MISSION APOLOGETICS: the RHENISH MISSION from WARS and GENOCIDE to the NAZI REVOLUTION, 1904-1936 GLEN RYLAND MOUNT ROYAL UNIVERSITY [email protected]
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STORIES AND MISSION APOLOGETICS: THE RHENISH MISSION FROM WARS AND GENOCIDE TO THE NAZI REVOLUTION, 1904-1936 GLEN RYLAND MOUNT ROYAL UNIVERSITY [email protected] tories of a Herero woman, Uerieta Kaza- Some Germans even met her face-to-face when Shendike (1837-1936), have circulated for a she visited the Rhineland and Westphalia with century and a half among German Protestants in missionary Carl Hugo Hahn in 1859, a year the Upper Rhineland and Westphalian region. after her baptism.2 Other than a few elites, no Known to mission enthusiasts as Johanna other Herero received as much written attention Gertze, or more often “Black Johanna” from the missionaries as Uerieta did. Why was (Schwarze Johanna), Uerieta was the first her story of interest to missions-minded Protest- Herero convert of the Rhenish Mission Society. ants in Germany? By 1936, her life had spanned the entire period In 1936, missionary Heinrich Vedder again of the Herero mission she had served since her told her story, this time shaping her into an youth. Over the years, the mission society African heroine for the Rhenish Mission. In published multiple versions of her story Vedder’s presentation “Black Johanna” demon- together with drawings and photos of her.1 strated the mission’s success in the past and embodied a call for Germans in the new era of National Socialism to do their duty toward so- called inferior peoples. Vedder used Uerieta’s I am grateful to Dr. Doris L. Bergen, Chancellor Rose story to shape an apologetic for Protestant mis- and Ray Wolfe Professor of Holocaust Studies, Uni- sions within the new regime. versity of Toronto, for her insight, guidance, and The Rhenish Mission had been in Southwest detailed feedback to help gain clarity in the content and Africa since 1842 as the only mission society claims of this essay. until 1904. Vedder arrived at the outset of the 1 The first story about Uerieta came in 1861; see Carl Hugo Hahn, “Die Schwarze Johanne,” Der kleine Southwest African-German Wars (1904-1907) Missionsfreund, no. 12 (1861): 179-88. Her story and a genocide that went with these wars. He resurfaced in the early twentieth century when the observed firsthand the genocide and served as Rhenish Mission Inspektor Johannes Spieker chaplain at the concentration camp for the mentioned her in a report from Africa in 1903 and Herero in Swakopmund. He remained in the again in 1905, during the Herero-German War and colony until Germany was defeated and lost its genocide. Then followed other stories about Uerieta: Jakob Irle Die Herero: Ein Beitrag zur Landes-, Volks- colonies during the First World War. In 1922, & Missions-kunde (Gütersloh: Bertelsmann, 1906), he returned from Germany having just 238; Hedwig Irle, Unsere Schwarze Landsleute in published his first story of Uerieta, and he Deutsch Südwest Afrika (Gütersloh: Bertelsmann, remained in the colony through the Second 1911), 127-31; August Kuhl-mann, Auf Adlers Fluglen World War. In 1849, at the outset of the (Barmen: Missionshaus, 1911), 22-24. In 1998 the apartheid system, Vedder became the Senator Namibian postal service honored Uerieta by including her image in a stamp series that honored Namibian women; see Diane Hubbard, “Urieta (Johanna Maria) Kazahendike, God’s Peace and Blessing,” in Women Writing Africa: The Southern Region, eds. M. J. 2 C. H. Hahn, “Die Schwarze Johanne,” Der kleine Daymond et al. (New York: The Feminist Press, 2003), Missionsfreund (hereafter DKMF), no. 12 (1861): 179- 1:96-98. 88. Symposia 5 (2013): 17-32.© The Author 2013. Published by University of Toronto. All rights reserved. 18 SYMPOSIA for the People of Namibia, at which time he Hitler and the Nazi elite turned out to have little published a third version of Uerieta’s story. use for overseas missions, missionaries tried to Throughout the first four decades of find a place in the “racial state.”5 Vedder’s career, starting in 1903, the Rhenish Missionary stories, including Vedder’s Mission was on the defensive and its Schwarze Johanna in 1936, were rooted in these representatives sought in various ways to prove changing contexts. They reflected political, its value to the German state and society. religious, and social upheavals, but they also During the Southwest African Wars, this project represented missionaries’ attempts to intervene involved defending the mission society and its in events and shape them to fit their purposes in missionaries against charges of sympathy Africa and at home. Helmut Walser Smith toward Africans. Missionaries on the ground in traces the “collapse of fellow feeling” through Southwest Africa also served the aims of the modern period to 1941 and the murder of empire in direct ways, by aiding in the millions of Jews. A “collapse” was also destruction of Herero communities and lives. apparent in the actions and words of After 1918, defending the mission meant missionaries from Southwest Africa, who fending off criticisms from Germany’s wartime promoted the German cause as they perceived enemies and trying to maintain a presence in it.6 Africa, even as the mission sold off properties at home and in territories no longer in German Two Wars 3 hands. With the ascendance of National The German colonial government in Southwest Socialism in 1933, currying favor involved Africa entered what would be its final decade of depicting overseas missions not as a sign of rule with a ruthless war that included the mass Christianity’s fundamental incompatibility with murder of Herero and Nama (1904-1907). Nazism but rather as a source of a “properly” 4 Horst Drechsler characterized the years that racialist understanding of the world. Although followed the genocide as “the peace of the graveyard.”7 A heavy peace also settled over the Rhenish Mission and its work. At first the 3 On the stalemate of the Rhenish Mission during missionaries had appeared to falter in the face WWI, see Eduard Kriele, Die Rheinische Mission in of criticisms at home over their role in the der Heimat (Barmen: Missionshaus, 1928), 345-72. On decisions to sell mission properties, see Archiv- und Museumsstiftung der VEM, Schriftarchiv, Bestand Rheinische Mission (Archives and Museum foundation 5 According to Wolfgang Wippermann, Michael of the UEM, hereafter RMG) 18 Protokollen der Burleigh, and Detlev Peukert, racial policies and Deputationssitzungen (und der Hauptversammlungen) ideology were the distinctive features of the Nazi 1917-1924 (10 April 1922), 629-30. “racial state”; see W. Wippermann and M. Burleigh, 4 This argument for the 1930s is made by Doris L. The Racial State: Germany 1933-1945 (Cambridge: Bergen, “‘What God has put asunder let no man join Cambridge University Press, 1993); D. J. Peukert, “The together:’ Overseas Missions and the German Christian Genesis of the "Final Solution" from the Spirit of View of Race,” Douglas F. Tobler (ed.) Remembrance, Science,” 236. A 2009 German Historical Institute Repentance, Reconciliation 11 (New York: University conference was devoted to this claim: see Mark Press of America, 1998), 5-17. Overseas missions had Roseman, Devin Pendas, and Richard Wetzell (eds.) developed racist ways of thinking, notably racial Beyond the Racial State (New York: Cambridge specificity and divisionism, which Protestant mission University Press, forthcoming 2013). leaders saw as “important lessons for race relations” 6Helmut Walser Smith, Continuities of German that “could be transferred on to Jews.” This use of History: Nation, Religion, and Race across the Long overseas missions went beyond the German Christian Nineteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Movement and its members’ efforts to fuse Christianity Press, 2008). and Nazism. Protestants who never joined the German 7 Horst Drechsler, “The Peace of the Graveyard,” Let Christians or who left the movement in 1934 also us die fighting: The Struggle of the Herero and Nama appealed to the racist practices and ideas found in against German Imperialism, 1884- 1915 (London: overseas missions. Zed Press, 1980), 231-47. RYLAND / STORIES AND MISSION APOLOGETICS 19 colony, but they found their bearings amid the There is an ironic pastoral tone to Kuhl- wretchedness of the concentration camps, or mann’s narrative of this process.13 Prior to the what the Germans called Konzentrationslager.8 Herero surrender, he called the Herero “a These camps operated from January 1905 until fleeing flock,” reminiscent of the biblical the civilian colonial government abolished them language describing the disciples who in 1908.9 The captured Herero, mainly women abandoned Jesus in Gethsemane. Once they and those unable to work as forced laborers, surrendered, they became “the gathered,” were consigned to three main concentration reminiscent of ekklesia, the biblical word for camps at Swakopmund, Karibib, and Shark “church” with a literal meaning of “the called- Island.10 The military ran the camps with out ones.” The incarcerated Herero, whether in assistance from some civilians, including one of the concentration camps or in a work missionaries. camp, he referred to as “our prisoners of war” The Rhenish Mission threw its energies into and his “little congregation.” Kuhlmann also the process of rounding up Herero survivors, described collection by other missionaries, setting up four collecting stations in early 1905 including Johannes Olpp and Willy Diehl, who at Omburo, Otjosazu, Otjihaenena, and later at found “great joy” in handing over Herero “ring Otjozongombe. A directive from Berlin on 14 leaders” to the German authorities. He ap- January 1905 and missionary descriptions make preciated the “free hand” the governor afforded clear the central role missionaries played.11 missionaries in setting up collection stations. Rhenish missionary August Kuhlmann provided His reports and later descriptions indicate that a few details in his book, Auf Adlers Flügeln. missionaries believed their “surprising success” By his account, the Herero would send a with collection resulted from a “trust” relation- messenger to a missionary, who assured them ship that existed between them and the Herero, the missionary had come to bring peace.