The Untold Story of Jakob Isliker

My journey into the life of Jakob Isliker began during a visit to his former house in Akropong on our first excursion. A remark from one of our Ghanaian colleagues piqued my interest: It was suggested that Isliker maintained familial ties in Switzerland while simultaneously establishing a second family with a mistress in Ghana. This fascinating, yet complex, narrative prompted me to delve deeper into his life, which led to the discovery of a multi-faceted individual whose story remains overshadowed by more prominent figures in missionary history. I used our second excursion to go through the personnel files in the archives of the Basel Mission (BM), which consist in particular of countless exchanges of letters between Isliker and the Committee.

Early Life and Missionary Work

Born in 1860 near Zurich, Jakob Isliker distinguished himself from many of his contemporaries by not relying on the typical Wurttemberg Pietist connections. Instead, he came from a village near Zurich. At the age of 23, he joined the BM, where his application was initially supported due to his practical skills and strong religious commitment. Unlike most candidates, however, he was sent to the field before completing the full three-year seminary program. Records suggest this was a pragmatic decision by the mission committee, which saw in him a suitable candidate for construction and logistical roles rather than preaching or pastoral work. In 1886, still unordained but viewed as trustworthy and useful, Isliker was dispatched to the Gold Coast. His case highlights how missionary societies sometimes made exceptions to accommodate practical needs in the field. At this point in time, “there were more European members of the BM on the Gold Coast than British colonial officers.”[2]

However, his missionary journey was fraught with challenges from the beginning. By 1887, as recorded in the committee minutes (Art. 716), Isliker faced his first dismissal from the mission. His involvement with a local woman, which was seen as highly inappropriate by the mission’s standards, led to this initial expulsion. The Committee assessed his relationship as a direct violation of the BM’s strict marriage rules and hierarchical separations between Europeans and Africans. These rules were part of the three mainstays of mission discipline: a general prohibition on intimate relations with Africans, maintaining a clear hierarchical separation, and avoiding any association with slavery. Despite these setbacks, Isliker’s dedication and skills as an engineer brought him back to the mission in 1891, though only as an employee rather than a full-fledged missionary.^[3]

Marriage, Mental Strain, and Moral Controversy

One of the most complex aspects of Isliker’s life it seems was his troubled marriage. Unlike his predecessors Zimmermann, Rottmann, and Spengler, who had married women of mixed race with some level of acceptance of the BM leadership, Isliker’s marriage to a “simple village girl” named Irene Ayesu, who bore him seven children, was seen as an uncompromising breach of the BM’s policies.[5] Isliker later faced significant challenges due to his wife’s mental illness. His personal letters reveal a man deeply troubled by his wife’s condition and struggling with the demands of his personal and professional life.

In a controversial move, Isliker sought to divorce his wife to marry another local woman, to whom he had already proposed. This decision was met with significant opposition from the BM headquarters as well as from local communities. The mission’s records indicate that Isliker’s request for divorce and remarriage was a significant factor in their decision to expel him.

In a letter from 1900, Isliker wrote to the Committee candidly about his reasoning for considering taking in another woman, ostensibly as a housekeeper. He argued:
“because a friendly relationship with a native woman here in the country without sexual intercourse is an impossibility.”^[6]

Isliker referred to this arrangement as a “Gewissensehe”—a “conscience-marriage”—suggesting that although his first marriage to Irene Ayesu legally remained, he hoped to legitimize a second relationship emotionally and spiritually. This deeply problematic framing reveals the conflict between his personal needs, the rigid moral expectations of the BM, and the local cultural complexities of the Gold Coast.

Later, in 1903, in a letter to Brother Mohr, Isliker wrote: „When I read your letter now, I don’t know how I could have become so entrenched in this idea of concubinage. I dreamed of a substitute for the unhappy marriage in a way that was so morbid that I am now dizzy myself.“[7]

In 1900, Isliker and several members of his household were formally expelled from the Akropong congregation, an incident recorded in detail by Theophilus Opoku in his annual report to the Basel Committee. Opoku described the case as one of “heinous” moral misconduct involving attempts to conceal a pregnancy and arrange a politically charged marriage.[8] However, oral accounts from Akropong offer a more complex picture: a local source familiar with the Isliker family shared that Isliker’s wife, Irene Ayesu, was herself a member of the royal family and that their lineage still holds a stool in the palace today. This suggests that what appeared to the Basel-trained Opoku as moral failure may have reflected deeper political and social entanglements within the chieftaincy system, and calls for a careful reading of missionary-era narratives that framed African agency strictly in terms of spiritual discipline or moral decline.

Isliker was initially relocated within the mission’s operations but eventually faced the harsh reality of expulsion in 1900, as noted in the committee minutes.[9] Grounded in letters and Committee records, this episode illustrates not only Isliker’s personal turmoil, but also the broader tensions between European missionary ideals and the lived complexities of cross-cultural entanglements in colonial West Africa.

Struggles and Relocation

After his dismissal from the BM, Isliker chose to remain on the Gold Coast, where he continued to leverage his engineering skills to benefit local communities. Although the BM had its own Handelsgesellschaft (trading company), there is no evidence that Isliker worked within that structure. Instead, the archival record suggests he operated as a self-employed contractor — an unusual path for a dismissed missionary and one that underscores his entrepreneurial adaptability.

It is also striking how rarely Isliker appears in the official publications of the BM. For instance, a passing mention in the Heidenbote from April 1898 merely records his arrival in Accra on February 3rd, without further detail.[10] This near-invisibility in institutional print stands in stark contrast to the richness of his personal letters and the oral histories preserved in Ghanaian communities — highlighting how easily certain lives could slip through the official record.

Despite this marginality, Isliker’s work as an independent engineer continued to leave a mark long after his expulsion from the mission. One notable example is the bridge he constructed for Larteh cocoa-farmers at Mmetiamu, entirely financed by the farmers themselves. The bridge reportedly remained standing into the late twentieth century, and scholars have since pointed to it as a symbol of local initiative and infrastructure-building beyond missionary or colonial control.[11]

This reflects the innovative spirit and determination of the Larteh cocoa-farmers, who employed Jacob Isliker, a Swiss engineer, to construct essential bridges, thereby facilitating their agricultural efforts and significantly impacting their community’s infrastructure.[12]

Health Issues and Personal Challenges

Beyond professional conflicts and familial tensions, Isliker’s letters reveal the toll that life on the Gold Coast took on his body. He battled repeated illnesses — gall fever, dysentery, and influenza — which at times incapacitated him. These physical hardships, combined with the emotional strain of caring for his mentally ill wife and navigating institutional rejection, underline the extraordinary burden he bore. Yet, his repeated appeals to the mission and continued engineering work suggest a deeply internalized sense of duty and perseverance.

Financial Instability and Employment Concerns

Financial instability was another significant aspect of Isliker’s life. After his dismissal, he experienced considerable financial strain and expressed frustration over the lack of support from the BM. In a letter to Inspector Oehler dated 4 December 1902, he described himself as having reached „a spiritual bankruptcy“ and lamented that the mission had refused to accept the metaphorical “bill” he had presented, “simply because the paper was brown and not white.” This poetic metaphor symbolized the stigma attached to his interracial marriage and social position. Earlier, in his August 1900 petition to the Committee, he requested to remain employed as a building technician with an annual salary of £250, underscoring his efforts to avoid complete financial collapse and secure a sustainable livelihood.^[13] His letters reveal a man deeply committed to his calling, despite the mission’s reluctance to re-employ him due to his past conduct and ongoing personal issues.^[14]

Contributions to Local Communities

Following his expulsion from the BM, Isliker remained professionally active on the Gold Coast, where he carved out a role as an independent builder and engineer. While his most cited project — the bridge at Mmetiamu, commissioned by Larteh cocoa-farmers — has been mentioned earlier, it gains deeper significance when contrasted with the infrastructural initiatives under the BM. Unlike mission-led projects, which were tightly governed, hierarchically organized, and often bound to broader colonial or evangelical agendas, Isliker’s post-expulsion work was locally driven, directly financed by African communities, and largely autonomous. This shift in framework — from institutional control to collaborative, need-based initiative — highlights a rarely acknowledged mode of development in which European technical knowledge was harnessed under African leadership rather than imposed through missionary structures. In this light, Isliker’s continued presence becomes more than a personal afterlife of a failed missionary career: it represents a quiet, practical entanglement of cross-cultural exchange that departed from the top-down imperatives of the mission.

Recent oral accounts from descendants and local contacts in Akropong affirm that Isliker not only built key infrastructure such as bridges but also designed and constructed churches and homes that still stand today. Members of his second family reportedly continue to preserve architectural drawings and engineering tools — tangible remnants of his independent work after leaving the BM. These details, passed down through community memory and family testimony, underscore that Isliker’s contributions were not merely transactional, but deeply embedded in the material and social fabric of the region.

The Basel Mission’s Organizational Integrity and Influence

A significant contrast existed between the BM as a European organization and the indigenous church it helped build on the Gold Coast. As Paul Jenkins observes, the BM maintained exceptionally tight control over its white employees, ensuring a high level of organizational integrity by disciplining and, where necessary, dismissing them outright—leaving virtually no European influence outside official BM channels. Isliker and Simon Süss were among the rare exceptions who remained on the Gold Coast after dismissal. However, such control was far harder to sustain in the indigenous church, where large numbers of dismissed local teachers and catechists remained embedded in the surrounding communities. Despite their expulsion, many continued to wield social influence—sometimes becoming candidates for chieftaincy or playing leadership roles in the spread of cocoa farming. This asymmetry in control reveals the BM’s struggle to extend its disciplinary reach beyond the formal boundaries of its European staff into the more fluid and resilient structures of local society.^[15]

Reflections and Conclusion

Jakob Isliker’s life is a testament to the complexities and challenges faced by missionaries in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. His story, marked by dedication, controversy, and resilience, offers a nuanced perspective on the missionary experience.

While never stating it verbatim, Isliker’s correspondence consistently reflects a sense of continuing allegiance to the BM, even after his expulsion. This demonstrates the deep emotional commitment he maintained to his calling, even after his formal dismissal.
In a later letter to Inspector Oehler in 1902, Isliker expressed his enduring desire to continue serving in any capacity, writing: “It is my sincere desire to continue serving the mission in the same manner and according to my strengths and abilities.”[16] This heartfelt statement underscores how, despite illness, stigma, and repeated rejection, Isliker sought to remain useful — even outside the official framework of the mission.

These statements bring to life the tension between individual conviction and institutional judgment, making his story not just an exception, but a mirror of the contradictions embedded in the missionary project itself. Despite being overshadowed by figures such as Johannes Zimmermann, Isliker’s contributions to both the BM and local Ghanaian communities are significant.

Isliker’s own narrative — as projected through his extensive personal letters — challenges us to look beyond the more prominent historical figures and consider the broader spectrum of experiences that shaped the missionary enterprise. At the same time, his life and work on the Gold Coast highlight the importance of understanding and appreciating the local contexts in which missionaries operated, and the lasting material and social impact they had on the communities they served.

Many unanswered questions remain, such as why his second wife, Felicia Yeboa, is never mentioned by name in scientific texts. The question of a mental disorder within the family is also repeatedly mentioned in the personal file, but it would be extremely interesting to see how this is assessed today.

The institutional structures of the BM left little room for personal deviation or cultural adaptation. While missionaries were expected to adhere strictly to prescribed rules — including those governing race, marriage, and discipline — these constraints reflected not just religious convictions, but also broader colonial and paternalistic ideologies. For individuals like Isliker, who deviated from these norms, the consequences were severe, and alternative pathways were structurally foreclosed rather than naturally absent.

In summary, Jakob Isliker’s life illustrates the complex entanglements of dedication, struggle, and contradiction that marked the missionary enterprise in the colonial era. His journey from a village near Zurich to the Gold Coast, and his transition from missionary to independent contractor, speaks to both personal resilience and the challenges of operating between two cultural worlds. While his technical contributions and persistence are notable, his story also reveals the tensions between individual conviction, institutional discipline, and the socio-political realities of colonial Ghana. For scholars of missionary history and indigenous African development, Isliker’s life offers a compelling — and at times troubling — lens through which to examine cross-cultural encounters and their enduring legacies.

Writing about Jakob Isliker requires sensitivity, particularly because aspects of his personal life remain difficult for his descendants. In a letter dated 25 September 1998 to Paul Jenkins, family members expressed support for public acknowledgement of Isliker’s Ghanaian marriage and his departure from the BM but explicitly requested that information regarding his wife’s health and a second relationship not be further publicized. In a 2024 email to me, Jenkins reflected on this tension, recalling how a family member once asked him to restrict access to such records, but emphasizing his policy that mission history must be told “warts and all,” while also acknowledging the need to handle sensitive cases with discretion until all affected parties had passed on. This text follows that principle: it refrains from detailing private matters, even where archival sources permit it, in deference to both family wishes and responsible historical practice.

In the course of this research, I shared parts of the draft with a local contact in Akropong who knows the Isliker family well. Through him, descendants of Jakob Isliker — many of whom now live in Accra or other cities — began to engage with my research. While they expressed surprise at some of the documented facts, they also confirmed key aspects of the narrative: including the family’s internal silence about the second wife, the enduring stigma surrounding mental illness, and the separation of the two family lines. These insights — emerging from oral history — not only affirm the archival record but also complicate and enrich it.

The conversation remains ongoing. Family members have expressed interest in further developing this history, and there is potential for deeper collaboration, including interviews, shared photographs, and oral testimonies. Such engagement could give voice to the generations who inherited this legacy and allow for a more inclusive and multidimensional account of Jakob Isliker’s life — one that moves beyond the lens of institutional judgment toward a fuller picture of human complexity and community memory.  Perhaps together, we can write new chapters — and even reconsider old ones. I will certainly remain engaged in this evolving and important story.

In these letters from Inspectors, doctors, family members and Isliker himself, we witness the quiet tragedy of a man who set out to serve God — and ended up pleading for grace from the very institution that once sent him. His life calls us to re-read the missionary archive not just as a record of religious endeavor, but as a field of human contradiction, where silence, stigma, and resistance speak as loudly as doctrine.