Dying German in Ghana: The Basel Mission Wrestles with Grief, 1830–1918

Abstract

Throughout the eighty years preceding the First World War, the Basel Mission's activities in the Gold Coast were overshadowed by endless reports of missionary death and disease. Lengthy bouts of sickness and grief described the very context of mission work. With each turn in the road, the missionaries and the home office alike turned to writing and rewriting their history, and in the process incorporated death into the message of the mission: sacrifice with an assurance of ultimate accomplishment gave way to notions of sacrifice as service in itself. This conversation was profoundly emotional and frequently expressed itself in song and poetry – the field hymnal, for example, included several songs for death and sickness. At the centre of Basel Mission grief lay a particularly German notion of home and spatial belonging called Heimat. To these German missionaries, including their supporters in Europe, the tragedy of dying in the mission field was above all dying far away from home.