Črno sonce v beli glavi

Abstract

Ignacij Knoblehar (1819–1858) worked as a Catholic missionary in southern Sudan, in particular among the Bari people. He sent regular reports home about his work and many newspapers also published his letters. Above all, he became known when he sailed beyond 4° north latitude. He was the first European to carry out systematic measurements of the White Nile and his discoveries were reported in both Europe and America. While he lived there, Slovenians became acquainted for the first time in their history with a part of Africa. In 1850 he brought a large collection of diverse artifacts from the Nilotic peoples back to Ljubljana. These artifacts are preserved in the Slovene Ethnographic Museum today, and part of the collection was put on display in a temporary exhibition entitled “Sudan Mission 1848–1858” at the museum in May 2009. The arrival of a number of African children in Ljubljana arguably constituted the highpoint of this early Slovenian contact with Africa. Missionaries bought the children at a slave market and brought them back to Europe with the intention of training the boys to be priests and the girls to be nuns. However, the plan fell through because the children all died of pneumonia and tuberculosis. The public baptism of the African children and the relationship of the general public to them in the mid-nineteenth century helped shape stereotypical representations of Africans as well as certain forms of racial discrimination that are still present today.