Ernst Dammann

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Ernst Karl Alwin Hans Dammann
Born(1904-05-06)6 May 1904
University of Kiel
Theses
  • Das negerische Afrika bei Yaqut und Qazwini (Ph.D.) (1929)
  • Dichtungen in der Lamu-Mundart des Suaheli (Habilitation) (1939)
Academic advisorsCarl Meinhof
Academic work
DisciplineAfrican languages
Institutions

Ernst Karl Alwin Hans Dammann (6 May 1904 in

DDR,[2] and as a student of Carl Meinhof and the successor of Diedrich Hermann Westermann, was part of the "second wave" of German Africanists.[3] A prodigious scholar of African languages and a one-time missionary in Tanga, Tanzania
, he was an early member of the Nazi party, and his scientific work was criticized as imbued with racist ideology.

Biography

Education, NSDAP membership

Dammann grew up in

University of Kiel.[6] He gained his doctorate in Kiel in 1929 (dissertation: Das negerische Afrika bei Yaqut und Qazwini) and was ordained in 1930. That same year he was employed as a research assistant by Meinhof in Hamburg.[3] According to Ernst Klee, he joined the Nazi Party in 1931;[1] other sources have him join on 1 August 1933, with membership number 609,464.[7] Meinhof and many others (including Dammann, Bernhard Struck, August Klingenheben, and Ernst Zyhlarz) were Nazis or Nazi sympathizers whose views on race were steeped in 19th-century theories of European racial superiority, with the attendant idea that the alleged African inferiority was manifested also in literature and language.[8]

In and out of Africa

From 1933 to 1937 he was a missionary in

foreign branch of the Nazi party (Landesgruppenleiter‍[2]). In this position "he discredited himself" in conflict with the Bethel Mission, German East Africa, and he was removed from the mission.[2]

Subsequent career in Germany (DDR and BRD)

After his return from Africa, he achieved his habilitation in African languages from the University of Hamburg in 1939,[5] (thesis: Dichtungen in der Lamu-Mundart des Suaheli‍[3]) where he was teaching by 1940.[1] During World War II he served in the army in Denmark and then Tunisia,[6] where he was captured by US forces.[3] From 1943 to 1946 he was a prisoner of war[6] at Fort Sam Houston in the United States; he was active as a parson. From 1946 to 1948 he was first a teacher, then the principal administrator at the school of theology for German prisoners of war at Norton Manor Camp in England.[6] In 1949 he was teaching missiology at the Baltic University, then became professor at the Kirchliche Hochschule Hamburg [de].[1]

In 1957 he was appointed as chair of African Languages and Cultures at the

NSDAP/AO in Africa, and copped only to having temporarily filled a vacancy.[5] With Walter Markov, who had set up an anti-Nazi communist cell and had been imprisoned for most of the Hitler era, he became one of the founding fathers of African Studies in East Germany. His colleagues in Berlin were well aware of his Nazi past and denounced him; one of them, in reporting him to the university's SED leader, noted Dammann was "glorifying the colonial politics of the imperialists ... and of German fascism". As the Berlin Wall was being built in 1961, he fled the DDR for the BRD.[2] In 1962 Dammann was appointed at the University of Marburg, and was able to start a department of African Studies there, with Herrmann Jungraithmayr as an assistant.[11] He retired in 1972 and moved back to Pinneberg, though he continued holding seminars in Marburg until 1985.[6] Throughout his life he held a number of positions outside of his academic appointments—he taught at the Lutherische Theologische Hochschule Oberursel [de], and was president of the Berlin Missionary Society.[6]

Research interests, legacy, and politics

Dammann traveled regularly to Africa and taught a large number of African languages, including Swahili, Zulu, Herero, Nama, and Oromo.[3] His students include Hildegard Höftmann (Berlin), Thilo C. Schadeberg (Leiden), Brigitte Reineke (Berlin), and Gudrun Miehe, all Africanists of note.[3] A Festschrift was published to honor him on his 65th birthday[12] which, according to one reviewer, reflects "the deep respect in which Professor Ernst Dammann is held by colleagues in the many disciplines to which he contributed".[13] Later, in a 2011 study about racism in how Germans had studied Africa, he was described as an "opportunistic member of the Nazi party" who was "deeply entrenched in racist thought", and his memoir, 70 Jahre erlebte Afrikanistik (1999), shows he "upheld his racist and paternalistic views until late in life".[9] A religious conservative (he also claimed he was a supporter of the constitutional monarchy), he taught that women should not be ordained as parson, but he never left the German Evangelical Church, though his wife did—she joined the Independent Evangelical-Lutheran Church.[6]

Bibliography

  • Dichtungen in der Lamu-Mundart des Suaheli. Hamburg 1940.
    OCLC 731219441
  • Die Religionen Afrikas. Stuttgart 1963 (Die Religionen der Menschheit, vol. 6).[14]
  • Studien zum Kwangali. Hamburg 1957.[15]
  • Grundriss der Religionsgeschichte. Stuttgart 1972.
    ISBN 9783170104761
  • Ndonga-Anthologie. Berlin 1975.[16]
  • Die Übersetzung der Bibel in Afrikanische Sprachen. Munich 1975.[17]
  • Was Herero erzählten und sangen: Texte, Übersetzung, Kommentar. Berlin 1987.[18]
  • Herero-Texte. With Andreas Kukuri. Berlin 1983.[19][20]
  • 70 Jahre erlebte Afrikanistik: ein Beitrag zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte. Berlin 1999.
    ISBN 9783496026716
  • Menschen an meinem Lebensweg. Groß Oesingen 2002.[6]

Festschrift

  • Wort und Religion: Kalima na dini. Studien zur Afrikanistik, Missionswissenschaft, Religionswissenschaft. Ernst Dammann zum 65. Geburtstag, eds. Hans-Jürgen Greschat, Herrmann Jungraithmayr. Stuttgart: Evangelischer Missionsverlag, 1969.
    OCLC 977062476

Further reading

References

Notes

  1. ^
    ISBN 3-10-039309-0
    .
  2. ^
    JSTOR 683629
    .
  3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Jungraithmayr, Herrmann (2007). "Ernst Dammann (1904–2003)". Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft. 157 (1): 1–6.
  4. ^ Dammann, Ernst (1929). Beiträge aus arabischen quellen zur kenntnis des negerischen Afrika. H.H. Nölke.
  5. ^
    ISBN 9783447056014
    .
  6. ^
    JSTOR 43751758
    .
  7. ^ Meyer-Bahlburg/Wolff 1986, p. 60.
  8. ISBN 9780472027774
    .
  9. ^
    ISBN 9783643901255
    .
  10. ISBN 9780870138942
    .
  11. JSTOR 40173864
    .
  12. JSTOR 40457694
    .
  13. JSTOR 612885
    .
  14. JSTOR 40456317
    .
  15. JSTOR 1157144
    .
  16. JSTOR 40458973
    .
  17. JSTOR 1594769
    .
  18. JSTOR 847703
    .
  19. JSTOR 40461899
    .
  20. JSTOR 43377384
    .

Bibliography

External links
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