The Brethren in Rixdorf and its colonial entanglements

Not far from the S-Bahn and U-Bahn station "Neukölln", at Kirchgasse 14, is the prayer room of the Evangelical Brethren and thus the center of today's Brethren in Berlin[1]. Since the 18th century, Protestant Bohemians had settled in Berlin, who had to leave their homeland because they did not want to give up their denomination. The congregation in Berlin professed the Moravian Brethren in Lusatia.

In the course of the colonial expansion of the German Empire in the 19th century, the Brethren also began their mission in the former colony of "German East Africa" (today: Tanzania, Burundi, Rwanda). Like other missionary societies – not only in Berlin – it also benefited from the colonial system of injustice.

The (non-European) missionary activity of the Brethren did not begin with the violent occupation of territories as German colonies. Early on, the mission was understood as an essential part of the Brethren. As early as 1732, the first missionaries were sent out to proselytize enslaved people on the plantations of the later Danish colony of St. Thomas.

In the following years, the Brethren founded further mission stations in Greenland, South Africa and Suriname – all colonies of Protestant-ruled countries. The selection of the mission territories was therefore not random, but dependent on the "political framework of the colonial world". [2] The Brethren needed the support, or at least the toleration, of the respective colonial governments. [3] In this way, the Brethren Church – also in Berlin – provided essential impulses for the development of Protestant missionary awareness at an early stage. [4]

In 1890 – and thus shortly after the violent suppression of the resistance of the East African coastal population against the colonial occupation – the Brethren decided, after initial hesitation, to proselytize in "German East Africa". [5] It communicated with the Berlin Missionary Society in Friedrichshain about the various mission areas and sent out the first missionaries a short time later. [6] In the following years, more missionaries were sent out and mission stations were founded, so that in 1902 the congregation was active at ten mission stations in the area of Lake Nyassa and in Unyamwezi. [7]

Missionaries were also sent out from the Rixdorf community. For example, the Missions-Blatt, the magazine of the mission of the Brethren, reports that Anna Magdalena and Ernst Otto Giersch left Rixdorf for "German East Africa" in 1906. While Anna Magdalena was born in Rixdorf, at Kirchgasse 6, the carpenter Ernst Otto Giersch came from Brandenburg. After the mission school in Silesia, he attended the Oriental Seminary in Berlin and was ordained in Rixdorf. The couple also married there. Both worked in "German East Africa" at the Mbozi mission station. What their everyday life there looked like is difficult to reconstruct today. The mission bulletin only mentions that they were introduced to work on the station and later taught in the mission school. [8] Two photographs show Ernst Otto being pulled in a rickshaw – in keeping with the idea of European superiority – and instructing African people on how to work with the sewing machine.

The feeling of one's own cultural-religious, Eurocentric superiority was also central to the mission of the Brethren. This became very clear in the case of Charles Buchner, who was for a time the mission director of the Moravian Brethren and "one of the leading men of the Protestant mission of his time". [9] In an article, he described the colonized people as "with the childlike and childish nature of the still uneducated" and compared them with "our children." [10] He clearly referred to the racist model of supposed stages of development and emphasized that certain behaviors were "only stages of development of a race that had only just entered into spiritual development through contact with culture"[11]. In his eyes, the "necessary education" derived from this was also a task of the mission – in harmony with the colonial government. It did not stop at purely theoretical treatises: Buchner was closely intertwined with the colonial structures in the German Reich. He was a representative in the Colonial Council, a body that was supposed to advise the Reich Colonial Office. From 1905 to 1907, he was also chairman of the Committee of German Protestant Missions. [12] The aim of this committee was to represent the common interests of the mission societies and also to provide the German Colonial Office with "all necessary information and to provide any information it desired on missionary issues." [13]

The desired "education" had far-reaching consequences for the colonized people: At the mission stations, which were central to missionary work, the missionaries condemned almost everything – culture, languages and religions – that did not fit into their bourgeois-Christian ideas – as "pagan" and forbade this.[14] In doing so, they intervened deeply in existing social structures.

The extent to which this idea of one's own superiority coincided with the colonial agenda became abundantly clear in a speech Buchner gave at the Colonial Congress in Berlin in 1905. In "The Assistance of the Mission in the Education of the Natives for Work", he emphasized that work had always been an integral part of Christianity: "He who does not work should not eat" was a law "that originated in the very essence of Christianity." [15] In accordance with this logic, Buchner described the mission stations as a "work center" in which "the natives" would develop "all kinds of new needs" through the "contact with culture" through the mission, for the satisfaction of which work on the numerous plantations was necessary. If "this knowledge is now gradually put into practice, then both the settler, with whom the native earns his money, and the merchant, with whom he has to spend it, have the advantage of it." [16] Coercion also has "its right within certain limits": "Every educator knows that there is no education without a certain coercion, that every education includes coercion to a certain extent." [17]

It becomes clear how the Christian mission advocates and legitimizes the exploitation of African people. In fact, however, it was not only "the settler" and "the merchant" who benefited from this supposed "education". The mission stations of the Brethren themselves often had plantations attached to them on which Africans were supposed to work.

It was not uncommon for the workers to resist and organize strikes due to the low wages. [18] Extensive coffee and rubber plantations were also set up at the Mbozi mission station, where Ernst Otto and Anna Magdalena from Rixdorf worked. [19] The mission station was one of the stations with the largest number of members of the Brethren in "German East Africa". And the missionary Traugott Bachmann, who set up the station, was in conflict with the mission leadership in Germany several times because he emphasized the "values of East African culture". [20]

Even if there were a few missionaries who criticized and rejected cooperation with the colonial state, most of them profited from the colonial system of injustice and cooperated with it. It was not uncommon for the missionaries to work directly on behalf of the colonial state as translators or tax collectors. [21]

When in 1897 the so-called "hut tax", a tax independent of income, was levied by the colonial administration in the colony of "German East Africa", which led to intensified forced labor and massive exploitation, the mission director Buchner also advocated it. [22] He described it as a "measure" that "we missionaries (...) had welcomed with joy as a beneficial one, because it has decisively induced the natives to make further efforts in the field of work without expecting them to do anything wrong." [23]

The compulsion to work, the oppression and the high taxes were also a trigger for the Maji-Maji resistance movements in "German East Africa", to which the German government reacted with brutal severity. In the Maji-Maji War, between 150,000 and 300,000 Africans were killed by the colonial troops. [24] The resistance was understood by most missionary societies as resistance against the God-ordained order. For example, in a speech by a missionary printed in the missionary bulletin, it is also stated that "paying taxes [...] and thus obedience to the authorities" is in the "sense of the word of God". [25] Against the resisters, who were described as enemies, the "hearers were to help the government if necessary [...] if they themselves wanted to keep the peace." [26]

During the Maji-Maji War, Anna Magdalena and Otto Giersch were also still in "German East Africa". They did not return until 1908. Anna Magdalena's traces are lost in the following period. In 1927 – and thus already after the end of the German colonial period – Ernst Otto travelled again to the Mbozi station to train a "young brother". He remained there until 1929 and probably died in Herzberg in 1946. [27]

Even after the end of the German colonial period, the mission remained an important part of the work of the Brethren and the congregation in Neukölln remained connected to it. Mission festivals were celebrated, at which returned missionaries reported on the mission, sold items from the regions and thus inspired the congregation for the mission. Today, these mission festivals are no longer celebrated in Rixdorf, even though the mission is still an important part of the work of the Brethren.

The mission areas in the former colony of "German East Africa" have become independent congregations. Today, more than half of the Moravian Christians live in East Africa. [28] They maintain close contacts – also with the congregation in today's Neukölln.