The first German movement toward a missionary possession of the German colonies in Africa was in Bavaria where a group of men who had been influenced by Krapf, planned a Wakamba mission. Their society is generally known by the name of their headquarters, Bielefeld. One of the leading spirits and a director of this society was Bodelschwingh, the famous leader of Germany’s Inner Mission movement. Bodelschwingh, like Francke, was an illustration of the fact that they who do mission work at home do also mission work abroad.
The principal field of the Bielefeld Society is Tanga and the country lying behind it. In 1907 it began a new mission in the northwest corner of German East Africa, a densely populated district between Lakes Victoria Nyanza, Kivu and Tanganyika. In its two fields the mission has thirty-five missionaries and about two thousand Christians.
|Careful and Painstaking.| The careful and painstaking methods of the German missionaries are indicated in a description of the winning of their first converts in their newer field. Three years after they had begun to work, a youth appeared for baptism. He was followed by six other young men. Then a number of girls asked for instruction and presently a leprous woman whose interest had been gained by the tender care of the missionaries. For more than a year these inquirers received instruction. At the end of that time four young men and three young women were considered worthy of baptism.
The Berlin Society began work in 1891 in the extreme southwest corner of the German possessions. Gradually extending, it has now fifty-seven missionaries and about four thousand native Christians. The mission field lies among the Konde tribes at the northern end of Lake Nyassa.
The Leipsic Society had begun its work before the possession of this section by Germany. The people among whom it labors belong to the Chaga tribes at the foot of snow-capped Mt. Kilimanjaro. Its stations extend also southward and westward. It has in all twenty-eight missionaries and about twenty-seven hundred Christians.
The Breklum Society began work in 1911 in the Uhha country on the western shore of Lake Tanganyika where it has three missionaries.
The Neukirchen Society has a mission in German territory in Urundi between Lake Tanganyika and Lake Kivu with five missionaries, and also in British territory near the mouth of the Pomo River, where there are nine missionaries.
In Africa as well as in India there is a long list of faithful Germans who worked in the missions of other churches. Among them Nylander went as a missionary of the English Church Missionary Society to Sierra Leone in 1806. Until his death in 1825 he remained at his post, never returning home for a furlough. Doctor Schön reduced the Hausa language to order and wrote for it grammars, dictionaries and reading lessons. Upon him the French Institute conferred a gold medal for his brilliant philological work. Livingstone declared that Schön’s name would live long after his own had been forgotten. Sigismund Kölle compiled the Polyglotta Africana, a comparison of a hundred African dialects. He was first a missionary in Sierra Leone and afterwards in Egypt, Constantinople and Palestine.
|A Lutheran in Jerusalem.| Another German Lutheran who has been employed by other societies was Samuel Gobat, who was born in Berne, Switzerland, in 1799. When he was nineteen years old he entered the Basel Missionary Institute. After he had thoroughly prepared himself there and in Paris in the Arabic, Ethiopic and Amharic languages, he offered himself to the Church missionary Society of England and was sent to begin in 1826 a mission in Abyssinia. Before he sailed for his mission field he received Lutheran ordination. For three years he traveled extensively in proclaiming the Gospel both to the priests who ministered to the sadly degenerate Abyssinian Church and to the people, then he was compelled to leave on account of ill health. He continued his missionary activity by superintending the translating of the Bible into Arabic at the Church Mission in Malta; in 1845 he was made Vice President of the Protestant College at Malta. Subsequently he was appointed Bishop of Jerusalem, his election to this important position being preceded by his entrance into the English Church. He died in Jerusalem in 1879, “notable for his piety, vigor, tact and good judgment.”
Scandinavian Societies.