Hermannsburg Mission

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Former "Old Mission House" (left), today "Ludwig Harms House"
“New Mission House” from 1879 in Hermannsburg

The Evangelical Lutheran Hermannsburg Mission was founded in 1849 as the “Missionsanstalt Hermannsburg” as a “foundation under private law” in the Südheide village of Hermannsburg near Celle . The Evangelical Lutheran Missionswerk in Lower Saxony (ELM) was formed from the free mission society in 1977 . This made it a work recognized by the regional church.

history

Hermannsburg Mission Festival with Louis Harms (painting by H. Barmführ, 1908)
Natal 1910
Mission ship Candace oil painting Alexander Scherzer (1861)

Ludwig Harms (1808–1865) founded the Hermannsburg Missionary Seminar on October 12, 1849. Harms was active from 1844 first as a vicar , later as a Lutheran pastor of the St. Peter-Paul Church in Hermannsburg in the Lüneburg Heath . He was an eloquent pastor and had a great gift for lively storytelling. On Sunday evenings, the villagers gathered in the hall of the rectory to listen to him. His stories entertained, taught and edified at the same time. Local history offered him living material. His stories are published in the anthologies Honnig (Low German) and Goldene Äpfel in silver bowls .

With his sermons Harms triggered a revival that affected the patriciate of nearby Hamburg. On October 12, 1849, the first students moved into the Hermannsburg Missionary Seminar, newly founded by Harms. He appointed his brother Theodor to be the first director. Harms persistently solicited donations. The eloquent and energetic evangelist managed to interest numerous Heidjers with poor perspective in missionary service, comparable to the effect that David Livingstone was able to achieve in poor Scotland .

Harms had the vision of beginning his missionary work among the Oromo people , then called Galla, in East Africa. The necessary financial resources were raised by the Hermannsburg parish and later by a large group of friends. He even managed to build his own mission ship , which was named after the Ethiopian Queen Candace mentioned in Acts 8.27  LUT . The attempt to get to Ethiopia , however, failed. That is why the Hermannsburg missionaries went ashore in Port Natal, South Africa (today Durban in the province of KwaZulu-Natal ) in 1854 and two years later founded a mission school in Neu-Hermannsburg . There they began to work among the Zulu and were also active in the Transvaal from 1857 . In 1864 August Mylius began working with the Telugu in southern India.

Missionary Wilhelm Behrens

Wilhelm Behrens in Bethanie (Transvaal)

Heinrich Wilhelm Behrens (born February 13, 1827 in Hermannsburg , † April 22, 1900 in Bethanie , Transvaal , today Northwest Province in South Africa ) was the son of a farmer and became a missionary . Wilhelm Behrens took over his father's farm in 1849 at the age of 22. It was one of the founding farms of the village of Hermannsburg, the so-called "Rißmann's Hof" , from 1756 named after the new owner of the "Behrenssche Hof" . Wilhelm Behrens initially managed this farm. On January 30, 1854, he gave it to the Hermannsburg Mission. In 1967 the farm was sold to the political municipality of Hermannsburg. Today the Hermannsburg High School is located on the site .

Ludwig Harms accepted Behrens into the Hermannsburg missionary seminar and trained him as a missionary. In October 1857 he received ordination . In the same year he went with his wife and two children on the mission ship Candace on a three-month sea voyage to South Africa. He came to the Ehlanzeni mission station in the Natal colony . To support his family, he had to farm here too. In 1864 he was transferred to the newly built mission station Bethanie (about 37 km northeast of Rustenburg ). He was the first missionary at this station and first had to learn the Bantu language Setswana in order to be able to communicate with the locals. He stayed at this station until his death in 1900.

Expansion of work

After the death of Ludwig Harms, his brother Theodor Harms (1819–1885) was his successor. Under his leadership the seminar and mission activities were further expanded. The second mission house was built as early as 1879, and Carl Mützelfeldt (1842–1927) was appointed to its first director as a mission inspector. Under the leadership of Theodor Harm's successors, his second oldest son Egmont Harms (1859–1916) and Georg Haccius (1847–1926), the missionary work consolidated. New areas of activity were opened up: Australia (1866), where in Central Australia the place name is also used to remember the German place of origin (in Aborigini language: Ntaria), North America (1866), New Zealand (1875), Persia (1880), Brazil (1898 ), Ethiopia (1927). However, not all areas could be held in the long term.

The emergence of the Hermannsburg Free Church and the consequences for the mission

After the annexation of the Kingdom of Hanover to Prussia , resistance arose especially in Hermannsburg against the mandatory civil marriage introduced in 1876 and the decree of a new wedding liturgy in the Hanoverian regional church by the Prussian king.

Theodor Harms in particular persevered in his resistance. As a result, Harms and a number of other pastors were removed from office. He left the regional church. A large part of the Hermannsburg parishioners followed him. On February 13, 1878, those who had left founded the Lutheran Kreuzkirche congregation, which was independent of the regional church.

At the Synod in Hermannsburg on April 30, 1878, under the chairmanship of Theodor Harms, pastors and representatives of the congregations independent of the regional church founded the " Hannoversche Evangelical-Lutheran Free Church ". In 1886 this split again. Thirteen parishes formed the "Hermannsburg Free Church".

The separation from the regional church had serious consequences for the Hermannsburg mission. The collections of the regional church failed to materialize and the character of the public body was lost. In 1890, however, an understanding was reached between the Hanoverian regional church and the "Hermannsburg Free Church". So that the state and free churches were represented in the leadership office of the mission, the office of a condirector was created, which existed until 1972.

The Hermannsburg Mission at the time of National Socialism

Like the conservative and nationally-minded milieu, with the victory and takeover of government by the NSDAP , the Mission had high hopes for more calm in society and politics and for a revision of the Versailles Treaty . For this reason, many people from the mission in Hermannsburg took part in the torchlight procession on March 21, 1933 on Potsdam Day, when Adolf Hitler bowed to President Paul von Hindenburg . However, none of the mission directors was a member of the NSDAP, of the 25 members of the mission committee, only the head of the state Hermannsburg elementary school was a party member, and five NSDAP memberships could be verified in the college of the mission seminar and the Christian school. But there was often a spiritual closeness to ethnicity, blood and soil, which was additionally nourished by traditional anti-Judaism in Lutheranism . The Aryan paragraph , which discriminated against Jewish church members, was also supported by those responsible; only one person opposed it.

On the other hand, Mission Director Schomerus resigned from the Hanoverian State Church Congress in August 1933, resistance was given to the harmonization of the mission societies, the ban on the traditional mission festival in 1939 and the conversion of the Christian school into a state institution.

The Hermannsburg Mission today

In 1977 the Hermannsburg Mission was formally integrated into the regional churches. By maintaining the legal form of the foundation, the possibility of special characterization of the spiritual work was still guaranteed. As an Evangelical Lutheran Mission in Lower Saxony (ELM), it is still based in Hermannsburg today .

The most important sponsors of the work are the Evangelical Lutheran regional churches of Hanover, Braunschweig and Schaumburg-Lippes . In addition, numerous communities and groups of friends support the work. The ELM is also supported by many private donations from the region. Missionaries sent out by the ELM are currently working in Africa, Latin America, India and Siberia.

The Missionswerk maintains the Hermannsburg Mission Seminar to this day , in which young theologians are prepared for service within one of the ELM's partner churches. The Ludwig-Harms-Haus in Hermannsburg, in the building of which the mission seminar was originally founded, is now a modern conference center with a café, bookstore and one-world shop. In the exhibition "Candace - Mission possible", those interested can find out more about the globally networked work of the ELM.

Mission Directors

Ludwig Harms

The responsible full-time head of the mission society is the director .

literature

  • Ernst Bauerochse : Your goal was Oromoland, The Beginnings of the Hermannsburg Mission in Ethiopia , Sources and Contributions to the History of the Hermannsburg Mission Vol. 14, LIT-Verlag 2006.
  • Wolfgang A. Bienert : In the sign of the cross of Christ. Character and significance of the Hermannsburg awakening movement . Verlag der Lutherische Buchhandlung Harms, Groß Oesingen 1986, ISBN 3-922534-37-6 .
  • Hugald Grafe: Church under Dalits, Adivasi and caste people in South India. The Indian partner churches of the Lutheran churches in Lower Saxony. Becoming and growing. Series: Sources and contributions to the history of the Hermannsburg Mission and the Evangelical Lutheran. Mission in Lower Saxony. Vol. 22, LIT Verlag Berlin-Münster-Vienna-Zurich-London 2013, ISBN 978-3-643-12098-4 .
  • Georg Gremels (Ed.): The Hermannsburg Mission and the "Third Reich". Between fascist seduction and Lutheran perseverance . Sources and contributions to the history of the Hermannsburg Mission Vol. 13, LIT-Verlag 2005.
  • Georg Gremels (ed.): Eschatology and community development. Hermannsburg Mission History in the Environment of the Lutheran Revival , Sources and Contributions to the History of the Hermannsburg Mission Vol. 11, Hermannsburg 2004.
  • Hartwig Harms: Dreams and Tears, Hermannsburg Missionaries and the Effects of Their Work in Australia and New Zealand , Sources and Contributions to the History of the Hermannsburg Mission Vol. 10, Hermannsburg 2003.
  • Ludwig Harms: Greetings to all my children, the white and the black ... (letters from a mission director 1861–1865) , sources and contributions to the history of the Hermannsburg Mission, Vol. 6, Hermannsburg 1998.
  • Ludwig Harms: In loyal love and intercession , Collected Letters 1830–1865, sources and contributions to the history of the Hermannsburg Mission, Vol. 12, LIT-Verlag 2004.
  • History of the Hanoverian Evangelical-Lutheran Free Church . Published by the Pastors' Convention, Celle 1924
  • Fritz Hasselhorn: Farmers Mission in South Africa. The Hermannsburg Mission in the Tension Area of ​​Colonial Policy 1880–1939 , Erlangen 1988.
  • Ludwig Harms Symposium (Ed.) Georg Haccius - Life and Work, Sources and Contributions to the History of the Hermannsburg Mission Vol. 5, Hermannsburg 1993.
  • Ernst-August Lüdemann (Ed.), Vision Church Worldwide - 150 Years of Hermannsburg Mission and Evangelical Lutheran. Mission in Lower Saxony (ELM) , Hermannsburg 2000.
  • Ernst-August Lüdemann (Ed.): Ludwig Harms Greetings to all my children, the white and the black, letters from a mission director to South Africa 1861–1865 , Hermannsburg 1998.
  • Joachim Lüdemann, August Mylius (1819–1887), Lutheran missionary existence in Tamilnadu and Andhra Pradesh , Studies on Oriental Church History 15, Hamburg 2003.
  • Reinhart Müller (Ed.): From the Heath into the World , Sources and Contributions to the History of the Hermannsburg Mission Vol. 4, Hermannsburg 1988.
  • Reinhart Müller: The forgotten sons of Hermannsburg in North America , sources and contributions to the history of the Hermannsburg Mission, Vol. 7, Hermannsburg 1998.
  • Reinhart Müller: Hermannsburg in Latin America , sources and contributions to the history of the Hermannsburg Mission, Vol. 8, Hermannsburg 2001.
  • Wolfgang Proske : Botswana and the beginnings of the Hermannsburg Mission; Requirements, course and failure of a Lutheran missionary attempt in the field of tension between diverging political interests , Frankfurt a. M. 1989.
  • Gunther Schendel: The Hermannsburg Missionary Institution and National Socialism . LIT-Verlag, Münster 2009, ISBN 978-3-8258-0627-9 .
  • Henning Wrogemann (ed.): India - melting pot of religions or competition between missions? Protestant mission in India since its beginnings in Tranquebar (1706) and the mission of other denominations and religions. Sources and contributions to the history of the Hermannsburg Mission and Ev.-Luth. Mission in Lower Saxony. Volume XVII. LIT Verlag Dr. W. Hopf, Berlin 2008. ISBN 978-3-8258-0914-0

Web links

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

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Hermannsburg Missionaries
  2. ^ Map of the region around Bethanie
  3. ^ Hans Walter Krumwiede : Church history of Lower Saxony , Volume 2: 19th century - 1948; P. 376
  4. ↑ http://www.celle-im-nationalsozialismus.de/texte/missionsanstalt-hermannsburg-im-nationalsozialismus-das-schwarze-herz-hannovers
  5. ↑ Wolfgang A. Bienert: Church history in ecumenical responsibility: Selected studies. E-BOOK . V&R Unipress, 2009, ISBN 978-3-86234-087-3 ( page 195 ). |