Rhenish Mission Society

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Memorial plaque in Mettmann for the foundation of the Rhenish Mission Society
Mission house in Barmen around 1872

On September 23, 1828, the three evangelical mission associations from Elberfeld , Barmen and Cologne joined together to form the Rheinische Missionsgesellschaft . It lasted until 1971 and was finally absorbed by the United Evangelical Mission .

Founding history

The Missionsverein Elberfeld was founded in 1799 by Reformed and Lutheran pastors in Elberfeld . This was the beginning of what would later become the largest German missionary society.

On January 30, 1818, the Barmen Missionsgesellschaft was founded in Barmen as an aid association for the Basel Mission . Assistant preacher Wilhelm Leipoldt was in charge. The Barmer Mission School initially served as a pre-school for further training in Basel . The expansion of the mission school into a school with an independent seminar began in 1825. In 1822 the mission societies were founded in Cologne and Wesel.

Finally, on September 23, 1828, the three mission associations of the Prussian Rhine Province in Elberfeld, Barmen and Cologne merged to form the Rheinische Missionsgesellschaft. The union took place on "neutral ground" in Mettmann in the rectory of Pastor Müller. In the same year the first missionaries were sent to South Africa. There was good cooperation with the mission stations of the London Mission there . The cooperation with Dutch companies was just as good. Immanuel Friedrich Emil Sander (1797–1859), who also held the chair until 1854, is considered the founder of the mission society .

Up until the First World War , two other parent companies were founded in addition to Wesel , the mission company in Grafschaft Mark (1831) and that in Tecklenburg-Oberlingen (1832). In addition, there were 40 support associations in the individual synods , all of which collected money for the Rheinische Missionsgesellschaft, including the Ravensberger Missions-Hilfsverein with (1913) 118,839.89 marks and the Missionsverein in Mettmann, Wülfrath and the surrounding area with the second highest sum of 23,512, 66 marks. A total of 1,058,449.36 marks were collected. From these donations (1913), in addition to 117 mission stations and 683 branches, 839 schools and two hospitals (Tungkun, East China, and Pea Radja, Sumatra) as well as three auxiliary hospitals on Sumatra and one on Nias were operated overseas . There were also training institutions and administrations in Barmen and missionary children's homes in Gütersloh (1880), Bad Kreuznach (1911) and Mettmann (1893–1928), the so-called daughter box , and Kaiserswerth (from 1928). The care of the retired missionaries and the bereaved, some of them living in mission houses (e.g. the missionary home in Mettmann, Bismarckstrasse 39), had to be shouldered.

Mission in southern Africa

Mission church and building, Swakopmund 1938

The establishment of the first station of the Rhenish Mission Society in the Cape Colony dates back to 1829. It was named Station Wupperthal (the city of Wupperthal did not yet exist). The Rhenish Mission then expanded its activities to the non-colonized area north of the Cape Colony, which later became German South West Africa . During the Herero and Nama uprising , the missionaries tried to mediate. The Versailles Treaty of 1919 then resulted in the loss of the German colonies. Nevertheless, the missionary work continued. When the Rhenish Mission withdrew from South Africa, the remaining mission congregations were integrated into the Dutch Reformed Church . The exception is the Wupperthal station, which was handed over to the Moravian Mission in 1965 , which later called itself Moravian Church , corresponding to its homeland Moravia .

It went into the Evangelical Lutheran Church in the Republic of Namibia .

Mission to New Guinea

The Rhenish Mission was represented in Friedrich-Wilhelm-Hafen in New Guinea ( German colony Kaiser-Wilhelmsland ) since 1887 . The Catholic Steyler Mission had only been represented in Madang since 1895. Until the end, the Rhenish Mission was mainly active in the Astrolabebai region around Madang. She ran about a dozen schools there with (before the First World War ) about 500 students. In 1913 she had over nine missionaries , one missionary craftsman and eight women stationed there. About a hundred Christians were baptized at that time. It was far less successful than the Neuendettelsau Mission , which began its work in Finschhafen a year before the Rhenish Mission, in 1886 . The Rhenish Mission suffered many losses, especially in the first few years of its activity: Twenty missionaries died, two of them in attacks by the locals.

Mission areas up to the First World War

In 1913 the Rhenish Mission Society sent its messengers to the Cape, to German Southwest Africa and Ovamboland , to the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia ) on the islands of Borneo , Sumatra , Nias and those of the Mentawai Archipelago and Enggano , to southern China to the canton province and the mainland of German New Guinea , the so-called Kaiser-Wilhelms-Land . The total number of missionaries at the beginning of 1913 was 207, including 166 ordained , 19 non-ordained (doctors, teachers, farmers, etc.) and 22 sisters. In addition, 154 missionary women.

Work in the time of National Socialism

Between 1933 and 1945 the so-called Third Reich brought major problems for the Rhenish Mission. She had distanced herself from the movement of the German Christians and refused to be incorporated into the Reich Church . Instead, a bond arose with the Confessing Church . Even before the beginning of the Second World War , the work had been severely hindered.

Association of the German Evangelical Mission Societies

In 1971 the Rhenish Mission merged with the Bethel Mission , which had started its missionary work in Dar es Salaam (in today's Tanzania / East Africa) in 1887 , to form the United Evangelical Mission , which in 1996 became the international church community United Evangelical Mission (UEM) with 35 independent churches Africa, Asia and Germany and the von Bodelschwingschen foundations.

aftermath

Archive and Museum Foundation of the UEM

In Wuppertal, in the houses of the United Evangelical Mission on Rudolfstraße and Missionsstraße, the archive and museum foundation of the UEM preserves and scientifically researches the history and tradition of the evangelical mission societies. The cultural assets of the missionaries collected by the missionaries are accessible to the public in the Museum auf der Hardt of the Archive and Museum Foundation of the UEM.

Mission cemetery

Resting place for the emissaries of the Rhenish Mission

On the lower Barmer cemetery is a separately situated part reserved for the graves of the missionaries of the Rhenish Mission and their wives.

literature

  • Ludwig von Rohden : History of the Rhenish Mission Society. Barmen 1856. (2nd, revised and completed edition. Barmen 1871; 3rd edition in two parts Barmen 1888).
  • August Hanke: The Rhenish Mission in Kaiser-Wilhelms-Land. 1908, 3rd edition, reviewed and supplemented by. A. Hanke.
  • Albert Hoffmann: Missionary work among primitive peoples. Berlin 1911.
  • Georg Kunze: In the service of the cross on uneven paths. Barmen 1897, 3rd edition 1925.
  • Edmund Kriele: The cross under the palm trees. The Rhenish Mission in New Guinea. Barmen 1927.
  • Albert Hoffmann: Memoirs of a Rhenish Missionary. 2 volumes, Wuppertal-Barmen 1948–1949.
  • W. Berner: Rheinische Missionsgesellschaft (RMG). In: Religion Past and Present (RGG). 5th volume, Tubingen 1961, p. 1083.
  • KJ Bade: Colonial Missions and Imperialism: the background to the fiasco of the Rhenish Mission in New Guinea. In: Australian Journal of Politics & History. 21, No. 2, 1975, pp. 73-94.
  • K.-J. Bade: Colonial Missions and Imperialism: The Background to the Fiasco of the Rhenish Mission in New Guinea. In: John A. Moses, Paul M. Kennedy (Eds.): Germany in the Pacific and Far East, 1870-1914. Brisbane 1977.
  • Gustav Menzel: The Rhenish Mission. From 150 years of mission history. Publishing house of the United Evang. Mission, Wuppertal 1978, ISBN 3-921900-00-X .
  • Hermann Reiner: Beginnings at Madang - The Rhenish Mission. In: Herwig Wagner, Hermann Reiner (Ed.): The Lutheran Church in Papua New Guinea. The first Hundred Years 1886-1986. Lutheran Publishing House, Adelaide 1986, Second revised ed. 1987, ISBN 0-85910-382-X , pp. 99-139.
  • Klaus J. Bade: The Rhenish Mission in "Kaiser-Wilhelms-Land" (German New Guinea). In: Wilfried Wagner (ed.): Structural change in the Pacific region. Bremen: Übersee-Museum Bremen; 1988: 219-244.
  • Heinz Schütte: The origin of knives and axes. Thoughts on the civilizing project of Rhenish missionaries in early colonial New Guinea. Abdera Verlag, Hamburg 1995, ISBN 3-934376-01-0 .
  • Paul B. Steffen : Beginning of the mission in New Guinea. The beginnings of the Rhenish, Neuendettelsauer and Steyler missionary work in New Guinea. (Studia Instituti Missiologici SVD - 61) Steyler Verlag, Nettetal 1995, ISBN 3-8050-0351-X .
  • Nicole Glocke: On the history of the Rheinische Missionsgesellschaft in German South West Africa with special consideration of the colonial war from 1904 to 1907. Brockmeyer, Bochum 1997, ISBN 3-8196-0548-7 .
  • Kurt Panzergrau: The education and upbringing of the natives of South West Africa by the Rheinische Missionsgesellschaft from 1842-1914. A contribution to the relationship between education and colonialism. Akademischer Verlag, Munich 1998, ISBN 3-932965-11-6 .
  • Walter Moritz: The beginning of the Rhenish Mission under the Damara , LDD Exclusiv Spenge, Windhoek 2015, ISBN 978-3-945044-38-4 .

Web links

Commons : Rheinische Missionsgesellschaft  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Missionary A. Schneider: The daughter box to Mettmann. In: Our community. Community letter of the Ev. Parish Mettmann, No. 11/12, 1965, p. 2 f.
  2. ↑ Klaus Dierks : BIOGRAPHIES OF NAMIBIAN PERSONALITIES - in alphabetical order - R - Z. Accessed on November 16, 2019 (English).
  3. ↑ Eighty-fourth annual report of the Rheinische Missionsgesellschaft from 1913. Barmen, May 1914, p. 182 f.
  4. ↑ 84th Report 1913, p. 168 ff.
  5. ↑ a b A. Schneider: The daughter box to Mettmann. P. 2.
  6. ↑ 84th Report 1913, pp. 144 ff.
  7. ↑ quoted from: Die Rheinische Missionsgesellschaft, A leaflet for their friends on the year 1914.
  8. ↑ according to the Bethel Chronicle ( memento of October 30, 2013 in the Internet Archive )
  9. ↑ Ulrich van der Heyden: Bethel Mission . In: Hans Dieter Betz u. a. (Ed.): Religion in the past and present. Concise dictionary for theology and religious studies . 4th edition. tape 8 , no. 1 . UTB, Stuttgart 2008, ISBN 978-3-8252-8401-5 , p. 1377 , col. 1 .