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Peni Lelei and Bible Translations at the German colonial exhibition of 1896

Felicity Jensz all December 13, 2024December 16, 2024 0 Comment

In 1896 the first Deutsche Kolonialausstellung, German colonial exhibition, was held in Berlin. In line with the large international exhibitions of the nineteen century, the aim of this exhibition was to showcase the economic and political power of the German empire through the products and potential of the colonies. After political unification in 1871, it had become a formal colonial power from 1884. This exhibition was to showcase the advancements made in the first decade of German colonial rule.

Missions at the Berlin Colonial exhibition (Catalogue, page 124)

Among the objects exhibited were works from the Protestant missionary groups operating in the German colonies. These included the large German missionary groups such as the Berlin Mission, the Bethel Mission, the Leipzig Mission and the mission of the Moravian Church. The exhibit also showcased the work of non-German missionary societies that worked within the German colonies, such as the Australian Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Society. The British Wesleyans had worked in New Guinea since 1857, long before the colonisation of the area by European states. From 1869 the Australian Wesleyans had taken over the mission work from the British sending out three European missionaries to work amongst peoples in Neu-Pommern, Neu-Lauenburg und Neu-Mecklenburg. Or, known by their English names, New Britain, Duke of York Island and New Ireland—part of the Bismarck Archipelago that would be placed under German colonial administration from 1884, first under the auspices of the New Guinea Company and from 1891 under formal German colonial control. By 1896 there were three local pastors and 117 local helpers working in the Wesleyan circuit on the Bismarck Archipelago. (Exhibition catalogue, p. 127).[1]

The objects on display in the Protestant mission section of the Berlin colonial exhibition in 1896 were texts or images, but explicitly no ethnographical objects, as it was assumed that other groups would display such items. In the catalogue, the Berlin-based missionary enthusiast and colonial propagandist Alexander Merensky, who had worked for the Berlin Mission in Southern Africa, wrote of the contributions of the Wesleyan mission in the Bismark Archipelago:

“Two extensive lexicons and grammars in the dialects of New Pomerania and New Lauenburg, written by Mr. Rickard and Mr. Brown, testify to the diligence that the missionaries had devoted to linguistic work. In both dialects there were reading books, hymn books, catechisms, translations of the Gospels and, in the Lauenburg dialect, the first two books of Moses.”[2]

The Brown referred to was the Englishman George Brown, who had lived a rather itinerate life before becoming a missionary for the Wesleyans, first in Samoa (1860-1874), where tensions between the Wesleyans and the London Missionary Society were high, and then in the Bismarck Archipelago from June 1875. He was accompanied by his wife, children and Fijian and Samoan teachers. Amongst the LMS and the Wesleyans it was a common strategy to take converted peoples from one island group to another in order to convert the populations of further islands to Christianity. This policy was in order to save money and European lives, and it also contributed to indigenous mobilities throughout the region.[3]

According to The book of a Thousand Tongues (1938/1972), which contains a list of all known bible translations, in part or in full, we read for the Duke of York Island that the language was spoken in Duke of York Island, in the New Britain group. That the first publication was St Mark’s Gospel in 1882 at Sydney by the BFBS and was translated by George Brown, of the Australian Wesleyan Missionary Society. In 1886, St. Matthew’s Gospel with portions of the Gospel of St. Luke and St. John and the Psalms were translated by Benjamin Danks and Isaac Rooney. In the same year, 1886, the Acts was printed in Brisbane from a translation by R.H. Richard.

Duke of York Island translations, from The Book of a Thousand Tongues (1972), 109

The translation of St. Mark occurred before the German colonial incursion into the Bismarck Archipelago, but this was not a matter that was explicitly noted in the catalogue, nor were the names of the local contributors to the bible translation.[4] As our project has demonstrated, the translation of the bible was only possible with the help of local people, however they are often not explicitly stated in official documentation, such as the Book of a Thousand Tongues.

Yet we know that local people were involved. In the minutes of the New South Wales Auxiliary of the British and Foreign Missionary Society in Sydney from 1882, a request is noted from the Wesleyan missionary society in which they ask if the “native Pandit [Pundit] from New Britain” could be paid for his work on the translation of the Bible into the language of the Duke of York island.[5] The request was not approved by the NSW BFBS, rather was deferred to the London BFBS.

Both the historians Helen Gardner and Margaret Reeson have independently named Peni Lelei as the man who was involved with Brown in the translation of the Gospel of Mark.[6] Brown himself notes that Peni Lelei was “my best pundit, and gave me great help in the work of translation.”[7] Yet his name is not mentioned in either the 1938 or 1972 version of the Book of a Thousand Tongues. During the 1880s, the third white missionary in what would become German New Guinea was Benjamin Danks, who worked there from 1878 until 1887. In his diary entry from 27 June 1879, he lists 20 male and 6 female students that he was teaching: the first name on the list is Peni Lelei.

Peni Lelei was from the village of Molot on the Duke of York Island; he was baptized on 8 December 1878 and was raised to the position of lay preacher in April 1880.[8] Together with Timot and George Brown, he worked on the Bible translation of the Duke of York language.[9] He died in February 1895.[10]

Tracey Banivanua Mar has noted that indigenous mobility between Pacific Islander and Australia was more frequent than commonly expressed, partly because there are only snippets of information available in the archives that point to the mobility of Indigenous peoples.[11] The same may be said for Melanesian language workers for the mission. Through his association with the mission, Peni Lelei with his wife and child departed for Sydney in January 1881 with Brown and his wife and child.[12]

The reason why Brown was recalled to Sydney was to explain his actions to the mission board, as he had led a punitive expedition in 1878 to revenge the murders of four Fijian mission teachers and pastors, including his travel companion Peni Luvu.[13] As Heinz Schütte has noted, these men were murdered and eaten by a Tolai alliance under the Big-Man Talali. The event subsequently changed the power balance in the area, alerted potential colonial administrations to the difficulties of the area and placed the assertive missionary endeavour in question.[14] The estimate of the number of people killed in the raids varies greatly, with Schütte suggesting between 90 to 100 people were killed in retribution, and Brown himself stating that not more than 10 people died.[15] Brown was eventually exonerated for his part in the punitive expedition and despite the disciplinary actions that could have come out of the meeting for Brown, he focused on mission work using the opportunity to work on the Duke of York translation.[16] Timot, another New Britain man, had also accompanied his, as too did Itione and wife, a Samoan couple, all arriving in Sydney in February 1881.[17] Brown wrote of the events:

“As soon as we were settled I began the work of translating one of the Gospels into the Duke of York language, I was very anxious indeed that this should be done, not only for the spiritual benefit of the people to whom it would be sent, but also as recording the results of our first studies of the language. I found Peni very useful in this work. He had, fortunately, some knowledge of English, and was also remarkably quick and intelligent. It was a great joy to me when this translation of the Gospel of St. Mark, the first one which had ever been made into any of the languages or dialects of New Britain, was in the hands of the natives, and it was also a great joy to me to receive from teachers and others testimonies as to its value.”[18]

This quote speaks both to the religious aims of translation as also to the scientific use that such a translation may be put to. Although Peni Lelei died in 1895, it is possible that an image of him, with his wife and child, was displayed in Berlin in 1896 amongst the 90 images that George Brown provided for the exhibition. Brown was known as a photographer, having purchased photographic equipment from a member of a naturalist expedition in 1875.[19] His images are to be found in the Ethnographical Museum in Berlin and also in the State Library of New South Wales, where one of his extant albums includes photographs including Duke of York Island, New Britain and New Ireland (Papua New Guinea), Samoa, Fiji and Tonga. The photos from the album in Sydney date from 1875 to 1881 and thus were taken prior to the Berlin colonial exhibition. The album consists of 90 images, including number 74 of “Peni Lelei and wife, Duke of York Island”.[20]

Peni Lelei and wife, Duke of York Island, 1880

[1] https://ia801304.us.archive.org/1/items/deutschlandundse00deut/deutschlandundse00deut.pdf

[2] Arbeitsausschuss der Deutschen Kolonial-Ausstellung, ed., Deutschland Und Seine Kolonien Im Jahr 1896. Amtlicher Bericht Über Die Erste Deutsche Kolonial-Ausstellung (Berlin: Dietrich Reimer, 1867).: German original: „„Von den Fleiss, denn die Missionare auf sprachliche Arbeiten verwendet hatten, zeugten zwei umfangreiche Lexika und Grammatiken in Dialekten Neu-Pommerns und Neu-Lauenburgs, verfasst von den Herren Rickard und Brown. In beiden Dialekten waren vorhanden Lesebücher, Gesangbücher, Katechismen, Uebersetzungen der Evangelien und im Lauenburger Dialekt auch die ersten beiden Bücher Mosis.“

[3] Doug Munro and Andrew Thornley, eds., The Covenant Makers. . Islander Missionaries in the Pacific (Suva, Fiji: Pacific Theological College and the Institute of Pacific Studies at the University of the South Pacific, 1996).

[4] Moore Theological College [MTC], Samuel Marsden Archives [SMA], Sydney, AU AU-MTC 204-207/1, Minutes of the New South Wales (NSW) Auxiliary of the British and Foreign Bible Society (BFBS), NSW BFBS, Monthly Committee Meeting held on 19 April 1882.

[5] MTC, SMA, NSW BFBS Monthly Committee Meeting held on 19 April 1882.

[6] Helen Bethea Gardner, Gathering for God: George Brown in Oceania (Dunedin: Otago University Press, 2006). p. 84. She states that Peni Lelei from the Duke Islands, helped translate the Gospel of St. Mark. (she does not give a footnote)]; See also: Margaret Reeson, Pacific Missionary George Brown, 1835-1917. Wesleyan Methodist Church (ANU Press: Canberra, 2012),

[7]George Brown, Pioneer-missionary and explorer, an autobiography; a narrative of forty-eight years’ residence and travel in Samoa, New Britain, New Ireland, New Guinea and the Solomon Islands Brown (Hodder and Stoughton: London, 1908), 378

[8] Margaret Reeson, Pacific Missionary George Brown, 1835-1917. Wesleyan Methodist Church (ANU Press: Canberra, 2012), 129; Brown, Pioneer-missionary and explorer, 378.

[9] Margaret Reeson, Pacific Missionary George Brown, 1835-1917. Wesleyan Methodist Church (ANU Press: Canberra, 2012), 166ff.

[10] Margaret Reeson, Pacific Missionary George Brown, 1835-1917. Wesleyan Methodist Church (ANU Press: Canberra, 2012), 220; cf. Australian Methodist Missionary Review, 5 February 1895

[11] Tracey Banivanua Mar, “Shadowing Imperial Networks: Indigenous Mobility and Australia’s Pacific Past”, Australian Historical Studies 46:3 (2015), 340-355.

[12] Brown, Pioneer-missionary and explorer, 194, 406.

[13] Brown, Pioneer-missionary and explorer, 236.

[14] Schütte, Heinz. “The Six Day War of 1878 in the Bismarck Archipelago.” The Journal of Pacific History 24, no. 1 (1989): 38–53. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25168980.

[15] Schütte, Heinz. “The Six Day War of 1878 in the Bismarck Archipelago.” The Journal of Pacific History 24, no. 1 (1989): 38–53. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25168980, 43; “The Blanche Bay Massacre. REV. GEORGE BROWN’S STATEMENT”, The Maitland Mercury and Hunter River General Advertiser (NSW) Thursday 2 June 1881 – Page 3

[16] Brown, Pioneer-missionary and explorer, 194, 406.

[17] Ibid.

[18] Ibid.

[19] Reeson, Pacific Missionary George Brown, 85.

[20] Reverend George Brown: Album of photographs including Duke of York Island, New Britain and New Ireland (Papua New Guinea), Samoa, Fiji and Tonga, ca. 1875-1881, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales: https://archival.sl.nsw.gov.au/Details/archive/110316387

Translating Colonialism conference

hilary.carey all, Bible societies, Conferences/Workshops November 12, 2024November 14, 2024 0 Comment

Last week, international delegates from around the world met for the Translating Colonialism conference at Westminster College, University of Cambridge.

The conference was the major event for the second year of the Global Bible project, and has been over a year in the planning and thinking.

Congratulations and thank you to everyone who joined us for this event!

Papers were organised into panels which corresponded roughly to geographical and chronological themes, though the range and diversity of topics and approaches was a key feature of the conference.

The conference began with a short presentation by the Global Bible team, both the Münster strand led by Felicity Jensz and Michael Wandusim (who was unfortunately not able to attend) and the Bristol strand, with Hilary Carey, Floris Solleveld, and Mei Mei Cheung. This outlined the origins of the project and its focus on three case study regions in colonial West Africa, Oceania, and the Arctic, but with the conference extending that to include participants presenting on bible translation in China, Russia, India and across a wider time frame, from the early Christian era to the modern day.

For the first panel, Daniel Jeyaraj (Liverpool Hope) and Hepzibah Israel (Edinburgh) took us to Tamil Nadu. Jeyaraj discussed the Danish Lutheran missionaries who undertook the first translations into Tamil in the Danish colony of Tranquebar. Israel analysed the translated bible for its materiality and as an icon for the translation process, with a series of striking illustrations including Bible colporteurs and Bible women in colonial India.

Delegates with Wkeng drawings — Delegates reviewing the drawings by Manfred Wkeng Aseng at the Translating Colonialism conference.

The second panel included a number of technological challenges and included a presentation from Benjamin Weber on behalf of the Münster digital humanities team on the missionary map. The missionary map is one of the outputs from the Global Bible project, building on an initial template from the Book of a Thousand Tongues, edited by Eric North (1938) and later by Eugene Nida (1972), with permission from the United Bible Society. There was a lively discussion of aspects of the map as a tool for future researchers, with valuable contributions made by Neil Rees (United Bible Society).

Two artistic commissions followed this presentation. Leeza Awojobi, a Bristol-based poet and storyteller, provided a poem and video reflection on the heritage of her family, originally from the former German colony of Cameroon and her ‘lost’ mother tongue of Kpwe (Mokpwe). This was followed by the work of the New Guinea artist Manfred Wkeng Aseng, and the coming of Anglican missions to his home place of Kaironk in the highlands, depicted using traditional images.

Manfred Wkeng Aseng, drawing of his brother’s travels from Kaironk in the PNG highlands (bottom right corner) to Simbai, Madang, Popendetta and St Paul’s and St Peter’s cathedral in Dogura (top right corner).

Onesimus Ngundu, for Cambridge University Library, presented on the library and archives of the British and Foreign Bible Society. This was followed by presentations on aspects of translation from two different times and perspectives: Tyler Horton (Cambridge) on strategies for translating the Hebrew term ruah (רוּחַ) ( ‘wind’ ‘breath’ ‘spirit’) in the Septuagint, and Uchenna Oyali (Abuja) on the changing meaning of nsọ (‘holiness’/ sacred/ unclean), a word with both positive and negative connotations, in Igbo bible translation.

For the final session of the day, Brian Stanley (Edinburgh) analysed the meaning of the term ‘heathen’ and questioned whether the derogatory connotations of this term had any real world impact on the social demarcation of race in colonial societies. Laura Rademaker (ANU, Canberra) took us to post-colonial era in supposedly decolonised Australia. Through her analysis of the bilingual school policy in the Northern Territory she noted the long tail of missionary education, which persisted long after the formal work of missions in settler countries had passed. Mia Jacobs (Bristol) analysed the meaning of biblical references to menstruation in Leviticus and the woman with the twelve-year flow (Matthew 9:20-22; Mark 5:25-34; Luke 8:43-48) to question pejorative interpretations of the status of menstruation in both the ancient world and today.

We enjoyed an excellent conference dinner at Galleria in Cambridge – readying us for another day of talks.

De Valera Botchway (Cape Coast) led the morning discussion with a challenge to understand the full meaning of traditional religious terms, as they were translated into new biblical contexts. His example was the Tiwi (Akan) term nyamesom pa which he argued was mistranslated to mean ‘religion’ as a practice set apart from other parts of life. He argued that traditionally there was no such distinction, and that translation into a western idiom undercut older life- and knowledge-ways. John Ekem (Accra) examined the earliest mother tongue translaters of the bible on the Gold Coast through the work of Christian Protten and Jacobus Capitein. He argued that they were more than translaters but necessarily acted as cultural mediators providing dynamic interpretations of language to meet the new needs of the times. Toon van Hal (Leuven), analysing the compilation of translations of the Lord’s Prayer, explained that this practice reflected in miniature the global bible project, and provided insights into the developing understanding of global languages, and the relationship between scholarly and mission-driven linguistics.

For the sixth panel, Holger Strutwolf (Münster) returned us to the earliest centuries of Christianity, pointing out through a rich selection of examples, that issues of translation and the editing of scripture are not new but are inherent in the transmission of scripture into new languages. In two complementary papers, Lisa Kerl (Münster) examined the role of German-speaking missionaries and the challenge of translating the bible into classical Chinese in the late 19th and early 20th centuries; Anastasia Akulich (Leeds) considered the work of Russian Orthodox missionaries and their close engagement with Chinese Orthodox Christians and the extent to which the latter were effectively independent agents in the work of translation.

Wyld Map — James Wyld. The World: designed to show the languages and dialects into which the BFBS has translated the scriptures. 2nd ed, 1841

The final session brought together papers from the two global bible project teams. Floris Solleveld outlined how the global translation project of the BFBS and affiliated societies resulted in a virtual as well as a physical world map of languages, as well as in massive repositories of linguistic data. Felicity Jensz examined the connections between German and British Bible Societies in colonial West Africa, highlighting the significant achievement and contribution of mother tongue translators to the present day. Finally, Judith Becker provided a summing up and review of the proceedings across two days of intense discussion.

The final activity for delegates was to take the short walk to Cambridge University Library to visit a display of items from the British and Foreign Bible Society. Selected by Floris Solleveld, these highlighted the work of Indigenous and mother tongue translators from many cultures, as well as archival and printed objects showing the history and progress of individual bible translation projects, as well as the 1841 copy of Wyld’s Map of the world, with all the languages into which the BFBS had translated the bible.

History, Reception, and Dissemination of Mother-Tongue Bibles in (post)Colonial Ghana

Felicity Jensz all, Conferences/Workshops, Project Activities, Project updates July 15, 2024July 15, 2024Bible translations, Ghana, Mother-Tongue Bibles 2 Comments

Over 50 people attended a workshop on 2 July 2024 at the Institute for Distance Learning (IDL) Amonoo-Neizer Conference Centre at Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) in Kumasi, Ghana, to discuss aspects surrounding histories, legacies and dissemination of mother-tongue Bibles.

In Ghana, German and British Bible Societies facilitated some of the first translations of the Bible into mother tongues in the nineteenth century. As Michael Wandusim has demonstrated on his work on Ludwig Adzaklo, Ghanaian scholars have been an integral part of historical translation work, yet often overlooked in the histories of Bible translations. The GloBil project is committed to making a contribution to the decolonisation of knowledge surrounding the histories and legacies of mother-tongue Bible translations and in this spirit we—Michael Wandusim and Felicity Jensz—co-organized a workshop with our colleague Prof. J. E. T. Kuwornu-Adjaottor of the Department of Religious Studies, KNUST, in Kumasi, Ghana.

The first session of the workshop was focused on the history of Bible translations and Bible societies, including an overview of the GloBil project (Jensz/Wandusim), the history of Bible translations in West Africa (Ekem) and the textual histories of the original Greek sources of the New Testament (Strutwolf). This session provided context into the deep historical tradition of Bible translations and transcriptions.

In sessions dedicated to the reception and dissemination of Bible translations, a wide range of topics were covered, including the question of how mother-tongue Bibles reflect African spirituality (Afriyie), as well as specific examples of Bible translations for the Bono-Twi (Boaheng) and Dangme (Kuwornu-Adjaottor) languages. Several papers focused on mother-tongue biblical hermeneutics, including the history and focus of different directions of mother-tongue biblical hermeneutics in Ghana (Aryeh), mother-tongue biblical hermeneutics as decolonized knowledge production for social transformation (Amevenku), and the centrality of mother-tongue Bibles to the religious landscape of Ghana (Torsu). The processes behind the distribution of Bibles in Ghana today were also presented in a paper (Worae), which highlighted some of the historical processes still used today as well as some of the newer forms of Bible dissemination, including through digital means.

The rich presentations over the day demonstrated the value of the collaborative workshop and provided insights into many aspects of mother-tongue Bibles that will be reflected in further outputs of the project, including future blogs and also publications. Of particular note was the display of mother-tongue Bibles of many Ghanian languages, some of which have historical legacies dating back to the nineteenth century. The workshop was made possible by our KNUST collaborator Prof. J. E. T. Kuwornu-Adjaottor, helped by his two assistants Peter Adams and Ernest Frimpong Junior. We were generously financed through the Internationalization Fund of the University of Münster.

A link to the program can be found here:

Program-Outline_2-July-2024 Download

The video of the conference on YouTube can be found here:

The Establishment of German Bible Societies in the nineteenth century

Felicity Jensz all, Bible societies June 14, 2024June 14, 2024Bible Societies, German Bible Societies 0 Comment

The nineteenth century has been called the century of bible societies (Risch quoted by Gundert, p. 34). In German-speaking lands alone, some 500 bible societies were established in the nineteenth century. In contrast, in the eighteenth century, there was only one bible society established in German lands, the Canstein Bible Society (Cansteinsche Bibelanstalt) (Heidenreich 2024). What then led to the proliferation of bible societies in the nineteenth century?

Figure 1: Establishment of German Bible Societies in nineteenth century (number per year). Data from Gundert 1987.

One major external influence in the establishment of German bible societies came from the British and Foreign Bible Society (BFBS), established in London in 1804. At the establishment of the BFBS a circular was sent out to influential Christians, both theologians and laypeople, in Europe to inform them of the new society, and to encourage them to establish their own bible societies. The BFBS also supplied funds to encourage and support the establishment of bible societies. Thus, already in 1804 the German Bible Society was established through a cooperation of two Bible Societies in German-speaking Basel (Switzerland) and Nuremberg (Franconia). Both of these locations were in the south, meaning that they were not in direct competition with the Canstein Bible Society in the north. Initially, the main seat of the German Bible Society was Nuremberg, however, that changed soon after as the printing was transferred to Basel. In the aftermath of the French invasion of Switzerland, the Basel Bible Society catered to a Swiss audience by publishing French-language bibles for Protestants, who had been affected by the violence. The focus on internal Swiss needs meant that the German-language need for bibles was not adequately covered to the disappointment of many. This desire for bibles was in part a reflection of the pietist movement of the early eighteenth century that placed a focus on bible reading as well as the activities of lay people within religious communities. Moreover, the general desire for education inspired a Christian feeling of responsibility towards the poor and the growth of German religious societies. Thus, when the BFBS was established in 1804 the internal influences on religious people in German lands were such that the BFBS model was easy to replicate. However, before a reorganisation of the German Bible Society could be occur, continental Europe was at war.

1812-1830

With the Napoleonic Wars and the Continental Blockade (Blocus continental) from the end of 1806 to April 1814, communications between England and the continent mostly ceased. In those years, only a few bible societies were established. In 1812, Carl Friedrich Adolf Steinkopf (1773-1849), who was a German theologian and former secretary of the Christian Society (Deutsche Christentumsgesellschaft) in Basel, was able to travel back to continental Europe via Sweden. He was pastor of the Lutheran Church of the Savoy, London, which was the second oldest German-speaking church in Great Britain, being founded in 1694.Steinkopf was also a member of the BFBS as well as other religious societies. On the continent, he visited many of his former contacts in religious circles and persuaded many to establish bible societies, with the financial support of the BFBS and following the model of the BFBS system.

When Napoleon was defeated and the blockage was raised, four men from the BFBS travelled to continental Europe to help establish Bible societies. John Patterson, Robert Pinkerton, Dr. Christian Schwabe (minister of the German Lutheran Church, Goodman’s Fields, London) and Ebenezer Henderson were very effective, with 25 bible societies established in the German states in 1814 alone. The method was to provide funds for the establishment of a bible society firstly in the large cities, then subsequently focusing on the smaller cities. The bible societies were to be ecumenical—some even included Catholics—and were encouraged to be independent societies, rather than assuming subsidiary positions with the BFBS network. Nevertheless, the BFBS was seen by many German bible societies in the early nineteenth centruy as the ‘mother’ society.

There was a perceived need for affordable bibles in the German Confederation, as years of war and blockade had left people without access to the Bible. Added to this was an increased interest in reading the Bible, which had been encouraged by the establishment of a number of religious societies in the early nineteenth century. Despite such interest, the supply of Bibles was quite restricted. The seven larger Bible societies (Canstein, Prussian, Württemberg, Saxon, Bavarian, Schleswig-Holstein and Strassburg) usually printed or had printed their own bibles, while the smaller societies obtained their bibles from these seven or other printers. Initially, bible societies gave away up to a third of all bibles free of charge, as in the case of the Württemberg Bible Society, but by the end of the century this figure had fallen considerably, so that the vast majority of Bibles were purchased (Gundert 1987, p. 172).

In the seven years between 1814-1820, 185 new bible societies were established in the German Confederation. The majority of these bible societies saw themselves as stemming from the BFBS. Unlike the BFBS, however, the German bible societies did not initially see their role as sponsors of foreign language translations of the bible, rather as publishes of languages of the people in their own jurisdictions. This included not only Standard High German (Hochdeutsch), but languages such Polish and Sorbian. The connections to the BFBS were strained and in many cases completely ruptured when in August 1822 the BFBS declared that they would not support the publication of any bibles which included the Apocrypha, that is, the non-canonical writings placed by Luther between the Old and New Testament. Almost all of the German, Swiss, Scandinavian and French bible societies were not prepared to follow this directive and continued to print bibles with the Apocrypha, although without financial support from the BFBS. A few German societies, including those connected to the Moravian Church, agreed to the new conditions. In 1827, the BFBS committee allowed for the New Testament, or the New Testament with Psalms, to be distributed to the bible societies for free, and many German societies took advantage of these publications. However, the majority of German bible societies wished to continue circulating bibles with the Apocrypha and thus relationships with the BFBS were tempered. This resulted in the BFBS establishing around 1830 their own branch and storehouse in Frankfurt from where continental Europe could be supplied with bibles. Such developments ensured that the German bible societies became independent of the BFBS.

The time of more independence

In the period between 1830 and 1848, the year of the March Revolution, over 100 further German bible societies were established. The remit of the German bible societies was predominantly the inner mission, and at times German emigrants in places such North America. The first half of the nineteenth century was also a period in which German foreign Christian missions were beginning to be established. The Danish-Halle-English mission in Tranquebar (Tharangambadi, Tamil Nadu, India) had already been established in the early eighteenth century, followed by Moravian missions from the 1730s. The early nineteenth century would see further German Protestant mission societies be established, such as the Basel mission in 1815, the Goßner mission in 1831 or the Rhenish mission from 1828. A consequence of the increased number of mission societies was that bible societies lost some of their donors, as the former were seen to confront more pressing issues in the conversion of non-Christians than were the Bible societies in their wish to spread Christianity amongst the poor. Mission societies were strongly connected with the translation of the bible into local languages. Yet when it came to the “reduction” of oral languages to written form, German missionaries and missionary societies often relied on funds from the BFBS for the publication of bibles in indigenous languages as German bible societies did not see this as their main task. By the end of the century, when Germany had its own colonies, the fact that German bible societies rarely published foreign language bibles was seen by some religious commentators of the period to be an indication of a lack of German patriotism (Richter 1899, p. 11). A few mother-tongue bibles had been published, for example the Basel Bible Society (Basler Bibelgesellschaft) funded the publishing of the Basel Talu New Testament (China-Tibet) as well as the Ga Bible, and the Württemburg Bible Society (Württemburgische Bibelgesellschaft) supported the publishing of the Duala New Testamen, with the Bremen Bible Society supporting the publication of the Ewe Bible. But there was a belief from some people that German bible societies should do more for German missions, and thus for German colonialism. However, given that from the mid-nineteenth century German mission societies received significantly more public funding than German bible societies, there was also the pressing issue of prioritising bible versions given the limited availability of funding.

Women’s work

Missing from the current blog are female voices. Much of the material used for this blog is taken from the work of Wilhelm Gundert, who wrote the history of the German bible societies in the nineteenth century. Gundert’s work is one of a grand narrative and named men with there being little information on women’s work, or the contributions of non-Europeans to the translation, printing and dissemination of bibles. Partly Gundert explains these omissions due to lack of sources. There were, he states, a number of lady’s bible associations in Germany in the nineteenth century, however, there is scarcely any archival material pertaining to them (Gundert 1987, p. 233). This is in contrast, for example, to the work of British women. According to contemporary reports, there were more than 100 women selling Bibles in London in the early 1860s (Auxiliary Bible Society of New South Wales 1861, p. 5). British scholarship has examined the role of women noting their importance for work of the BFBS (Martin 2004; Lane 2004). Compared to their British counterparts, German women were slower to obtain the franchise, or to be able to earn their own living. Their contributions to public life are also not as often reported on as in Britain. Furthermore, women’s societies and associations often had numerous functions, for example the Female Association for the Poor and Invalids (Weiblichen Verein für Armen- und Krankenpflege) in Hamburg also disseminated bibles, without the word mentioned in their title (Gundert 1987, p. 235). Unlike mission societies, where females working in foreign countries reported on their work to European audiences, thus gaining female supporters (Habermas 2017, p. 507), there were no female role models in the German bible societies. Just because nineteenth century printed sources scarcely mention female actors, this does not mean that they were not working behind the scenes to support bible societies through donations, or through selling bibles. Yet their voices are harder to find in the dominant narratives of the history of bible societies, and thus provide a strong motivation to increase focus on them in our further research.

Sources:

Auxiliary Bible Society of New South Wales, 1861. Empire (Sydney), Tuesday 12 February, p. 5

Gundert, Wilhelm. 1987. Geschichte der deutschen Bibelgesellschaften im 19. Jahrhundert. Bielefeld: Luther-Verlag.

Gundert, Wilhelm. 1987. Festschrift zur Gründung der Privilegierten Württembergischen Bibelanstalt vor 175 Jahren. Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft

Habermas, Rebekka. 2017. “Colonies in the Countryside: Doing Mission in Imperial Germany.” Journal of Social History 50, no. 3 (2017): 502–17. http://www.jstor.org/stable/45133237.

Heidenreich, Sven. 2024. “The Cansteinsche Bibelanstalt: The oldest German Bible Society.” In Global Bible: British and German Bible Societies Translating Colonialism, 1800-1914, Blog post. https://globalbible.blogs.bristol.ac.uk/2024/04/19/the-cansteinsche-bibelanstalt-the-oldest-german-bible-society/ (Accessed 11 June 2024)Lane, Sarah. 2004 “Forgotten Labours: Women’s Bible Work and the BFBS.” In Stephen Batalden, Kathleen Cann and John Dean (eds). Sowing the Seed. The Cultural Impact of the British and Foreign Bible Society, 1804-2004 (Phoenix Press: Sheffield), 53-62.

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The Cansteinsche Bibelanstalt: The oldest German Bible Society

Administrator all, Bible societies April 19, 2024April 19, 2024Bible translation, German Bible Societies 0 Comment

Title page of the 20th edition of the Canstein Bible, pubished in Halle 1728. Image: Bible Museum, Münster.

by Sven Heidenreich, Student Research Assistant

When people think of the systematic translation and distribution of the Bible, the British and Foreign Bible Society (BFBS) certainly comes to mind. It was the largest of all Bible Societies in the nineteenth century. Originally founded in 1804, it set itself the task of bringing the Bible in the local language and at a low price to people who were normally dependent on the interpretation of the Bible by the clergy. These ideas were not limited to the English-speaking world.

The history of German Bible societies, which pursued very similar goals to the British counterparts, is less researched and therefore less known. This is slightly surprising given that the first German Bible Society was established in 1710, almost a century before the BFBS. The Cansteinsche Bibelanstalt had the aim of producing low-cost Bibles for the masses, just as the BFBS would later do.

The Reformation movement is an important historical background to the founding of German Bible Societies. During that period, in addition to rejecting the sale of indulgences, the elitist interpretation of the Bible was also criticized. Before the Reformation, Bibles were almost exclusively in Latin, which few people could read, write, or even understand. Although Martin Luther’s (1483-1546) translation of the Bible was printed and sold in German in 1534, it remained too expensive for most people to afford. Furthermore, after the Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648), the availability and ownership of Bibles significantly decreased. The religious historian Wilhelm Gundert (1987) estimates that in Protestant territories, there was only one Bible for every 70 inhabitants.

Before the Reformation, the general population were dependent on the interpretations and readings of the Catholic clergy in order to learn the Word of God. Yet, in the post-Reformation environment some people strove to change this. One important person was Baron Karl Hildebrand von Canstein (1667-1719), who wished for the Bible to be more accessible. Although von Canstein is often associated with the idea of Bible societies, he himself referred to similar endeavours in the Netherlands, where the idea of using standing type (in German Stehsatz or Schiebesatz) to reduce printing costs was already in practice. Inspired by the desire to make the Bible accessible, he outlined his ideas for a Bible society in his 1710 pamphlet “Ohnmaßgeblicher Vorschlag / Wie GOTTES Wort den Armen zur Erbauung um einen geringen Preis in die Hand zu bringen” (Authoritative Proposal / How to bring the Word of God into the hands of the poor for their edification at a low price).

In order to underscore his agenda, von Canstein quoted Jesus from the Gospel of Luke 11: 52: “Woe to you experts in the law, because you have taken away the key to knowledge. You yourselves have not entered, and you have hindered those who were entering.” Accordingly, no profit was to be made from the sale of the Bibles, as this would undermine the integrity of the organisation, which saw itself as a successor to the apostles.

The brief interpretation of Col. 3:17 (“Let the word of Christ dwell among you richly in all wisdom”) that von Canstein used in the introduction of his 1710 pamphlet illustrates the ideals of the project and as such can be seen as one of the foundational principles on which all subsequent Bible societies were to be built. The original proposal discussed the extent to which the appeal for donations should be used to print and distribute the Bible and insisted that the funds were not to be used to improve the material conditions of the poor. Furthermore, plans to translate the Bible into other languages were also discussed. However, as the printing of the Bible was already an expensive undertaking this idea was not realised.

Von Canstein followed up the agenda in his pamphlet with a call for participation and an appeal for donations, to ensure that at least some of the Christian teachings reached the poorer sections of the population. Although the appeal for donations was only moderately successful, the funds were sufficient to get the project off the ground. On 21 October 1710, the first ‘Canstein’ Bible was printed in the printing house of the Frankesche Stiftungen and orphanage in Halle. Halle itself was a centre for Pietism, a movement within Lutheranism that focused on biblical doctrine and individual Christian piety. Initially, a specially printed version of the New Testament was to be sold for two Groschen. As soon as the capital for a standing set of the entire Bible was available, the complete Bible was to be sold for ten Groschen. Although the institution that printed the Bibles was known as the Cansteinsche Bibelanstalt, the establishment of the institution was not von Canstein’s work alone, rather he benefited from the support of the Pietist theologian August Hermann Francke (1663-1727) and his colleague Heinrich Julius Elers (1667-1728), who both were integral to the development and realisation of the proposal.

Von Canstein was needed not only as a financial backer, but also as a prominent figure to inform the public about the project and to provide legitimacy for the project. The daily operation also required a well-thought-out organisation that had to reconcile the goal of disseminating Bibles to as many people as possible at a reasonable price with the difficulties of running a not-for-profit organisation. For example, the booksellers who were commissioned to sell the Canstein Bibles for the fixed price now had to forfeit the turnover that could be achieved with the regular sale of, for example, commercial versions of the Bible. In addition, the number of Bibles sold had to be monitored in order to estimate the next printing orders. The Cansteinsche Bibelanstalt thus required a well conceptualised network of different agents particularly. These included typesetters who transformed corrections of the Luther Bible into printed form, and various booksellers who were necessary for storage and sales. Moreover, as the demand grew, more printing presses beyond that at the Franckesche Stiftungen were included in the network as that one alone could hardly cope with the great demand for cheap Bibles on its own. Threats of bankruptcy hung over the Cansteinsche Bibelanstalt, resulting in the need to constantly raise more funds. Amongst other things, this financially precarious situation meant that the plans to translate the Bible into other languages could not be realised.

One could speculate that if the Cansteinsche Bibelanstalt had been able to realise the project of translating the Bible into other languages, it would have assumed a similar significance for the eighteenth century as the BFBS did for the nineteenth century. The latter provided the decisive impetus for the increased founding and networking of Bible societies outside England, as it was able to offer financial and organisational support.

Yet, even without publishing foreign Bibles, the Cansteinsche Bibelanstalt made a significant impact on the German religious landscape. By 1800, more than 2.7 million Bibles and New Testaments had been printed in the German lands alone. Moreover, the establishment of the Cansteinsche Bibelanstalt in the early eighteenth century was a model for other Bible societies in the nineteenth century to follow, with the idea of making Bibles affordable to all being a driving force behind subsequent Bible societies.

Sources:

Gundert, Wilhelm (1987): Geschichte der deutschen Bibelgesellschaften im 19. Jahrhundert, Bielefeld: Luther-Verlag

Howsam, Leslie (1991) Cheap Bibles: Nineteenth-century Publishing and the British and Foreign Bible Society (Cambridge Studies in Publishing and Printing.

Schicketanz, Peter (2001): Carl Hildebrand Freiherr von Canstein. Leben und Denken in Quellendarstellungen, Tübingen: Verlag der Franckeschen Stiftungen Halle

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