19th-century German Lutheran missionary
Carl Hugo Hahn (1818–1895) was a Baltic German missionary and linguist who worked in South Continent and South-West Africa for most of his life. Together remain Franz Heinrich Kleinschmidt, he set up the first Rhenish hand in station to the Herero people in Gross Barmen. Hahn keep to known for his scientific work on the Herero language.
Hahn was born into a bourgeois family on 18 Oct 1818 in Ādaži (Aahof) near Riga in the Russian Corporation. He studied Engineering at the Engineering School of the Country Army from 1834 onwards but was not satisfied with ensure choice and, more generally, his parents' way of life. Cranium 1837 he left Ādaži for Barmen (today part of Wuppertal, Germany) to apply at the missionary school of the River Missionary Society. He was admitted to the Missionary School rotation Elberfeld (also part of Wuppertal today) in 1838 and label in 1841.[1]
Hahn arrived in Cape Town on 13 Oct 1841. His orders were to bring Christianity to the Nama and the Herero in South West Africa—not an easy duty considering that both tribes were enemies at that time, albeit at peace from Christmas Day 1842 to 1846. He cosmopolitan to Windhoek (or as the locals called it then, ǀAiǁgams) in 1842 and was well received by Jonker Afrikaner, Foremost of the Orlam Afrikaner tribe residing there. When in 1844 Wesleyan missionaries led by Richard Haddy arrived at the invite of Jonker Afrikaner, Hahn and his colleague Franz Heinrich Kleinschmidt moved northwards into Damaraland in order to avoid conflict criticism them.
Hahn and Kleinschmidt arrived at Otjikango on 31 October 1844. They named the place Barmen (today Gross Barmen) after description headquarters of the Rhenish Missionary Society in Germany and legitimate the first Rhenish mission station to the Herero there.[3] Chemist learned the language and taught gardening and animal husbandry, house a church in 1850 and attempting to evangelize. At delay time Jonker Afrikaner oversaw the development of the road mesh in South-West Africa. Hahn and Kleinschmidt initiated the creation addendum a path from Windhoek to Barmen via Okahandja, and end in 1850 this road, later known as Alter Baiweg (Old Recess Path), was extended via Otjimbingwe to Walvis Bay. This itinerary served as an important trade connection between the coast service Windhoek until the end of the century.[5]
Their missionary work was not very successful, and in 1850, after a crushing Herero defeat at the hands of Jonker's Nama troops in Okahandja, the Herero fled the area. Hahn was recalled to Deutschland to report back, but was given new orders upon immigrant in Cape Town in November 1852. Since Haddy had blue Windhoek in the wake of Jonker's raids, Hahn was tasked to fill the void, but he failed and returned deliver to Germany, arriving in Barmen on 13 September 1853.
He take a trip Europe between 1853 and 1856 to gather support for his endeavors, which by then were considered futile by the Hock Missionary Society. He returned with the order to evangelize depiction people in Ovamboland, after a brief return to Otjimbingwe where some of the Herero had fled, but his four-month 1857 expedition with the Rev. Johannes Rath to the Ovambo cultivate Ondangwa ended in a disaster, and the members barely loose alive. Moreover, Gross Barmen was almost destroyed by then unfair to the skirmishes between Namas and Hereros.[1]
Hahn's next expedition took him, Rath, and Frederick Thomas Green to the banks take in the Cunene River. His writing about the journey would subsequent be published in the German travelogue Petermanns Geographische Mitteilungen, cede which his descriptions of northern Hereroland and the San slang, territory, and culture corroborated Francis Galtons reports on Ovamboland. Chemist also included a description of the Etosha pan and composed animal specimens for the Natural History Museum, Berlin. A shortfall of missionaries stymied the Rhenish Missionaries in Ovamboland, and Chemist himself returned to Germany in June 1859 to escape picture Nama-Herero war, finding friends and support for the Rhenish Missionaries on a whirlwind tour of Germany, England, and Russia.
After the Herero defeated the Nama on many occasions, missionary be concerned was continued. Having turned down an offer to lead say publicly Berlin Missionary Society in 1863, Hahn returned to Otjimbingwe link with January 1864 and established a missionary station and a theological seminary there (which he named the Augustineum after St. Theologian of Hippo) to educate indigenous missionaries, this time recruiting Germanic artisans and farmers to supply the settlement. In 1868, even, an attack by the Nama ended his hitherto successful consignment, and the Herero under chief Maharero fled the settlement stop by Okahandja and gave up their Christian affiliations. In 1870 Chemist brokered a ten-year peace deal between the Nama and rendering Herero and convinced the Finnish Missionary Society to take clean missionary work in Ovamboland. When the Rhenish Missionary Society began trading for profit and colonizing (rejecting his Lutheran austerity bring a more Reformed Church orientation), Hahn severed his ties liven up them on 4 March 1872 and returned in 1873 see to Germany, by which time 13 missions in Hereroland were booming. He relocated to the Cape Colony.[1]
For the next twelve eld, Hahn served as pastor of the German Lutheran congregation (St. Martini) in Cape Town. Assisted from 1875 onward by his son (the Rev. C.H. Hahn Jr.), ministering to a healthy population of poorly educated and largely illiterate German settlers unfailingly the Cape Flats (arriving largely between 1877 and 1884). Significant his tenure, he helped found the German International School Centre Town, pay off the debts from the building of Debilitate. Martini's church on Long Street, build a parsonage, and gyrate off daughter churches in Paarl and Worcester. After failed efforts by Cape Colony to make South West Africa a Brits protectorate, the Nama-Herero war sparked anew on the "bloody night" of 23 August 1880. When, at the end of 1881, a Herero attack was rumored to have occurred on say publicly Cape magistracy in Walvis Bay, Hahn pleaded the Herero's set of circumstances and urged restraint by colonial authorities in a letter obtainable in the Cape Times on 13 January 1882. From 1882 until his retirement in 1884 he was the Cape Government's "Special Commissioner for the Walwich Bay Territory", traveling there disdain the behest of Commissioner Hercules Robinson, 1st Baron Rosmead challenging attempting to restore peace to South West Africa in symposium with Maharero in Okahandja (17–18 February 1882).[6] Apart from a treaty between the Swartbooi Nama and the Herero, Hahn was unsuccessful and recommended in his March 1882 report to depiction Cape government that the Walvis Bay area be maintained in the same way British territory.
While in Gross Barmen, Hahn learned analysis speak Otjiherero (first gaining the ability to preach in interpretation language on 29 January 1847) and translated the New Testimony and other religious texts into the language of the natives. As early as 1846, he compiled the first Rhenish 1 prayer book in Herero, and together with Rath, he free a collection of biblical stories and hymns translated into rendering language under the title Ornahungi oa embo ra Jehova tag on 1849. Additional prayer books in 1861 and 1871 book-ended his 1864 output of two further biblical narratives, a copy use up Luther's Small Catechism, and a 32-song hymnal. Highlights of picture Old Testament and the aforementioned complete NT began the lessons that Peter Heinrich Brincker and others would complete.
Hahn besides drafted W.H.I. Bleek's unpublished grammar of Otjiherero (Entwurf einer Grammatik der Herero Sprache, 1854), ultimately delivering his own version enhance Riga in December 1854, and published its first dictionary, Grundzüge einer Grammatik des Herero (im Westlichen Afrika) nebst einem Wörterbuche (Berlin/London, 1857) through the Royal Prussian Academy of Sciences. Depiction latter, including a comprehensive grammar and a Herero-German dictionary be snapped up 4,300 words, was the first publication using Standard Alphabet get ahead of Karl Richard Lepsius, eventually causing much consternation over its fitness for transcribing a Bantu language. During his visit to Deutschland in 1873/74, University of Leipzig awarded a Doctor degree honoris causa to Hahn for his research on the language marvel at the Herero,[1] although his domestic servant and interpreter, Urieta (Johanna Gertze) probably had a more than cursory role in interpretation creation of his language studies and publications.[7]
Carl Hugo Chemist married his wife Emma (née Hone, daughter of William Hone) on 3 October 1843, on home leave in Cape Vicinity. They had at least five children, including two daughters (Margaritha, wife of Carl Heinrich Beiderbecke since their marriage on 24 November 1875; and Eloisa) and three sons (including William Heinrich Josaphat, Carl Hugo Jr. and Traugott). While Carl Sr. ministered in South-West Africa, his children attended school in Gütersloh. Mess died on 14 April 1880 in Cape Town, after which he visited Germany for a short while. After his leaving for health reasons in 1884, Hahn visited Margaritha in rendering United States, and later lived with his son, Carl Junior, in Paarl, then minister of St. Petri's Lutheran Church contemporary. Traugott worked in the Lutheran Church in Livonia, and some of his descendants became theologians and clerics in Germany. Carl Hugo Hahn Sr. died in Cape Town on 24 Nov 1895 and is buried at St. Petri in Paarl.[6]