Book Reviews

Exchange 40 (2011) 201-222 brill.nl/exch

Book Reviews

Karl Josef Rivinius svd, Bischof J.B. Anzer im Spiegel seiner Briefe an Magdalene Leitner. Ein Beitrag zur Steyler Frömmigkeitsgeschichte, Studia Instituti Missiologici Societatis Verbi Divini 88, Nettetal: Steyler Verlag 2006. 256 p., isbn 978-3-8050-0537-1, price

Johann Baptist Anzer (1851-1903) was born in the south of Germany. Probably because of the Kulturkampf he showed up in the Netherlands. In 1876 Anzer was ordained in Utrecht by Msgr. Andreas Schaepman. He joined the svd mission of Arnold Janssen’s in Steyl (Lim- burg). In 1879 he and Josef Freinademetz left for China as the ﬁrst svd-missionaries to propagate the Roman-catholic religion. The Propaganda Fide, the Vatican ‘ministry of mission’, allocated the southern part of the Shandong peninsula to the Societas Verbi Divini (svd — Society of the Word of God). Anzer not only became head of the mission on behalf of the congregation. Rome made him bishop (apostolic vicar) as well. In those years it was unusual that a bishop was chief of mission at the same time. Anzer came back to Europe so that he could be consecrated a bishop in Steyl on 24 January, 1886. It was quite a ceremony in the village on the border of the river Maas. Phi- lippus Cremenz, the archbishop of Cologne, had traveled all the way to the Netherlands. Felix Korum, bishop of Trier, and Franciscus Boermans, suﬀragan biship of Roermond, participated as assistants of Msgr. Cremenz. The bishop of Roermond and the internuncio in The Hague had also undertaken the journey to Steyl. The activities of the svd under the leadership of Anzer did not have the intention to make friends with the non-converted Chinese. In his book The Origins of the Boxer War (London 2003) Lanxin Xiang makes this clear. He gave a few examples (p. 59):

Anzer was a poor financial planner and a big spender. A constant need for money pushed him to seek and provoke religious cases, which, as the French experience had shown, was the best way to raise money paid by the Chinese government as indemni- ties. With the help of capable assistants [. . .] Anzer never missed a single opportunity to protest against the Chinese government. Steyl-related religious disputes increased rapidly and were often among the most intense and violent. In some cases, the missionaries and the converts were encouraged to pick a fight over issues of little signifi- cance. On many occasions in the 1890s, a fight would be started at a busy local marketplace generating all manner of local news and rumor. In 1890, a butcher hanged the head of a sheep on his meat stand in a busy market. The converts considered it profane and anti-Christian, because the word ‘sheep’ pronounced as ‘yang’, could also mean ‘foreign’. A bloody fight ensued. The missionaries claimed that this butcher had lost a religious case before, hence his action was deliberate. When the local officials

intervened, despite the fact that the claims by the missionaries could not be substanti- ated, the butcher lost his case anyway. The local population were outraged.

Another common practice was to encourage the converts to demonstrate disrespect towards traditional festivals. Once the converts were barred from participating in these events, the Steyl missionaries would claim discrimination and ask for compensation. Anzer had a strong character. In his capacity of both apostolic vicar and head of mission he felt he could aﬀord to be dominant. According to Xiang (pp. 60-61),

Bishop Anzer became abominable not only to the Chinese, but also to his fellow missionaries. The bishop always exercised a kind of authoritarian control over his own colleagues. No dissenting voice was allowed in his vicarage apostolic. The bishop had developed a taste for Chinese liquor and was known to get drunk on an almost daily basis in a village hostelry. This heavy drinking problem often brought him into con- frontation with the Chinese authorities as well as his fellow missionaries. [. . .] By 1896, a major rebellion threatened to depose the bishop, a situation which was, of course, largely of his own making. The ﬁrst person to challenge Anzer’s power was Father Eberhard Limbrock, who wrote in the winter of 1890-91 a detailed letter reporting Anzer’s behavior. Other missionaries soon followed suit. Even the normally timid Vice-Bishop Freinademetz decided to send a report an Anzer’s irregularities. Father Augustinus Henninghaus, who had served as a personal secretary to the bishop, put it bluntly in his letter, ‘The evil development will be stopped if we receive a new bishop’. Anzer was completely isolated. An invisible wall began to separate him and his subordinates.

The provocations of the svd-missionaries did have consequences. On 1 November 1897 two German fathers of Steyl were killed by the Chinese. Wilhelm ii, the German Emperor, who had been given a free hand by the Russian Czar Nicholas ii, gave his imperial ﬂeet order to attack Shandong. Germany annexed a substantial part of the southern coast of the peninsula. Anzer actively cooperated with the German authorities. As a result the bishop was enobled and allowed to call himself Von Anzer. The use of military force by the Germans brought the other major European powers into action as well. France and Britain, and even Japan, forced Beijing to give up large pieces of Chinese territory. Some time it looked as though the European nations were ready to parti- tion China, the way they had done in Africa before. Imperial China was powerless. It was up to the Chinese people to resist the military moves of the Europeans. In the so-called Boxer Rebellion substantial groups of converts, missionaries and other Europeans were assassinated. Fridolin Knobel, the Dutch envoy in Beijing, in a dispatch to the Minister of Foreign Aﬀairs De Beaufort reported (p. 60):

Many are of the opinion, that this rebellion is a spontaneous expression of the outcry of the common people regarding te annexation of [Qingdao] by Germany, the result- ing occupation of coastal areas by other powers and the immigration of foreigners into