(12/06/08) »Sisters from Two Worlds« is the title of a historical documentaion on the achievement of female missionaries in Nambia. The book was presented during the Women's Pre-Assembly of the United Evangelical Mision (UEM) in Borkum (Germany) on Wednesday.

The 157 page volume follows the traces of women of the Rhenish Mission who worked and lived in Namibia in the 19th and 20th century. They were the wives of missionaries and »sisters« (deaconesses). Lateron, the mission also sent unmarried women as missionaries into what they called the »mission field«.

Women played an important role in missionary work on the grass root level because they established contact with the local people teaching them (again mostly women and children) to read and write, providing medical services and reading the Bible with them.

However, the legacy of female missionaries has been underestimated - unlike the achievement of their husbands and male colleagues which is well documented. The male perspective dominated historiography for the past 150 years. »Mission history was written by men«, co-editor and managing director of the Archives and Museum Foundation Wuppertal, Julia Besten said on the presentation. The research is founded on documents of the foundation.

The concept of women as »helpers« and mere assistants of men was predominent throughout the 19th century, Besten explains. Only Gender Studies sweaping over from the United States initiated alternative perspectives of history.

The working group »Women in Mission« of the UEM - which is a successor organisation of the Rhenish Mission - endeavours to bring the women out of the shadow by researching historical sources and presenting them to the public. The group wishes not only to focus on German women but also from women in Africa and Asia who achieved as much.

It is one of the merits of this book to take up critical points of mission history when it comes to gender equality. The young woman Ida Kreft for example was engaged to be married with a young missionary. The mission management, however, prohibited the marriages on terms that Ida Kreft were »weak« to become the wife of a missionary, co-editor Sonia Parera-Hummel explains. Obedient to the mission, Ida Kreft remained unmarried but pursued her plans to work for the Rhenish Mission. Together with Anna Fenchel who is also portrayed in the book, Kreft cared for survivors of the German-Namibian war after 1904.
The woman believed to be »too weak for mission« became 89 years old. 

Mission und Gegenwart: »Sisters from Two Worlds«

edited by Julia Besten, Gesine v. Kloeden-Freudenberg, Sonia Parera-Hummel und Angelika SöhneRüdiger Köppe Verlag, Köln 2008