The Missionary Society of German Baptists

In 1903, the Missionary Society of German Baptists acquired a house at Filandastraße 4 in Steglitz. From then on, this house became a central place for the missionary society: the departing and returning missionaries were to be able to stay here, as well as the children of the missionaries. The Society's office and the missionary inspector's apartment were also located in the building. [1] In 1903, 15 missionaries of the Society and 43 "African assistants" were active at five main and 40 secondary stations in the former colony of Cameroon. [2] The history of the Missionary Society of German Baptists is also closely linked to the colonial expansion of the German Reich.

At the time of the purchase of the building in Filandastraße, the missionary society had already existed for almost 15 years and had been active in different parts of today's Berlin until then.

In 1889, five years after Cameroon was forcibly subjugated as a German colony, the preacher Eduard Scheve first founded the Missionary Committee for Cameroon. The committee was to support the congregations, which were founded mainly by English Baptists, by sending out "material for schools, congregations, missions and craftsmen". [3] Barely nine years later, this committee became the Missionary Society, which sent the first missionary to Cameroon in 1891. The statutes of the Society stated that it "pursues the purpose of sending missionaries to the German colonies to preach the gospel to the natives, to instruct them and to train preachers and teachers from among them." [4]

In 1893, the society, and especially Eduard Scheve, began to "let African children come to Berlin." [5] They were to be trained in Berlin – primarily to later work as teachers or assistants in the mission schools in Cameroon. [6] The Cameroonians came to Berlin under different conditions and stayed for different lengths of time. [7] While the boys lived directly with Scheve, who was living at Gubener Straße 11 in Friedrichshain at the time, the girls were accommodated in the Bethel deaconess house , which is also located in Friedrichshain. [8]

One of the first so-called "Cameroon pupils" was the young Cameroonian Richard Edube Mbene, who was sent to Berlin by a missionary in 1893. [9] After his training with Eduard Scheve, he returned to Cameroon in 1897 and worked there as a missionary teacher. The diary of Richard Edube Mbene, which has survived, provides a rare insight into the perspective of the colonized and missionary population. Mbene criticized German colonial policy and addressed his racist experiences in his diary – also in the circle of his missionary colleagues. On the one hand, he denounced their lack of pedagogy as well as the type of church discipline and public confession, which he could not reconcile with his idea of a Christian community. [10] Mbene also criticizes the unwillingness of individual missionaries to engage with the Duala language. He writes in his diary: "How are souls to be won for Christ when Christ is preached in words that do not even understand themselves in a purely linguistic way?" [11] On the other hand, he also criticizes the Cameroonians and speaks in his diary of the fact that the overall result of his observations "does not allow for a favorable judgment (...) about the spiritual and moral state of the majority of my compatriots". [12] He describes his own position as a "hybrid position" between criticism of the grievances of German colonial policy and proximity to the Dualas protest movement on the one hand and the conviction of the German Baptist mission on the other. [13] In 1903, Mbene returned to Berlin for almost a year due to illness, before returning to work as a missionary teacher in 1904. In 1907, he died in a boating accident in Cameroon. [14]

In fact, Eduard Scheve's house in Berlin became a place with which Cameroonian Baptists or people close to them were closely connected. [15] In 1902, and thus at the time when Eduard Scheve lived at Emdener Straße 15 in today's Moabit district,[16] he was also visited by the Bell delegation from Cameroon, which played an important role in the protest against German colonial rule. The delegation was in Berlin that year to deliver a petition to the Kaiser in which the family denounced the "arbitrary actions of civil servants, soldiers, expeditions and factories" in Cameroon. [17] August Manga Bell/Manga Ndumbe thanked Scheve after his stay with an entry in Scheve's guest book, in which he described Scheve as a man who would stand by the Africans with his heart. [18] August Manga Bell's son – Richard Din – who was still a child at the time, stayed with Scheve in Moabit after the delegation trip. After graduating from the Royal Luisengymnasium in Moabit, he trained as a timber merchant at Julius Aßmann & Co. in Groß-Lichterfelde in 1912. [19] When the German Colonial Newspaper made a racist comment that he was superior to white people in this position, he openly defended himself against the articulated racism in the Groß-Lichterfelder Lokalanzeiger. [20]

At this time, Eduard Scheve was no longer the chairman of the Missionary Society of German Baptists. Already at the beginning of 1901, the mission leadership was taken over by the previous board member Karl Mascher, under whose chairmanship the missionary society expanded and later the house in Steglitz was also purchased. [21]

Scheve's good contacts should not obscure the fact that the missionary society of the German Baptists was also intertwined with the colonial structures at an early stage. The society strives for a "good and amicable relationship with the colonial government". Both on the side of the missionary society and in government circles, there is "the insight that the colonial authority and the mission would mutually support each other in their concerns". [22] In Berlin, the society supports the colonial museum and the colonial congresses and participates in the "colonial economic committee", which has as its purpose the "utilization" of the colonies through economic enterprises. [23] The same cooperation also exists in the colony. In 1906, the society founded the "Handelshaus Duala G.m.b.H." [24], which traded in colonial products and whose address was also given in Filandastraße. The magazine spoke of a "double purpose" pursued by the "industrial enterprises" of the mission. On the one hand, the "entire net profit would benefit the Cameroon mission alone" and on the other hand, it would be a matter of "giving the natives the blessing of work" so that they could later "carry out missions independently". [25] In fact, however, everyday life in the colony was characterized by exploitation and forced labor of the colonized people. The fact that the work of the colonized people is something from which the Europeans should benefit becomes clear when it comes to the cultivation around the mission school in Soppo. It says: "European vegetables will thrive well on the garden area around the house, thus not only ensuring better nutrition for Europeans, but also offering Africans the opportunity for rewarding physical work." [26] And a missionary himself also describes "[t]he willingness to work, compared to the general work-shyness three years ago" at the Nnamtan station as a "salutary influence of the mission on the culture of the country". [27]

In an article in "Unsere Heidenmission", the journal of the missionary society, the intertwining between science, mission and the colonial state also becomes very clear. The "exploration of Africa" is described as a "prerequisite" for mission[28] and the violent colonization of the African continent among the colonial states is welcomed: "This brings a great relief for the missionary societies if they are allowed to proclaim the message of peace under the protection of orderly conditions." [29] But the government could also benefit from the work of the missionary society in the other way, as missionary Hofmeister describes it: "Where the mission can do its work undisturbed, there will certainly be no uprising, because the mission's efforts are also to make civilized people and good subjects out of the natives." [30]

The mission stations in the colonies are central to this. In addition to the work facilities, schools are also set up here in which the colonized people are taught. At the mission stations, deep interventions are made in social structures and indigenous ways of life and above all religions are condemned as paganism "with its idols, its immoral festivals and its terrible superstitions". [31]

The mission of the German Baptists is also based on the idea of European superiority and propagates colonial-racist ideas. The magazine says: "The inhabitants of the large, black area are either devoted to fetish service or are under the pernicious influence of Islam. Nowhere do we find such spiritually degraded masses as in Africa. And yet they are mostly warm-hearted, trusting tribes, capable of grasping the most sublime thoughts of Christianity and living them out in a childlike, simple way." [32]

After ten years in Steglitz, the Society bought a plot of land in Neuruppin in 1911. After the last sending out ceremony of "13 Missionary Brothers for Cameroon" in Steglitz in March 1914, the missionary society left the building in Filandastraße and moved to Neuruppin.[33]