Maria Heyde

Maria Elisabeth Heyde

Maria Elisabeth Heyde , also Marie, née Hartmann (born April 19, 1837 in Paramaribo , Suriname , † April 6, 1917 in Schönebeck ) was a missionary of the Moravian Brethren . In addition to her life, which was unusual for the 19th century, she is characterized by the fact that she has continuously communicated via diaries and letters. Many of the documents have been preserved and are accessible.

Life

Childhood and youth

Maria Elisabeth Hartmann was born on April 19, 1837 in Paramaribo, capital of what was then the Dutch colony of Suriname. Her parents were the missionaries Johannes Gottlieb Hartmann (1796–1844) and Maria Lobach (1798–1853), who had worked for the Brethren in Suriname since 1826. Both died in Paramaribo and were buried here in Maria's Rust cemetery. Little Maria Elisabeth spent the first years of her life on the Herrnhuter Station Charlottenburg, a former coffee plantation on Cottica . Mission trips to the plantations on Cottica and the tributaries were undertaken from Charlottenburg.

When Maria reached school age, she left her parents and with it Suriname and after a successful crossing not only got to know her older siblings for the first time, but also received her first school lessons in Kleinwelka near Bautzen at the educational institution for mission children established there from 1844 to 1850 . Around 1851 she continued her training in the nurses 'house in Niesky for more than a year before she was sent from 1853 to 1855 to prepare for the teaching profession at the girls' institution in Gnadenfrei in Silesia . Subsequently, she worked in the same institution as a teacher, among other things in the subjects arithmetic, geography, religion, literature, French and history.

Activity as a missionary

In 1859 Maria Hartmann was proposed by the Herrnhuter Brothers Congregation to the unknown August Wilhelm Heyde as husband after his wish to marry another woman of the Brothers Congregation could not be fulfilled. Maria Hartmann let the lot decide and in the same year at the age of 22 traveled to the previously unknown viceroyalty of India to see missionary Heyde. In the same year they got married.

She lived in India for a total of 44 years, from this until 1898 at the mission station Kyelang in the Bhaga valley in the province of Lahoul (today: Indian state of Himachal Pradesh ), which she seldom left. Her life and everyday life can be reconstructed through an unusually good database, because on the one hand she wrote a diary from 1862 until the end of her life (the 37 volumes are in the private ownership of her descendants) and because correspondence with three of her remaining children has been preserved in the Herrnhut University Archives are.

Maria Heyde ran the small property and took care of the growing family. A total of ten pregnancies are mentioned by her. She was often left on her own with other missionary sisters during her husband's and other missionaries' long missionary journeys. At the beginning of each year she held a so-called knitting school for the first few months not only to teach this technique, but also to introduce the Buddhists to the Christian faith. In addition, with her calligraphic talent , she helped with printing and, after all the children had moved out , she participated in translation work into the Tibetan language.

Of her seven children, only three of school age reached Germany for further education. Only two sons, Paul Johannes (1863–1943) and Gerhard Heyde (1874–1939), were able to greet their parents in 1903 after their return to the Halle train station, since in 1899 their eldest daughter Elisabeth had died. After the death of her husband, Maria Heyde lived close to her son Paul Johannes in Gnadau until she died of a fall in Schönebeck at the age of 79 .

literature

• Friedrich Wilhelm Bautz :  Heyde, Wilhelm. In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). Volume 2, Bautz, Hamm 1990, ISBN 3-88309-032-8 , Sp. 805-807.
• Maria Hartmann [married: Heyde]: The Pagell siblings and the Rosenhauer and Hartmann sisters travel from Calcutta to Kyelang . In: Missionsblatt der Brüdergemeine, No. 5, pp. 102–112, 1860 [continued in No. 6, pp. 192–198 under Maria Heyde]
• Gerhard Heyde: Fifty years among Tibetans - life picture of Wilhelm and Maria Heyde . Herrnhut: Verlag der Missionsbuchhandlung Herrnhut, 1921
• [Gerhard and Paul Johannes Heyde]: Curriculum vitae of the widowed sister Marie Heyde, born on April 6, 1917 in Schönebeck. Hartmann . In: Communications from the Brothers Community for the Promotion of Christian Community, No. 6, pp. 192–198, 1917
• Gudrun Meier: Three women in the Himalayas . In: UNITAS FRATRUM, Vol. 45/46, pp. 141-151, 1999
• Ruth Schiel: Wings of Charadius - Report of a life in Surinam . Wunderlich, Tübingen, Stuttgart 1949
• Ruth Schiel: Wedding in Tibet . Wunderlich, Tübingen 1961
• Ruth Schiel: The House under the Seven Buddhas . Wunderlich, Tübingen 1963
• Frank Seeliger: Maria Elisabeth Heyde - An attempt at a biographical approach based on the diary notes for the years 1862 to 1870 , including transcription by employees of the Ulm working group “Moravian Missionaries in Lahoul”, 2005
• Center for general and scientific further education (ed.), Created by the working group "Moravian Missionaries in Lahoul": "You have to get hold of ...". From the life of Maria Heyde, missionary woman in the West Himalayas . Brochure for the special exhibition in the Moravian Ethnographic Museum from May 8th to August 31st, 2008

Web links

• Texts by Maria Heyde
• Special exhibition from May 8th - August 31st, 2008 "You have to get hold of yourself" From the life of Maria Heyde, missionary wife in the West Himalayas in the Moravian Ethnographic Museum ( exhibition brochure )