Mission school

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The term mission school is understood to be a church educational institution whose declared aim is the training of missionary helpers or the general missionary offspring. As a rule, the term was used for the schools set up in the colonial areas, which were supposed to serve the realization of the respective missionary intentions by helping with the literacy of the pupils and the imparting of basic Christian knowledge. Little known, on the other hand, are the mission schools in the German Reich between 1887 and 1940 run by male Catholic orders and congregations.

Mission schools in the colonial areas

Mission school run by the German missionary Friedrich Heidmann in Rehoboth in what is now Namibia (1898)

In the research literature, mission and colonial pedagogy is generally assigned a rather low priority in German educational research. Correspondingly, a deficient state of research can be established with regard to mission schools. However, it can at least be stated that individual mission schools differ enormously from one another. Above all, questions of development, the colonial and mission-political or mission-pedagogical motives, the different school types and their function, the teaching practice with their goals and contents as well as their significance for the colonial areas, which in some cases still lasts to this day, are mentioned here. Most mission schools, however, claimed to provide the local population with a "modern [...] school education based on the pattern of the respective 'motherland'". Often teachers from the colonized populations were responsible for the establishment, operation and maintenance of mission schools. They fulfilled mediating roles between European missionaries and the indigenous population and translated religious content into local languages ​​and contexts. They played a central role in setting up local educational and church structures.

With the decolonization , the activity of the mission schools in the colonial areas also ended .

Mission schools in Germany

The first German mission school was founded by Johannes Jaenicke in Berlin in 1800 , from which the Berlin Missionswerk has developed to this day . Overall, mission schools in Germany have so far been less researched than those in the colonial areas. A survey carried out in 1928 by the Central Office of the Catholic School Organization identified 49 of these educational institutions, with the vast majority of the schools being located in Bavaria and Prussia. The mission schools in Germany were "professional private higher boys' schools with boarding schools [...] which were sponsored by the orders and congregations".

The German mission schools had the task of training future missionaries for use outside of Europe. Much of the teaching content was therefore specifically aimed at the later activities of the students. The mission schools in Germany aligned their lessons according to the grammar school curriculum, but especially in the upper level many students attended a state grammar school as external students, since the mission schools generally did not have any state-recognized school qualifications.

During the Nazi era , starting in 1940, all mission schools in Germany were forcibly closed because there was no public interest in their existence and continued existence. No new mission schools emerged in Germany after 1945.

Web links

Wiktionary: School of missions  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ See: Holger Gast, Antonia Leugers , August H. Leugers-Scherzberg u. Uwe Sandfuchs: Catholic Mission Schools in Germany 1887-1940, Bad Heilbrunn 2013, p. 10.
  2. ↑ See: Holger Gast u. a. (2013), pp. 10–15.
  3. ↑ See: Marcella Mathieu: Katholische Missionspädagogik in Schwarzafrika, Munich 1982, p. 68f.
  4. ↑ Wolfgang Mehnert: Government and Mission Schools in German Colonial Policy (1885-1914), in: Bildung und Erbildung 3 (1993), ed. v. Christel Adick and Wolfgang Mitter, p. 251.
  5. ^ Richard Hölzl: Educating Missions. Teachers and Catechists in Southern Tanganyika, 1890s and 1940s . In: Itinerario . tape 40 , no. 3 , December 2016, ISSN  0165-1153 , p. 405-428 , doi : 10.1017 / S0165115316000632 ( cambridge.org [accessed July 10, 2020]).
  6. ↑ Holger Gast, Antonia Leugers, August H. Leugers-Scherzberg: Optimization of historical research through databases. The exemplary database "Missionsschulen 1887-1940", Bad Heilbrunn 2010, p. 27.
  7. ↑ See: Holger Gast u. a. (2010), p. 27.
  8. ↑ See: Holger Gast u. a. (2013), p. 11.
  9. ↑ See: Holger Gast u. a. (2013), p. 14.