The missionary Alexander Merensky

In 1855, Alexander Merensky, who was 18 years old at the time, began his training as a missionary with the Berlin Missionary Society (BMG).^[i] After a three-year training, he was "seconded" to South Africa and, together with his colleague Heinrich Grützner (1834–1910), set out to open up new and separate mission areas. [ii] Their main project was the founding of the Botshabelo mission station near the present-day city of Mpumalanga. ^[iii]

As a missionary in South Africa

Today, missionary work is no longer understood as a one-sided, linear process of cultural imposition of Western values and Christian teachings. Recent missionary history regards mission as the result of concrete actions of various people on the ground, as a "cultural encounter", as a process whose concrete relationship structure and social practice must be reconstructed. [iv] However, increasing colonization massively changed the respective power relations and the possibilities of action of the native population.

When Merensky began his missionary activity, missionaries in southern Africa were still completely dependent on the tolerance and goodwill of the local population and their leaders. However, the presence of missionaries in the respective African societies could trigger complex and sometimes profound social, economic, cultural and political processes. For the missionaries' concern went beyond the establishment of a new religion, they wanted to influence moral and moral questions and practices, everyday processes and ways of working, attitudes and world views.

As colonization progressed, colonial authorities and missionaries increasingly worked together. Alexander Merensky was a supporter of close cooperation between colonial power and mission, which had been propagated since the 1880s under the keyword "colonial mission". [v]

Just four years after his mission to South Africa, Merensky married Marie Liers (1838–1919) in Durban. The Merenskys had nine children, seven of whom survived. Wives of missionaries were unpaid domestic and family workers, educators and nurses. Missionary work in the narrower sense, the proclamation of the gospel, was officially reserved for trained and ordained male missionaries; however, these role assignments were not always adhered to. [vi] The same was true of the distribution of roles between white missionaries and the native evangelists, i.e. African Christians who had not yet been ordained, but who contributed to the congregation in a variety of ways as pastors, teachers or preachers. [vii]

Alexander Merensky ruled in "his" Botshabelo mission station almost absolutistically. Contemporary sources describe him as a tirelessly active leader, but he neither delegated tasks nor shared power. As a result, he lost the sympathy of many African Christians in the course of his activity. In the war between Great Britain and the South African Republic, he manoeuvred between the two parties and lost the trust of both. After 23 years of missionary service in southern Africa, Merensky returned to Berlin in 1882. [viii]

"Inner" Mission and Colonial Propaganda

After his return to Berlin, Alexander Merensky initially worked for the so-called Inner Mission, i.e. the Christian conversion of the poorer urban population. Merensky became an inspector of the Berlin City Mission, which was led by the court preacher and anti-Semitic politician Adolf Stoecker (1835–1909). He was responsible for the north of Berlin, including today's Prenzlauer Berg district. [ix]

The Merenskys also lived in the north of Berlin, initially in Moabit. Around 1888, the family moved to what is now Prenzlauer Berg for a good decade. They first lived at Belforter Straße 4, and from 1894 for another five years at what was then Weißenburger Straße 5 (today Kollwitzstraße 10) on Senefelderplatz. [x]

Alexander Merensky was also involved in the German colonial movement. He became a member of the "Society for German Colonization", founded by Carl Peters (1856–1918), among others. Merensky's biographer Hermann Petrich was convinced that Merensky was one of the "Protestant missionaries" who "most resolutely advocated German colonial acquisition". [xi]

In 1885, Merensky won first prize in an essay competition under the question: "How best to educate the N[...] to work on plantations?" Merensky's text is full of generalizing and racist evaluations. He gives advice on how to deal with locals and recommends power political measures. To his credit, he largely rejects brute physical force and that he also names mistakes made by the colonial powers. Nevertheless, his essay shows the unconditional will to exercise power and the Christian-European superiority mentality. [xii]

Colonial mission

From 1886 Merensky worked for the BMG again. [xiii] Probably at Merensky's insistence, the BMG decided in 1890 to become active in the German colony of "German East Africa" and sent an expedition led by Merensky to the northern end of Lake Nyasa (Lake Malawi). [xiv] The aim was to promote Christianity among the Nyakyusa (also Sokile, Ngonde, in the sources of the German missionaries Konde). The Nyakyusa had extensive trade contacts, were in exchange with their neighbours and had been asserting their independence for centuries. The missionaries were warmly received and regarded as interlocutors and interlocutors. [xv]

However, the missionaries did not only lay the foundation for Christian missionary work with their stations. Merensky also played a part in the European development of the region: he drew maps, researched and described the geography, botany and culture of the locals. He thought about the economic exploitation of mineral resources and the infrastructure of the area, and he advised the German colonial administration and the colonial troops. [xvi]

After almost two years of travel to Africa, Merensky returned to Berlin in 1893. In 1894 he was officially appointed mission inspector of the BMG and from then on was responsible for missionary work in the German colony of "German East Africa". [xvii] Merensky used the popularity of the colonial movement and the high media presence that the colonies had to promote the missionary activities of the BMG and at the same time German colonial possessions. He gave lectures, published and was networked up to higher government circles.

He was significantly involved in colonial exhibitions in Berlin, provided exhibition objects and text contributions for the colonial exhibition, which took place in Treptower Park in 1896 as part of the Berlin Trade Exhibition. [xviii] Many of the objects from the everyday life of the missionary life compiled by Merensky became part of the inventory of the newly founded "German Colonial Museum" after the conclusion of the colonial exhibition in the fall of 1896. [xix] At the opening of the "German Army, Navy and Colonial Exhibition" in Friedenau in 1907, Merensky was one of the guests of honor as a representative of the Protestant missionary societies, along with dukes, princes, state secretaries and high military officers. [xx]

Merensky wrote scientific papers, historical, geographical and ethnological texts, and he enjoyed great prestige in the expanding colonial sciences. [xxi] He also published various children's books with stories on the subject of mission and colonization in the series "Missionary Writings for Children". [xxii] In the last years of his life, Alexander Merensky lived in Charlottenburg's Fasanenstraße and died in 1918, one year before his wife Marie.