Diaries of Hendrik Witbooi

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Diaries of Hendrik Witbooi
World document heritage UNESCO World Document Heritage emblem
Witboi (retouched) .jpg
Hendrik Witbooi around 1892/94
State (s): NamibiaNamibia Namibia
Period: 1891-1905
Storage: National Archives of Namibia
Register link: Letter Journals of Hendrik Witbooi
Admission: 2005 ( session 7 )

The diaries of Hendrik Witbooi are a collection of diaries that Hendrik Witbooi , a tribal leader in the former German South West Africa , today's Namibia , had written. They were included in the UNESCO World Document Heritage in 2005.

background

Hendrik Witbooi (born around 1835, died 1905) was appointed captain of the Witbooi group, who lived in what was then German South West Africa and belonged to the Orlam , in 1888 and developed into one of the key figures in Namibian history . After Namibia gained its national independence in 1990, he was proclaimed a national hero.

In addition to disputes with other African tribes, Witbooi opposed the efforts of the colonial authorities of German South West Africa to make the natives into dependency by concluding "protection treaties" and tried to form a common front against it. After a defeat against the protection force for German South West Africa , however, he was forced in 1894 to sign such a protection treaty himself. In accordance with his contractual obligations, he initially participated in the suppression of the Herero uprising in 1904 . Because of the inhumane behavior of Lieutenant General von Trotha , Witbooi terminated the protection treaty and called for a general uprising. He was wounded in a fight against German troops in 1905 and later died as a result of the gunshot wound.

history

Scan from Book 1, 1891

Hendrik Witbooi kept a diary which, however, contained fewer normal diary entries than transcripts of letters, contracts and minutes of meetings arranged by date. The entries in Cape Dutch (Afrikaans) were written down by Witboois' secretaries, because Witbooi himself was unable to write well due to the loss of a thumb in a battle.

A first book ranges from 1884 to the battle of Hornkranz in 1893, in which Witbooi had to flee. The book fell into the hands of the Germans and was brought to Windhoek, where it was stored in a box until 1925. It has been in the National Archives of Namibia in Windhoek since 1948 . Two other books cover the period from 1893 to 1901. They were found by a German merchant and sold to the Übersee-Museum in Bremen in 1934, together with several individual documents, mainly letters . There the books were restored and in 1996 handed over to the National Archives of Namibia together with the individual documents. A fourth (and possibly last) book is said to have come into the hands of the German Schutztruppe in 1904. Nothing is known of its whereabouts, only a few privately owned pages seem to come from it. It may have been taken apart and the individual sheets distributed among the soldiers as souvenirs from the war.

content

Even if the books are usually referred to as "diaries" in German-language literature (in English they are usually called "journals"), actual diary entries are rare there. In the first book there are only two diary entries, the rest consists of copies of Hendrik Witboois' correspondence. So these are more like letter copy books than diaries.

shape

Scan from Book 2, 1894: Witbooi's notes between earlier booking entries

Witbooi used bookkeeping books made of light gray-blue paper to enter his notes . The rows in it are marked with blue lines, the columns with red.

Book 1 is a leather-bound volume with 366 numbered pages with a sheet size of 32.5 × 21 cm. Only about half of them are labeled, namely on pages 12–23, 101–103, 110–120 and 128–291.

Book 2 is 84 sheets and Book 3 is 103 sheets. Both have a sheet size of 33 × 21 cm. They originally had an interim binding , but were given a half-linen binding in the course of their restoration . Before they were used as diaries, these two books had already been used as accounting books. The Witboois entries were made in the vacancies where no bookings were previously entered.

storage

The first three diaries and several individual documents are kept in the National Archives of Namibia in Windhoek . They are registered in its accession list under the access numbers A2 and A650. A2 includes Diary 1, which has been in the possession of the National Archives since 1948, A650 includes Diaries 2 and 3 as well as several individual items, including letters, photographs and postcards. Witbooi's other writings are scattered over several accession numbers of the National Archives or are in files of German authorities.

The originals of A2 and A650 are kept in the safe, the documents scattered via other access numbers of the National Archives are to be tracked down and placed in the safe. Archive users have access to A2 in the form of photocopies and A650 as microfilm. Digital copies of the diaries and letters are available on the website of the Digital Namibian Archive, a cooperation between the Namibia University of Science and Technology , the Utah Valley University and the National Archives of Namibia.

The parts of Diary 4 that have become known so far are in private hands, the National Archives of Namibia only have copies. It is not known whether further parts of Diary 4 have been preserved and where they have remained.

Publications

The period from 1884 to 1904 covered in the diaries is of particular importance for the history of Namibia. It ranges from the beginnings of colonization to complete control by the colonial power. Therefore, soon after the first Witboois diary became known, its historical importance was recognized. In 1929 its content was first published in the original language. A German translation made in the 1930s formed the basis for publications in German (Berlin 1982) and English (Boston 1984).

In 1989 the National Archives of Namibia published the first authentic translation of Witbooi's first diary from the original into English. In 1995 an expanded and revised edition appeared, which also contained parts of the second and third diaries. It also contains annotations of the text by the historian Brigitte Lau , who lives in Namibia and was director of the National Archives of Namibia from 1991 to 1996. Brigitte Lau emphasizes the importance of the diaries:

“Hardly any African tribal leader in the 19th century recorded his experiences, views, meetings and agreements in writing or even had copies made of his correspondence. The economic and political career of Hendrik Witboois and his struggle against the imperial colonial power in what was then German South West Africa can be traced from his writings. "

World document heritage

In 2004, the National Archives of Namibia nominated for the UNESCO within the framework of the UNESCO program Memory of the World in its owned three days Books Witbooi and other individual documents for the World Soundtrack Awards . In 2005 the Director General of the UNESCO Secretariat decided to include Hendrik Witbooi's diaries and letters in the World Document Heritage. In recognition of the outstanding importance of the diaries, the following were stated:

“Witbooi's insights into the nature of colonialism and the fundamental difference between conflict with African rivals and with European invaders, his attempts to formulate African legal concepts, and the visionary and poetic power of some of his texts are the characteristics that make his letters stand out and they do stand out above the majority of contemporary and earlier African texts of the same genre. The texts contain what is probably the first written formulation of the concept of Pan-Africanism . "

Hendrik Witbooi’s diaries and letters are so far (as of 2019) the only world document heritage in Namibia .

literature

  • Hendrik Witbooi: Die dagboek van Hendrik Witbooi, Kaptein van die Witbooi-Hottentotte 1884-1905 . The Van Riebeeck Society, Cape Town 1929 (Dutch, online at dbnl.org [PDF; 1,3 MB ]).
  • 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 . Ed .: Wolfgang Reinhard. Verlag JHW Dietz Nachf., Berlin Bonn 1982, ISBN 3-8012-0070-1 ( online at uni-rostock.de [PDF; 42.0 MB ] Unchanged digital new edition with a new introduction Rostock 2017).
  • Hendrik Witbooi: The Hendrik Witbooi Papers . Second, revised ed. National Archives of Namibia, Windhoek 1995, ISBN 99916-44-06-7 (English, annotated by Brigitte Lau, translated by Annemarie Heywood and Eben Maasdorp).
  • The Hendrik Witbooi Papers . Nomination Form for the Memory of the World Register. National Archives of Namibia, Windhoek June 11, 2004 (English, online at unesco.org [PDF; 1.6 MB ]).
  • Werner Hillebrecht : Hendrik Witbooi and Samuel Maharero: The Ambiguity of Heroes . In: Jeremy Silvester (Ed.): Re-Viewing Resistance in Namibian History . University of Namibia Press, Windhoek 2015, ISBN 978-99916-42-27-7 , pp. 38–54 ( limited preview in Google Book Search).

Web links

Commons : Hendrik Witbooi Journals  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Official names: English Letter Journals of Hendrik Witbooi , French Les journaux épistolaires d'Hendrik Witbooi
  2. ^ A b Letter Journals of Hendrik Witbooi. In: unesco.org. UNESCO, accessed February 16, 2019 .
  3. ↑ a b World Heritage: the writings of Nama-Kaptein Hendrik Witbooi. In: gondwana-collection.com. Gondwana Collection Namibia, June 23, 2017, accessed on February 16, 2019 .
  4. ↑ a b The Hendrik Witbooi Papers. Nomination Form for the Memory of the World Register. Windhoek 2004, p. 3
  5. ^ Werner Hillebrecht: Hendrik Witbooi and Samuel Maharero: The Ambiguity of Heroes . In: Jeremy Silvester (Ed.): Re-Viewing Resistance in Namibian History . 2015, p. 39 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
  6. ↑ a b The Hendrik Witbooi Papers. Nomination Form for the Memory of the World Register. Windhoek 2004, Appendix 1
  7. ^ Witbooi Collection. In: dna.nust.na. Digital Namibian Archive, accessed July 15, 2019 .
  8. ^ The Hendrik Witbooi Papers. Nomination Form for the Memory of the World Register. Windhoek 2004, p. 4
  9. ^ The Hendrik Witbooi Papers. Nomination Form for the Memory of the World Register. Windhoek 2004, pp. 1-8
  10. ↑ Original names English Letter Journals of Hendrik Witbooi , French Les journaux épistolaires d'Hendrik Witbooi , German translation from https://www.unesco.de/sites/default/files/2018-07/MoW_Ged%C3%A4chtnis%20der%20Zukunft .pdf .
  11. ↑ with somewhat confusing numbering: Diary Vol. 1 is Journal 1. Under A 650, Volume 1 and Volume 2 are journals 2 and 3, Volume CH are individual documents, and Volume 4 are fragments of Journal 4