"To you, Basel is a city. To us, Basel is a church"

(Rev. Nana Opare Kwakye)

Exploring the Heritage of the Basel Mission Together

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In Twi, the most widely-spoken language in Ghana, “Baselfo” (plural) or “Baselnii” (singular) is the term for persons associated with the Basel Mission (BM) tradition. This website is the result of a collaborative teaching project that brought students and faculty from Basel, Switzerland, Accra and Akropong, Ghana, together in their joint endeavor to research the heritage of the Basel Mission. Students from the University of Ghana, the Akrofi-Christaller Institute of Theology, Mission and Culture, and the University of Basel discussed the history of the BM in two preparatory seminars, both online and on-site. At the heart of our collaboration were two excursions, one in southern Ghana in January 2024, and one in Basel and southern Germany in July 2024, where we jointly visited historic monuments, archives, and museums, while also talking to missionary descendants.

Excursion 1Exploring the Heritage of the Basel Mission in Ghana Read more
Excursion 2The Mission at Home: Pietism and Imperialism in Basel and Southwest Germany Read more

Read our Stories

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Students and faculty involved in the Baselfo project have undertaken individual research projects to document the entangled histories and stories around the Basel Mission. The texts below are the results of oral history interviews, archival research, and observations during our excursions as well as independent research. Some are also reflections on the research and collaboration experience itself. Our contributions seek to be accessible and are academic in a broad sense. We reference the sources of any information used and clearly mark what is based on personal opinion or observation. Each contribution reflects the insights and evaluations of the respective author, which might not be shared by the group as a whole. We are a diverse group of scholars and students of different world regions, generations, beliefs, and scholarly disciplines. All of this is reflected in our texts.

Screenshot of the website of Mission 21 and its project “Colonialism Revisited”. (https://www.mission-21.org/was-wir-tun/veranstaltungen/mission-colonialism-revisited/ accessed on: 3rd of November 2024)

Mission 21. An Organisation Dealing with Its Colonial Past

Visitors to the Basel Mission (BM) website today can see photos of the mission house, read about what the foundation still does today and, especially, learn about the history of the BM…

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Letter to the BM by the Chief Commissioner informing it about the order, that all of the “European Members” have to leave the Gold Coast (BMA, D-03.03, Letter from the Chief Commissioner to the BM station in Kumasi, February 3, 1918).

A Gold Coast Nationalist’s Agitation for Basel Mission Autonomy during the First World War

On Saturday morning, the 12th of May 1917, at the height of the First World War, the newsboys went around town in Accra (Christiansborg) distributing the newest edition of the Gold Coast…

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The Introduction of Cocoa in the Gold Coast: The Roles of the Basel Mission and Tetteh Quarshie

Introduction This entry was inspired in part by an excursion I embarked on with a team of scholars and research students from the Akrofi-Christaller Institute of Theology, Mission and Culture and universities…

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n.a.: Baselland. Mission (correspondence), in: Basellandschaftliche Zeitung, 20.08.1890, p. 3.

Positionality and Knowledge Production about West Africa in the Basel Mission

Positionality as a Key Topic During our excursion, we were often confronted with differing viewpoints on the history of the Basel Mission (BM) and its work. From the outset of our excursion…

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Mission at Home

“How did I end up here?” was a question I often asked myself during the seven days of our excursion to Basel and southern Germany. What I imagined to be a “why…

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BMA QD-30.112.00108, “Pfarrer Opoku,” BMArchives, https://www.bmarchives.org/items/show/71941

Reflections on Nineteenth-Century Palace Court Language in Theophilus Opoku’s Annual Report for 1900

Introduction On 2nd July 2024, I visited Gerlingen in southern Germany alongside colleagues from the Akrofi-Christaller Institute of Theology, Mission and Culture, the University of Ghana, and the University of Basel. Our…

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Different People, Different Stories

Meet the participants and authors of the Baselfo project.

This is us
  • Portrait Yannick
  • Portrait Tabea Steinmann
  • Portrait Sophie Pfander
  • Portrait Sina Ritter
  • Portrait Samuel Hall
  • Portrait Saleh Mohammed Saleh
  • Portrait Rose Buerkie Puplampu
  • Portrait Rafael Feind
  • Portrait Micha Steiner
  • Portrait Leonard Opoku Agyemang
  • Poirtrait Juliet Oppong-Boateng
  • Portrait Julia Tischler
  • Portrait Francis Addo Sakylama
  • Portrait Fabian Herzog
  • Portrait Ernest Afrifa-Anane
  • Portrait Ernest K. Afrifa-Anane
  • Portrait Elena Müller
  • Portrait Edwina Conna
  • Portrait Edwin Tetteh Buertey
  • Portrait Dorothea Schiewer
  • Portrait Damaris Zaugg
  • Portrait Cerdick Ofori Antoh
  • Portrait Catharina Deeg
  • Portrait Carla Samira Biesenbender
  • Portrait Bernard Obese Ntow
  • Portrait Benedikta Spannring Salzgeber
  • Portrait Alyna Reading
  • Portrait Alfred Kwarteng