Johanna Brandt

Johanna Brandt

Johanna Brandt , b. van Warmelo, (born November 18, 1876 in Heidelberg (Transvaal) ; † January 23, 1964 in Nuweland, Cape Town ) was a South African propagandist of Afrikaaner nationalism, spy in the Second Boer War , prophet and writer.

childhood

Johanna Brandt was born as the penultimate of seven children to an Afrikaaner pastor's family. Her father, Pastor Nicolaas Jacobus van Warmelo, immigrated to the Transvaal from the Netherlands in 1862 ; his second wife Maria Magdalena Elizabeth Maré was able to trace her descent to one of the Voortrekker families. The daughter Johanna grew up in Heidelberg / Transvaal and was then trained for two years at the Good Hope Seminary for Young Ladies in Cape Town. In 1892 the father died; In 1897 she went on a six-month trip to Europe with her mother.

Second Boer War

In October 1899 the Second Boer War broke out. Johanna Brandt volunteered as a nurse; three of her brothers, two of whom were captured, served as soldiers. On May 29, 1900, the government of the South African Republic had to leave Pretoria , and on June 4, the city was occupied by British troops . But contrary to British expectations, the fall of the capital did not mean that the war was won, but instead turned into brutal guerrilla warfare.

In 1895 mother and daughter van Warmelo settled on the "Harmonie" estate; the site is now in the Sunnyside district of Pretoria. Numerous British military establishments emerged around the estate: the military police, the War Office, the military governor and the residences of Lord Roberts , later Lord Kitchener and the Duke of Westminster. The residents of the city had to swear neutrality with an oath, breach of which was punishable by death. However, the two women on “Harmonie” were largely left alone by the occupying forces. With the military governor of Pretoria, John Grenfell Maxwell , Johanna even developed an almost friendly relationship at times.

Irene internment camp nurse

Between 1900 and 1902 the British set up more than 50 internment camps, in the parlance of the time one also spoke of “ concentration camps ”. The origin of the Irene camp 20 kilometers southwest of Pretoria is poorly documented. In February 1901, 891 people lived there, including 315 women and 390 children, but the number of prisoners rose sharply later. Almost 20 inmates each had to share a tent, food was scarce and diseases spread.

In April, an aid committee for Pretorian citizens was able to ensure that at least six nurses were allowed to work in the camp, including Johanna van Warmelo from April 24th. As winter began, most of the camp residents had to sleep on the bare floor without bedding. In the worst month between June 7th and July 11th, the health statistics recorded 182 deaths, including 161 children. When Johanna's mother visited the camp, she was horrified. She wrote a letter to the foreign consuls in Pretoria, which culminated in the accusation: "Our nation is being exterminated and destroyed." The conditions in the internment camps are hardly due to a deliberate strategy of extermination, but rather to an overburdened British military administration.

A group of the consuls I wrote to visited the camp; at the same time, Johanna van Warmelo succeeded in persuading the British military governor to carry out an inspection. Separately, Emily Hobhouse publicly denounced the internment camps in the UK. On July 10th Johanna van Warmelo left the Irene camp because she was sick herself; As of September, the other volunteer nurses were no longer allowed to enter the camp. During a visit that she was allowed to do a year later, the conditions in the camp had greatly improved. After the war she published the book Het concentratie-kamp van Iréne about her experiences .

Espionage activities

The British responded to the Afrikaans guerrilla war with scorched earth tactics - they destroyed farms, blew up houses, felled trees and burned fields. In her diary, which she continued to keep in English, one can see how she was radicalized by the events. Around mid-1901, "Harmonie" developed into an Afrikaans espionage center. Young men were smuggled out of the city to join the Boerekommando troops, which were defending the Free State against British troops in the south . JJ Naudé organized a secret service, the "Geheime Diens Kommissie", and in July 1901 also recruited Johanna van Warmelo. It transported dynamite, obtained the timetables for troop and ammunition trains, which were then blown up by resistance fighters, and housed agents.

In order to circumvent the censorship, she had initially developed a method for private purposes of writing letters with an ink made from lemon juice that only became visible when heated. In this way, through her future husband Louis Brandt, she kept in contact with the government-in-exile in the Netherlands, which she reported, among other things, on the conditions in the internment camps. A house search of the British remained unsuccessful.

On another occasion, however, the occupiers succeeded in arresting four spies and then largely rolling up Naudé's network of agents in Pretoria; the van Warmelos, however, remained unmolested. Johanna built a new spy ring out of women, with whom she scouted out the location of soldiers' camps, field hospitals and artillery positions. After the war, she published the book Die Kappie-Kommando, English: The Petticoat Commando, in 1913 , which became a literary success. Although the book pays homage to Afrikaaner nationalism, she later worked with English-speaking South Africans.

Pastor's wife

On her first trip to Europe in 1897, she met Louis Brandt, a theology student, and the two of them had agreed to marry by letter. Even before the Treaty of Vereeniging , she traveled from Cape Town via England to the Netherlands in June 1902 and celebrated her wedding there on August 28th. Congratulations from Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands and President Paul Kruger prove that she must have been a well-known person at the time . Johanna was able to persuade her husband to return to South Africa, who initially took over a parish of the Nederduitsch Hervormde Kerk in Pietersburg . His area of ​​activity covered the whole of the North Transvaal and was therefore larger than the Netherlands. The pastor's wife did reconstruction work among the impoverished Afrikaaner population in the war-ravaged country, including setting up a weaving school. She also had seven children by 1913. Her husband died in 1939.

prophetess

While she was waking up on her mother's deathbed on December 1, 1916, Johanna Brandt is said to have had a vision. She was allegedly "visited by an angel" who reportedly revealed to her that the Second Coming of Jesus Christ in South Africa was imminent. After that she is said to have received three more visions. She hesitated until the spring of 1918 before going public. The South Africans - meaning the Afrikaans-speaking whites - are, in their opinion, "chosen from all other peoples in the world". Before the coming of the "millennial kingdom" described in the Apocalypse , however, she prophesied a "melting pot" - afrikaans: smeltkroes - full of bloodshed and horror. Her book Die Millenium , however, is only about the visions to a small extent; above all, she tries to interpret various events in church history from a prophetic perspective. Johanna Brandt thus belongs to a number of prophets - on the Afrikaaner side especially Siener van Rensburg - who appeared in South Africa towards the end of the First World War. She felt that the Spanish flu spread shortly afterwards as confirmation of her prophecies.

The author

Despite her origins, Johanna Brandt initially wrote her first books in English and later had them translated into Dutch. It was not until their age that they appeared in Afrikaans. She also wrote her diaries in English; her style is clear and shows her literary talent. The two books written by Afrikaans, Die Millenium and Die smeltkroes , on the other hand, are held in a gloomy, prophetic tone. Even today people in South Africa believe in Johanna Brandt's prophetic mission. Her estate and diaries are in the Nederduitsch Hervormde Kerkargief in Pretoria.

Works

• Johanna Brandt-van Warmelo: Het concentratie-kamp van Iréne. Hollandsch-Afrikaansche Uitgevers-Maatschappij, Amsterdam 1905.
• Johanna Brandt: The Kappie Kommando, of Boerevrouwen in Secret Service. JH De Bussy & Hollandsch-Afrikaansche Uitgevers-Maatschappij, Amsterdam 1913.
• Johanna Brandt: The Petticoat Commando, or Boer Women in Secret Service. Mills & Boon, London 1913.
• Johanna Brandt: The Millenium, een voorspelling. Self-published, Bloemfontein 1918.
• Johanna Brandt: The Millenium - A Prophetic Message to the Native Tribes of South Africa. 1918.
• Johanna Brandt: The smeltkroes. 1920.

Literature about Johanna Brandt

• Rita van der Merwe: Johanna Brandt en die kritieke jare in the Transvaal 1899-1908. Protea, Pretoria 2004, ISBN 1-919825-20-7 .
• Annelize Morgan: The vision of Johanna Brandt. Lebanon Uitgewers, Mosselbaai 1994, ISBN 0-9583779-4-4 .

Web links

• South Africa New Age Prophets at home.comcast.net (English, PDF)
• The Visions of Johanna Brandt at southafricaproject.info (English)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Kleio . Department of History, University of South Africa, 2001 ( books.google.de ).
2. ↑ Sabinet - Buitengewone insigte oor vroue en oorlog - The war diary of Johanna Brandt, JEH Grobler (Red.): Boekresensie. In: reference.sabinet.co.za. Retrieved July 9, 2015 .