Excursion 2: The Mission at Home: Pietism and Imperialism in Basel and Southwest Germany

One of our preparatory seminars was entitled with the question: “What’s God got to do with it?” At the end of our second excursion in the footsteps of the Basel Mission, the answer to this question was clear: Quite a lot, whatever you may or may not think of Him. In the first week of July 2024, 32 students and instructors from the University of Basel, the Akrofi-Christaller Institute (ACI), and the University of Ghana (UG) participated in an excursion in Basel and southern Germany. This journey, following our Ghana journey in January 2024, allowed participants to experience and assess how the historical legacies of the BM are presently perceived, preserved, and presented in Europe.

Our group experience was enriched by sharing across diverse cultural and generational backgrounds. These exchanges taught us many lessons: for one, positionalities tied to one’s geographical/cultural origin do not necessarily restrict shared opinions with people from a different place. What one believes in, or whether one holds any religious belief at all, definitely matters in how we assess mission history. Another prominent lesson, particularly for the Basel-based participants was this: A cultural shock at home can hit you just as hard as a cultural shock abroad.

Gathering at the Mission 21 building in Basel
Gathering at the Mission 21 building in Basel

We started our programme on the premises of the Basel Mission house with a tour guided by Claudia Buess and Alexandra Flury-Schölch. From Missionsstrasse, we walked through Basel city along the route of Mission 21’s curated tour called “Mission and Colonialism” which illuminated the entanglements between the mission’s (and Basel’s) history and imperialism. Such entanglements included, among many other things, aspects of trade and slavery, the exhibition of different “peoples” in the Basel zoo (Völkerschauen) as well as the history of Anjama, a woman of noble birth who left her hometown in southern Ghana to join a missionary family on their way back to Basel.

Learning about Basel's historical ties with colonialism
Learning about Basel’s historical ties with colonialism

Our excursion programme then took us to the Stuttgart region, where we visited towns known for their strong historical roots in the pietism movement. In Gerlingen, the place of birth of prominent Basel missionary Johannes Zimmermann, archivist Klaus Herrmann had prepared a packed programme for us, which included a visit to Zimmermann’s former home and the local museum, where Mr. Sellner guided us through a small but exciting collection of artefacts that show the tangible relationship between Gerlingen and places where the town’s kinsmen went to spread Christianity. Johannes Zimmermann’s life in Ghana was prominently staged in a thatch-roofed shed with personal objects including a traditional stool he used when he sat in the council of advisors in the king’s court in Kroboland. As we learned in detail from former mayor Alfred Sellner, in the past few decades, there have been several exchanges between Gerlingen and Kroboland, celebrating the historical bonds between these places initiated by the Basel Mission.

Visiting the town museum of Gerlingen
Visiting the town museum of Gerlingen

In neighboring Korntal, Klaus Andersen, the former head of the Korntal congregation (Brüdergemeinde), introduced the town as an exemplar of a self-sufficient 19th-century pietist settlement, sustained by farming, a wine press, and a food bank. Mr. Anderson also highlighted how Gottlieb Wilhelm Hoffmann, the founder of Korntal, envisioned a settlement guided by the reformist teaching of Martin Luther, which translated into devout Christian everyday living and symbolism. Many participants were reminded of towns like Abokobi and Akropong in Ghana, where missionary founding figures like Hoffmann or Zimmermann also loomed large in local memory culture.  

Learning about pietism in Korntal
Learning about pietism in Korntal

On the fourth day, one part of our group hiked to Mount Chrischona in Riehen, another prominent site of pietistic missionary training in the 19th century. We briefly looked into the history of Cornelius Badu, born in 1847 in Elmina (Ghana), who spent some time in missionary training at Mount Chrischona, but throughout his life according to historian Paul Grant struggled to play the role of the “grateful African convert”.

Mount Chrischona
Mount Chrischona
Crossing borders
Crossing borders
Basel from above
Basel from above

Our programme also included two half-days in the Basel Mission archive, with our Ghanaian guests working on their own research themes while Basel-based students assisted them with their German language skills. The small archival staff, Andrea Rhyn and Patrick Moser, did their utmost to cater to the needs of our guests, realizing that for many, this visit to the “mother archive” was long-anticipated and of great importance.

At the Basel Mission archive
At the Basel Mission archive
Studying at the BM archive
Studying at the BM archive

Echoing similar activities during the Ghana excursion in January, we also had the chance to speak to descendants of Basel missionaries. In an eye-opening conversation, three members from the children’s/grandchildren’s generation shared their very personal encounters with the heritage of the Basel Mission, having been raised in the tradition of pietist discipline, experienced separation from their parents and/or suffered under their isolation from local children in both Basel and Ghana. 

Learning from descendants of the Kölle missionary family
Learning from descendants of the Kölle missionary family

Thanks to the efforts of the Museum der Kulturen staff and curators, participants were offered unique insights into the museum’s depot to look at items collected by former Basel missionaries in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Our Basel-based participants could not do anything with these foreign objects, which Basel missionaries had classified under the nebulous and condescending term of “fetish”. However, many of our Ghanaian guests had rather clear ideas of what these objects had been used for and what they meant to their previous owners.

At the depot of the Museum der Kulturen
At the depot of the Museum der Kulturen

The excursion ended with an in-depth evaluation by groups of our students of the freshly published source collection, The Reports of Theophilus Opoku: A 19th Century-Gold Coast Pastor (2024) edited by anthropologist Michelle Gilbert and historian Paul Jenkins. During the discussions, many crucial topics were raised, spanning Opoku’s hotly debated “derivative” language and tone as a Ghanaian collogue. The discussions were followed by the eventful launch of the volume punctuated by a memorable cocoa pod-breaking ceremony by Leonard O. Agyemang and Adelle A’asante. Good-byes were stretched out over a concluding reception dinner, a church service, and a farewell lunch in subsequent days.

Closing workshop
Closing workshop
Pod-breaking ceremony
Pod-breaking ceremony

Our excursions have been timely in many ways. First, they reinvigorated interest—critical and clerical—in the Basel Mission’s history ahead of the 2028 bicentenary anniversary of the mission’s first arrival in Ghana. Secondly, we have built new networks amongst individuals and institutions in Ghana, Switzerland, and Germany from which fruitful collaborations are underway (e.g., exchanges of archival materials between the mission archives in Basel and their counterparts at ACI). Thirdly, the forthcoming website will not only deepen the scholarship on the Basel Mission but also provide a medium for continued engagement among the partner institutions.

The Basel way
The Basel way

Finally, this exchange has shown how rewarding it can be to draw practical lessons from postcolonial criticism – especially at a time when “postcolonial” has become a discursive trigger in some circles. However, we also came to understand that an unquestioned right to question and critique whatever one pleases, including an individual’s religious beliefs and heritage (even if by implication), can be just as narrow-minded as the religious zeal of the first Basel missionaries.  

Good-bye dinner
Good-bye dinner

Ernest Sewordor, Julia Tischler

Timeline

Stories

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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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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The excursion group in the Betsaal of the Brüdergemeinde Korntal. Photo taken by Fabian Herzog.

Lived Religiosity in Ghana and Switzerland

As one of the students to experience both excursions, firstly the trip to Ghana in February and secondly the tour of Basel and southern Germany, I was able to get a unique…

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Abetifi “Mission-House” (Photo Bruno Bassi)

Cultures at Crossroads: A Conversation with Carla Bassi about Her Time in Ghana

In early July 2024, I was fortunate to have a fascinating conversation with Carla Bassi at a senior’s residence in Meggen, where she lives together with her husband Bruno. I gained valuable…

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: The so-called “hut of a fetish priest” with a figure of the “fetish priest” (BMA, QS-30.100.0071)

Imagining the Gold Coast: The 1908 Ethnographic Exhibition of the Basel Mission

On the outskirts of Basel, in an inconspicuous building, countless artifacts from around the world are stored: The depot of the Museum der Kulturen Basel houses, among other things, the ethnographic collection…

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„Der breite und der schmale Weg“, Stadtmuseum Gerlingen (photograph: Bernard Ntow).

Tenacious skepticism?  

I am the child who always returns… A shadow on the edge of faithIn the face of knowing and unknowingYet I am here, an enigma of beliefChallenging what is known,With each breath…

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At a Loss for Words: A Reflection on Colonial “Aphasia” and the Basel Mission Archive

At a Loss for Words: A Reflection on Colonial “Aphasia” and the Basel Mission Archive

I have made several attempts to write this reflective piece on our joint excursion between students and researchers from the University of Basel and several institutes in Ghana in July 2024. While…

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