Johannes Ittmann

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Johannes Ittmann (born January 26, 1885 in Groß-Umstadt ; † June 15, 1963 in Gambach ) was a Protestant missionary and ethnologist from Hesse .

Life

Ittmann, whose family is down to the Middle Ages in the northern Odenwald can be traced back - an ancestor of the same name was in 1545 the first Protestant pastor in the neighboring Schaafheim been the elementary school attended in Gross-Umstadt from 1891 to 1899. Influenced by the Bible study in his parents' house, pietistic awakening circles, he entered the mission seminar of the Basel Mission from 1899 to 1904 after his training as a notary's assistant , which he attended from August 1904 to April 1911. From 1907 to 1908 he had to do his military service. From 1911 he studied with Carl Meinhof at the University of Hamburg Duala , was sent to Cameroon in the same year and worked there as head of a middle school of the Basel Mission in Mangamba ( Moungo district , Littoral region ) until 1914. On April 8, he married in Douala his wife Hanny Weygandt.

When the First World War broke out , he had to interrupt his missionary service. From November 1914 to January 1915 he was interned in Cameroon and Great Britain . From January to October 1915 the now 30-year-old Ittmann was a teacher at the Mission Boys School in Basel . From November 1915 a medical soldier in the reserve hospital in Saarbrücken , he came to Constantinople from August 1916 to November 1918 as a medical sergeant . He experienced the end of the war in Versailles in 1918 .

Ittmann worked as a parish administrator in Mittel-Seemen from the end of November 1918 to May 1925 after the end of the war . From 1925 onwards his work in Cameroon began again. Between May 1925 and August 1926 he was traveling as a travel preacher for the Basel Mission in Bad Hersfeld . From August 23 to December 10, 1926 Ittmann stayed at the Kingsmead Missionary Seminar in Selly Oak near Birmingham .

At the turn of the year he went back to Cameroon as a school inspector for three years . From February 1930 he had a year-long home service, during which time he lived in Allschwil near Basel. In the summer of the same year he combined that with a summer semester of studying theology in Basel. At the end of February 1931 he reached Cameroon again. His third stay lasted until June 1934. The last two years as Preses (field leader) mainly in the region of Southwest Cameroon . On March 1, 1934, he became a member of the NSDAP in Buea, Cameroon . From June 1934 he again had a 14-month home service in and around Darmstadt , where he took up residence from September. This was followed by his fourth stay in Cameroon from August 1935 until March 1938, followed by another 13 months of homeland service. From June 1939, Ittmann worked for the fifth and last time in Cameroon, again as President.

The start of the war in 1939 also led to fighting in Africa. From August 1940 Ittmann was interned by the British in Nigeria and Jamaica , where he was employed as a clergyman in the internment camps in Umuahia and later in Kingston . His release on December 23rd brought him back to his hometown Groß-Umstadt, as his apartment in Darmstadt had been bombed out since 1944.

After the Second World War and the return from internment in 1946 it came on February 21 in 1947 to forced retirement of Basel by the German branch mission, presumably to their rejection of Nazism to make it clear. Ittmann is said to have felt unjustly discriminated against. He saw it as a “sacrifice for ecumenism ” in order to make the German branch of the Basel Mission internationally socially acceptable again.

From June 1948 until his retirement at the end of January 1955, he worked as a parish administrator in Groß-Umstadt. After two more years with a service assignment in Umstadt, he moved on October 16, 1957 to his daughter Traudel, married Schmidt, in Mainz .

Works

Ittmann followed Bruno Gutmann's approach to regard the African religions as God's creation, as praperatio evangelica . The work, which comprises several thousand printed pages, consists mainly of research work on Cameroonian languages , especially on Duala. Extensive publications on ethnology and religious ethnology in Cameroon and a work on mission studies round off the work. Ittmann died in 1963 shortly before he was awarded an honorary doctorate in theology . His field research made Ittmann a collector of material from Cameroon and African theology - his work on the African image of God was groundbreaking for theological research into African religions .

A differentiated change from missionary to ethnologist can be seen in his works.

The mostly unpublished materials stored in the archive of the Basel Mission are being evaluated at the Humboldt University in Berlin .

Publications (selection)

  • J. Ittmann: Dictionary of the Duala language (Cameroon) , (= Africa and Overseas Supplement 30), Dietrich Reimer Verlag, Berlin 1976, 675 pages
  • J. Ittmann, Carl Meinhof: Grammar of Duala (Cameroon) , Dietrich Reimer Verlag, Berlin 1939, 250 pages
  • J. Ittmann: Crocodile and Spoon - The Story of Two Cameroonian Missionary Students, Volume 2, Anchor Books, Evang. Missionsverlag, Stuttgart / Basel 1920, 64 pages
  • J. Ittmann: Nana. A story from Cameroon. Evang. Missionsverlag, Stuttgart 1925, 93 pages
  • J. Ittmann: My friend Leopard: a story from Cameroon . Evang. Missionsverlag, Stuttgart 1926, 78 pages
  • J. Ittmann: Crocodile and Spoon: the story of two Cameroonian mission students. (Anchor books 2), Evang. Missionsverlag, Stuttgart 1928, 63 pages
  • J. Ittmann: Aus dem Rätselschatz der Kosi , (from: Special print from: Journal for native languages ; 21.1930, issue 1), Dietrich Reimer Verlag, Berlin 1930, 29 pages
  • J. Ittmann: Times and signs in the front Cameroon. In D. Dr. Wilhelm Öhler (Hrsg.): Evangelisches Missionsmagazin , new series, 74th year, issue 7, publishing house of the Basler Missionsbuchhandlung in Basel, for Germany: Evang. Missionsverlag, Stuttgart July 1930, pp. 213-219
  • J. Ittmann: Proverbs of the Nyang , (from: special print from: Journal for native languages ; 22.1932, issue 2-4), Dietrich Reimer Verlag, Berlin 1932, 63 pages
  • J. Ittmann: Ke̱nyaṅ, the language of the Nyang , (from: Special print from: Journal for native languages ; 26.1936, issue 1-4), Dietrich Reimer Verlag, Berlin 1936, 130 pages
  • J. Ittmann: Folklore and religious terms in the northern woodlands of Cameroon , Dietrich Reimer Verlag, Berlin 1953, 63 pages
  • J. Ittmann: Image of God and name of God in the northern woodland of Kamerum. In: Internationale Zeitschrift für Völker- und Sprachenkunde , Sonderabdruck Volume 50, 1955, Friborg 1955, 264 pages
  • J. Ittmann: Umbrella goes whaling. Experiences from Cameroon. Evang. Missionsverlag, Stuttgart 1957, 15 pages
  • J. Ittmann: From the basics of the world and life view in South Cameroon , in the magazine Anthropos (International Journal for Ethnology and Linguistics), Vol. 58, Issue 5./6. (1963), Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft mbH, pp. 661-676 JSTOR 40456039
  • J. Ittmann: Proverbs of the Kundu (Cameroon) , (= publications of the German Academy of Sciences in Berlin, Institute for Orient Research, vol. 75), Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 1971, 301 pages

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Jürgen Thiesbonenkamp, ​​Andreas-Martin Selignow (both ed.): Interdisciplinary Africa Research and New Afropessimism , Selignow Verlag, Berlin 2009, ISBN 978-3-933889-13-3 , p. 151
  2. ↑ Kathlyeen May Sponsler, Dean M. Sponsler: Klinger / Schaefer and allied families: out of the Odenwald to USA, 1500 to 1986 , Sponsler Pub. Co., 1987, p. 314 and which is based on the research of the former pastor Sieghard Volp from Groß-Umstadt on the Ittmann family tree.
  3. ↑ Peter Anhalt: On Johannes Ittmann's "Religion in the Front Cameroon" , online article ; accessed on June 16, 2020
  4. ↑ a b c d e f g h i Andreas-Martin Selignow: Gospel, African folklore and intellectual property in the thinking of the missionary Johannes Ittmann , Magister's writing ; accessed on June 16, 2020
  5. ^ Basler Mission - German branch , in Württembergische Kirchengeschichte Online www.wkgo.de ; accessed on June 17, 2020

literature

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Ittmann, Johannes
BRIEF DESCRIPTION evangelical missionary
DATE OF BIRTH January 26, 1885
PLACE OF BIRTH Groß-Umstadt (Hesse)
DATE OF DEATH June 15, 1963
Place of death Gambach (Hesse)