbooi was allowed to stay in Nama-Kaptein and on top of that received an annual pension of 2,000 marks . Leutwein received a lot of incomprehension for this mild treatment, but Witbooi himself taught the critics better, because he stuck to the contract for ten years.

In 1904 the Herero and Nama uprising began . As Witbooi had contractually agreed, the Nama initially participated in the suppression of the rebellious Herero. Shocked by the inhuman actions of Lieutenant General von Trotha , several of the Nama who were fighting on the side of the German troops fled. In mid-September they reported to Witbooi about the Battle of Waterberg and the warfare of the Germans. How difficult it was for him to adhere to the contract is made clear in a letter that he addressed to two Nama leaders in October 1904:

“As you know, for some time I have walked under the law, in the law and behind the law, all of us with all obedience, but in the hope and expectation that God the Father would redeem us from this time of hardship. So far I have endured in peace and with patience, and everything that pressed on my heart I let pass me by ... ” (Reeh, A life for freedom).

From September 1904, the Nama came under the influence of the "Prophet" Shepherd Stuurman (also Hendrik Bekeer), a representative of the " Ethiopian Movement ", which was directed against the European missionaries and aimed at a purely African Christianity. Stuurman came from the British Cape Colony , where this heretical movement played a major role around 1900. It is unclear whether Hendrik Witbooi himself adhered to the Ethiopian movement or whether he only used it to remove his people from the influence of the missionaries.

Both events heated the mood against the Germans to such an extent that Witbooi led his people into the fight against the German troops, especially since his former contract partner Leutwein was no longer in command. Witbooi no longer felt obliged to Trotha.

In a letter dated October 3, 1904 to the district captain of Burgsdorff , he terminated the protection treaty, and on the same day the attacks against both the German troops and the German settlers began. Witbooi, now over 70 years old, handed over the leadership to his son Isaak Witbooi shortly after the fighting broke out. However, he continued to participate in the fighting and advised his son on tactical issues. The Nama again used their tried and true guerrilla tactics and were so difficult to catch. At times they operated from the impassable terrain of the Karas Mountains in the south of the country.

The German commander-in-chief von Trotha took about 1,500 soldiers, twenty cannons and two machine guns against the approx. 750 Witboois fighters, who were armed with rifles. The Witbooi were able to evade an attempt to encircle them. Instead, fierce fighting broke out periodically. On October 24, 1905, Witbooi's attempt to attack the Kiriis-Ost station failed. On October 29, Witbooi and his men attacked a car belonging to the German 3rd Battery at the Fahlgras waterhole (today the village of Kleinvaalgras), about 60 kilometers west of Koës . In the ensuing battle, the Witbooi were forced to flee. Hendrik Witbooi was hit in the thigh by a bullet during the attack and died a little later of the wound. According to a report from the new commander of the Schutztruppe, Colonel Dame , on November 25, 1905, Witbooi died on October 29. Captain Johann Christian Goliath, allied with the Germans, stated that Witbooi died on November 3rd.

Aftermath

Witbooi's tribe split into several groups, of which Samuel Isaak and Hans Hendrik and their followers surrendered to the German troops without a fight on November 26, 1905. Four months later, Hendrik Witbooi's successor Isaak Witbooi ( ǃNanseb ǂKharib ǃNansemab ) also surrendered with 278 men and 306 women and children. Hendrik Witbooi's son-in-law Cornelius Frederiks , Jakobus Morenga and other leaders from the south continued the fight; Frederiks surrendered in March 1906 with 235 men, 176 women and children. The mild peace terms that had been promised to the resulting Nama were overridden by the new governor, Friedrich von Lindequist . The groups under Samuel Isaak and Hans Hendrik were first interned in a camp in Windhoek in 1906 and then taken to Shark Island in Lüderitz Bay . The Bethanians under Cornelius Fredericks first had to work in Karibib on the railway line to Tsumeb before they too came to Shark Island. Many prisoners died there due to the poor conditions, inadequate care and forced labor. On Shark Island, the mortality rate between 1905 and 1908 was around 70%. The 119 Witbooi who had served in the German armed forces in October 1904 had already been deported to the other German colonies of Togo and then Cameroon . By June 1906, almost two-thirds of them were dead.

After Namibia's independence in 1990, Hendrik Witbooi was proclaimed the country's national hero. It was featured on all Namibian dollar banknotes of the first series (1993–2012) and is depicted on the 50, 100 and 200 dollar notes of the second series (since 2012).

Witbooi's diaries , which are kept in the National Archives of Namibia in Windhoek , were added to the list of world documentary heritage in 2005 because of the insights they contain into the nature of colonialism, approaches to formulating African legal concepts and pan-Africanism as well generally because of their poetic and visionary quality.

10 Namibian dollars -Note

After the battle of Hornkranz it probably came to plunder the kraal of Witbooi. The looted property very likely also contained the family Bible with handwritten notes by the captain and his whip . Both objects were in 1902 the Linden Museum in Stuttgart as a donation assigned and have found themselves until shortly before the restitution of the state Museum of Ethnology . The artefacts of the great fighter against colonialism are of the highest symbolic value for the people of Namibia and were returned during a solemn ceremony on February 28, 2019.

Descendants

One of Witbooi's grandsons was Markus Witbooi , born in 1903 , who worked as an evangelist under the Nama when they left the Rheinische Missionsgesellschaft in 1946 and joined the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AMEC).

A great-grandson of Witbooi was Hendrik Witbooi ( ǃNanseb ǀGabemab ), who was born in 1934 and died in 2009 , a SWAPO politician and longstanding Vice President of SWAPO and Vice Prime Minister of Namibia.

annotation

  1. ↑ Note: This article contains characters from the alphabet of the Khoisan languages spoken in southern Africa . The display contains characters of the click letters ǀ , ǁ , ǂ and ǃ . For more information on the pronunciation of long or nasal vowels or certain clicks , see e.g. B. under Khoekhoegowab .

literature

  • Horst Drechsler : South West Africa under German colonial rule. The struggle of the Herero and Nama against German imperialism (1884–1915) . 2nd revised edition. Akademie-Verlag, Berlin (GDR) 1984.
  • Udo Kaulich: The history of the former colony of German South West Africa. (1884-1914); an overall representation. Univ., Diss. - Mainz, 2000. 2nd edition. Lang, Frankfurt am Main 2003, ISBN 3-631-50196-X .
  • Heinrich Loth : From the snake cult to the Christ Church. Religion and Messianism in Africa . Union Verlag, Berlin (GDR) 1985.
  • Günther Reeh: Hendrik Witbooi. A life for freedom. Between belief and doubt . Rüdiger Köppe Verlag, Cologne 2000, ISBN 3-89645-315-7 .
  • Hendrik Witbooi: Africa for the Africans! Notes by a Nama chief from the time of the German conquest of South West Africa from 1884 to 1894 . Edited by Wolfgang Reinhard . Dietz, Bonn 1982, ISBN 3-8012-0070-1 . ( Digital edition )

Literary adaptations

  • Martin Selber : Hendrik Witbooi. Struggle for freedom in South West Africa . Youth book. Gebr. Knabe Verlag, Weimar, 1974. Rowohlt TB-Verl., Reinbek, 1979, ISBN 3-499-20215-8
  • Dietmar Beetz : Scout of the Witbooi warriors . Youth book. Series Excitingly told , Volume 145 Verlag Neues Leben Berlin 1978.

Web links

References and comments

  1. ^ A b c Marion Wallace: History of Namibia. From the beginning until 1990 . Basler Afrika Bibliographien, Basel 2015, p. 264.
  2. ↑ Walter Nuhn : Enemy Everywhere. The great Nama uprising in 1904-1908 in German South West Africa. Bernard & Graefe Verlag, Bonn 2000, ISBN 3-7637-6207-8 , p. 174.
  3. ↑ Andreas H. Bühler: The Nama uprising against German colonial rule in Namibia from 1904–1913 . IKO, Berlin 2003, p. 263.
  4. ^ Marion Wallace: History of Namibia. From the beginning until 1990 . Basler Afrika Bibliographien, Basel 2015, p. 264 f.
  5. ^ Marion Wallace: History of Namibia. From the beginning until 1990 . Basler Afrika Bibliographien, Basel 2015, pp. 270–273.
  6. ↑ Letter Journals of Hendrik Witbooi in the UNESCO program "Memory of the World"
  7. ↑ Baden-Württemberg returns cultural assets to Namibia. SWR, February 28, 2019.
  8. ^ Biographies of Namibian Personalities - W , Klaus Dierks , accessed January 24, 2009
predecessor Office successor
Moses Witbooi Kaptein der Witbooi ( Kapsteine der Nama )
 Isaac Witbooi
personal data
SURNAME Witbooi, Hendrik
ALTERNATIVE NAMES ǃNanseb given
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Nama captain
DATE OF BIRTH around 1830
PLACE OF BIRTH Pella , South Africa
DATE OF DEATH October 29, 1905
Place of death Karas Mountains , South West Africa