The Berlin Missionary Society was one of four German Protestant mission societies active in South Africa before 1914. It emerged from the German tradition of Pietism after 1815 and sent its first missionaries to South Africa in 1834.
Free State and Northern Cape The BMS began the training of its first missionaries in 1829, with assistance from missionary societies in
Pomerania and
East Prussia. The first five, August Gebel, Johann Schmidt, Reinhold Gregorowski, Gustav Kraut and August F. Lange, were sent to South Africa in 1883 to establish the first BMS mission station,
Bethanien (
Bethany), in the
Orange Free State. Missionaries with ties to Berlin had been working there with the
London Missionary Society and
Rhenish Missionary Society, making South Africa an obvious choice, with the initial objective being to set up a mission to the
Tswana. Upon arriving in the southern
Free State, and on advice from the London Mission Society's
G.A. Kolbe at
Philippolis, it was decided instead to establish a mission amongst the
Korana at a spot on the
Riet River, which they named
Bethanien, in September 1834. From Bethanien missionaries founded a station at
Pniel on the
Vaal River in 1845, which would be at the centre of South Africa's diamond discoveries in 1869–70.
Eastern Cape and Natal Further missionaries arrived in 1836–7, with
Jacob Ludwig Döhne setting up BMS stations Bethel and Itemba amongst the
Xhosa in a part of the
Eastern Cape then known as
Kaffraria. Other stations followed but on-going frontier conflict was a constraint. During the Frontier War of 1846 to 1847, these stations were abandoned and the missionaries sought safety in the neighbouring British colony of
Natal. Missionaries
Karl Wilhelm Posselt and
Wilhelm Güldenpfennig founded the first BMS station in Natal which they named
Emmaus, with further stations being established in the years that followed, including the Christianenberg and
Hermannsburg Missions.
South African Republic/Transvaal Missionaries
Alexander Merensky and
Heinrich Grützner started work in the northeastern part of the
South African Republic in 1860, their first station being at
Gerlachshoop on the farm Rietkloof – named after Prussian army general
Leopold von Gerlach, one of the founders of the BMS. There were unsuccessful early attempts to evangelise the
Swazi and in
Sekhukhuneland. Merensky sought refuge amongst his Christian converts in the
Middelburg district and founded the station at
Botshabelo (“city of refuge”) in 1865 – which soon became the most important station of the Berlin Society in South Africa. Here were established a school, seminary, workshops, mill and printing press; and from here BMS influence spread throughout the
Transvaal. In 1880 BMS missionary
Johannes Winter established a mission station at Thaba Mosego, the vanquished capital of the
Pedi king,
Sekhukhune, who had been defeated the year before by an army of British,
Boer and
Swazi soldiers. In 1889 a prominent native evangelist, Martinus Sewushane, and around 500 of his followers decided to secede from the Berlin Missionary Society and form the Lutheran Bapedi Church (LBC), asking Winter to join them. By 1900 there were more than thirty-six stations and nearly 30,000 converts in the region. The Berlin missionaries in South Africa, particularly
Alexander Merensky,
Carl Knothe,
Gustav Trümpelmann,
Paul Schwellnus and
Gustav Eiselen, contributed to the study of
African languages, producing Bible translations and hymnals. It was at
Botshabelo that
Trümpelmann, with the invaluable assistance of his erstwhile student,
Abraham Serote, translated the Bible into
Sepedi (Northern Sotho). The publication in 1904 by the British and Foreign Bible Society of this combined effort was the first complete Bible in an indigenous language. Their work was interrupted by the
Anglo Boer War, during which BMS missionary
Daniel Heese was murdered by members of the
Bushveldt Carbineers, an irregular regiment of the
British Army. Both World Wars, when access to funding became severely limited, caused even greater disruption. Moreover, after
World War II the Society's Berlin headquarters fell within the
Soviet Zone of
Occupied Germany. In 1961 the BMS established a branch in
West Berlin, which remained in contact with its only remaining missionary field, namely in South Africa, for the next 28 years. However, from 1962 it began granting independence to its mission churches which, in time, became amalgamated with other Lutheran mission churches in the region and formed the
Evangelical Lutheran Church in Southern Africa.
Nationalhelferen The BMS focused on providing schooling and bringing the gospel to people in their own language. Hence the Society's missionaries were often at the forefront of publishing Bible translations, dictionaries and grammars in indigenous languages. It was as part of this process that Africans, duly trained and sometimes salaried, were accepted into the Society as teachers, catechists and lay-preachers, the so-called
Nationalhelferen or national helpers. The
Tswana Catechist
Richard Miles was an early example of an indigenous person fulfilling this role at the Mission Station at
Bethanie in the Southern Free State. Miles traveled to the interior with the missionary party in 1835. Niklaas Koen, a “
Khoikhoi”, was sent by the BMS to Germany in 1875 to further his education at a high school at
Ducherow in
Pomerania and afterwards to study for the ministry at the Berlin
Missionshaus, where he adopted a German version of his name,
Klaus Kuhn. Kuhn qualified as a missionary (he also took lessons as a violinist) and, after becoming engaged to a German woman, Maria Brose, returned to Africa to the mission station Königsberg in Natal – where he married his bride in 1878. Another gifted African student who had started out with violin lessons and was to follow in Kuhn's footsteps to Ducherow and then the theological seminary in Berlin was one Jan Sekoto. Apparently not adapting well to the Pomeranian climate, however, he returned early to the BMS station at
Botshabelo as a teacher. Sekoto's son
Gerard Sekoto, born at
Botshabelo in 1913, would later emigrate to Europe, obtaining French citizenship and achieving considerable renown as an artist. ==China==