History of the inventory creator
The North German Mission was founded in Hamburg in 1836 by six missionary associations as one of the oldest German missionary societies. It has been based in Bremen since 1851 and today is a joint work of four German and two African churches. After initial activities in New Zealand and the East Indies, the North German Mission also sent missionaries to West Africa from 1847. The missionary work in West Africa, which has been carried out continuously since then, has resulted in two independent churches: the Evangelical Churches of Togo and the Evangelical Presbyterian Church of Ghana. In these two countries, the North German Mission still focuses on its missionary and, today, development policy activities. In over 150 years of presence in Africa, the North German Mission has experienced all the ups and downs of German-African relations in its West African mission centers. This includes the pre-colonial presence, the colonial period following the founding of the colony of German Togoland in 1884 and the difficult post-colonial development from the First World War to the present day. Recruited throughout Germany and sent out from the headquarters in Bremen, generations of missionary workers were active in Africa in mission, school and development service and recorded their work in letters, reports, minutes and also photographic documentation. Conversely, African mission workers found their way to Germany early on for training. Over the course of more than 150 years, a unique archive collection has thus been created at the mission headquarters, which has hardly suffered any significant loss of material, even through the numerous political upheavals and military events. It is supplemented by a collection of pictorial documents which, like the written records, date back to the 1840s. A special library was also set up at the Bremen mission headquarters, which was primarily used for internal training purposes of the mission and contains numerous manuscripts and early prints in West African languages - in particular the Ewe language spoken in present-day Togo.
Transfer of the collection to the Bremen State Archives
On November 18, 2005, the archives, image collection and library of the North German Missionary Society were handed over to the Bremen State Archives. The documents, image collection and mission library are now available for research in one place. The archive of the North German Mission is one of the most important archive holdings in the Free Hanseatic City of Bremen. Its value and importance for research was recognized early on. Even during the Second World War, the State Archives took over numerous archival records in order to bring them to safety together with the state archives. In 1968, a contract was concluded under which the collection was transferred to the Bremen State Archives as a deposit (StAB 7,1025). Since then, it has been listed as no. 0503 in the general list of nationally valuable archives in accordance with § 13 para. 2 of the law on the protection of German cultural assets against emigration.
Inventory history
As the North German Mission was forced to part with its collection and library items in 2005 when it moved into a new but smaller mission house in Bremen and was no longer able to provide reading rooms for academic use in the mission house, it felt compelled to take the step of transferring ownership of the entire collection to the Bremen State Archives at the same time as transferring the remaining archive, collection and library items to the State Archives. This was initially done in the certainty that freer access would bring considerable advantages for academic and research use and against the background that archival indexing, especially of the collection and image material as well as the library, could no longer be adequately carried out in the Mission House itself. It was also not possible to ensure optimal long-term storage of the documents in the Mission House. It was agreed at the time of the handover that the collection should continue to receive a steady increase in written and collection material from the North German Mission, which is primarily active in West Africa.
Since 1968, Depositum 7,1025 Norddeutsche Mission has been one of the most frequently requested holdings in the Bremen State Archives for academic - and international - use. Since 2003, it has been used intensively for a research project of the University of Bremen funded by the VW Foundation, in which researchers and doctoral students from Togo and Ghana were also involved under the direction of Dr. Rainer Alsheimer, and the files had already been formed and recorded by an employee of the North German Missionary Society when they were delivered to the archive: In the 1970s and 1980s, Paul Wiegräber had compiled a file index and labeled the file folders with shelfmarks. During this time, larger and smaller amounts of written material were added to the collection several times - materials from older times, but also collection items that had accumulated in cooperation with the churches in Ghana and Togo at the time.
With the takeover of the archive material, the State Archives undertook to restore, pack and index the existing and especially the newly acquired image and library holdings. To this end, after returning from loan to the Transkulturation project in 2004, the archive holdings were systematically reviewed, the existing packaging materials were supplemented and the labeling was renewed. The documents in the collection are often loose; in particular, the sometimes extensive units in which the semi-official correspondence with the mission staff is filed are still very much at risk in terms of their preservation and internal organization.
The archive holdings had already been microfilmed in the 1970s as part of the federal government's back-up filming work; these films were returned to the State Archives after copies had been made and could be used. The subsequent deliveries to the collection will be filmed in 2007 so that user films can be made available for the entire collection. In future, copies will only be made of the films in order to avoid having to make copies of the documents themselves. To this end, the structure was greatly expanded in order to appropriately organize the previously little-noticed documents that were not directly related to the activities of the missionary staff in Africa and Australia. Where available, surviving titles were included in the index. The documents relating to missionary activities in the narrower sense, to which the older indexes were limited, had already been extensively indexed. In addition, the evaluations compiled by various members of the Transkulturation project were available, which were based on the older lists, but also contained descriptive texts, including transcriptions and translations. This information was evaluated for the file index, so that information on the scope and the languages used in the written material is available for this area of the inventory.
The image collection, its acquisition and processing
The North German Missionary Society has used the medium of photography since the 19th century to document its work internally and to present it to the public. The photographs, mostly taken by missionaries as part of their work in the African mission field, were not only kept as memorabilia, but were also used in slide shows for the public and at internal training events, and were often printed in the missionary society's publications.
An extensive stock of photo prints, systematically filed, forms the core of the archive. These photos were indexed in various lists and were often labeled and dated on the back. Another focus of the collection is on the portraits of the mission staff, which were apparently systematically collected and stored from the beginning of the mission's activities and the spread of photography, and the mission staff and various people associated with the mission also created their own collections and added them to the missionary society's photo collection. The collection contains several albums of individual missionaries and the German-Togo Society, as well as slide series from the lecture activities. Only a single album of photo negatives has been preserved. The existing slides are likely to be copies that were made from the recording media or prints. The collection comprises 5,316 individually listed photos, many of which have been handed down several times. They are all black and white photos, a few pieces are colored, two drawings are in color.
As part of the Transculturation project, which was funded by the Volkswagen Foundation and carried out under the direction of Dr. Rainer Alsheimer at the University of Bremen between 2003 and 2005, the religious studies scholar Sonja Sawitzki worked intensively with the image collection. She recorded the titles and dates of the photographs, signed and packaged the items and prepared them for reproduction. In particular, notes on duplicate image content were incorporated. The physical condition of the pieces was also described, with the size and state of preservation and any existing defects listed. With regard to the type of image, the editor distinguishes between prints, drawings, prints, postcards and the various film and glass materials, and there are also references to mounts on cardboard or in albums. Many photo prints are not in good condition, heavily faded, soiled or incomplete. The albums and portfolios often contain prints from which no high-quality originals can be obtained. As a rule, however, it was possible to find the originals for the prints elsewhere in the collection.
All existing images are now listed in the index to fonds 7,1025 Fotos. The existing prints and their signature, the repro or surviving negative or slide are listed and the identifier of the corresponding image file is given. As part of the content indexing, the image title and date are given, as well as additional information that Sonja Sawitzki noticed or found useful, that has been handed down with the items or that was filed in connection with indexing approaches by other processors in the past. Particularly important are the references to duplicates that were found in different contexts and identified together. Different titles for such duplicates have been regularly included, as some unlabeled photos could be assigned in this way. Missing titles have been added, preferably on the basis of labeled duplicates; added titles are indicated in square brackets. Images unsuitable for reproduction and items that were already recognized as duplicates during the first round of work have not been reproduced. In these cases, the image content of the duplicate is shown in the index and the image file of the reproduced duplicate is indicated. This applies above all to the photographic prints, which have already been filed systematically by the North German Missionary Society. Other classification features found were derived from the context of the photo albums and slide boxes. Only the items that had not been filed in any particular order were arranged according to a rough chronology, while the undated and unmarked items were grouped according to motifs. There are a large number of duplicates, particularly among the undocumented image originals, which could not be easily assigned to the better documented items due to the large size of the inventory. No evaluation of the file inventory was carried out in the production of the image annotations - numerous photos, especially portraits, could certainly be labeled more precisely on the basis of the file inventory.
The images can be viewed in an online presentation. The image descriptions and formal data are reproduced there, and a preview is intended to give an impression of the image content. The images will only be shown in specially justified cases. All images are available as black and white reproductions on film, unless negatives or slides have survived. Image files are also available for the images, which were created using the existing repros with a resolution of 400 ppi. Reproductions and image data are available from the Bremen State Archives.
The Bremen State Archives also took over the extensive special library of the North German Missionary Society along with the files and photographs. The books in the library are kept in a special section of the State Archives and are indexed as individual works according to standard library procedures. This index lists all titles published by the North German Missionary Society itself or by individual members of its staff. For the other works, the systematic classification is given; the titles can be searched in the library's online reference systems.
Bremen, May 2007
B. VeilContains Mission in New Zealand and the East Indies, especially letters and reports - Mission in West Africa, especially letters and reports from the main stations, service of African workers, school system and seminary, travel reports and maps, Bible translation, church ordinances, building matters and land acquisition, accounting, slavery, liquor trade, individual missionaries - institutions in Germany, in particular educational establishments and seminaries, management and administration of the missionary society, aid societies, international cooperationBlack-and-white negatives in ideal format were made from the surviving paper images, whereby the images already recognized as duplicates and most of the prints were not taken into account. During the reproduction process, signature labels were added to the photographs, which can now be seen in the image field of the online presentation. The surviving paper images were arranged in folders of approx. 50 pieces, the signature of the folder was noted, as well as the signature of the folder in which the created reproduction is stored. Some pieces or groups of objects - the existing stereo recordings, two daguerreotypes, the glass slides etc. - have been packed separately and are stored in separate folders. - have been packed separately and are stored in specially created units so that they can be better preserved. The existing repros and surviving film negatives were scanned by a service company and the data generated in this way was stored on CD in accordance with the standard used in the Bremen State Archives - 400 ppi, 256 gray scales, TIFF format. The items on glass were scanned at the Bremen State Archives. Preview images with a smaller data content were created from the image data in archive format.
