Hermann Heinrich Vedder (born 3 July 1876 in , Westphalia, Germany; died 26 April 1972 in Okahandja, South-West Africa) was a German missionary, linguist, ethnologist and historian. Originally a silk weaver, he received missionary training by the Rhenish Missionary Society in Barmen between 1894 and 1903, whereafter he was sent to German South West Africa in 1905 and worked as a missionary and teacher trainer until his retirement, first for the black workers and prisoners-of-war in Swakopmund,Dr Klaus Dierks Biographies of Namibian Personalities then at the small mission station Gaub in the Otavi Mountains, and from 1922 onwards in Okahandja, where he taught at the Augustineum school.
After his retirement, the National Party Government of South Africa nominated him as senator to represent the Namibian 'natives' (who had no vote) in the South African Senate in 1951. He vehemently defended the policy of apartheid. In his first speech he stated: "Our Government in South West Africa has been the depositary of a fine heritage. From the very beginning the German Government carried out that which has unfortunately not yet been attained in South Africa - namely, apartheid."
Vedder spoke fluently Oshindonga, Khoekhoe, and Otjiherero. He spent a lot of his time recording oral history and folklore and wrote school textbooks in Otjiherero and Khoekhoegowab.
His best known works are the ethnographic treatise Die Bergdama on history and culture of the Damara, his work on the pre-colonial history of South West Africa, South West Africa in Early Times, and his contribution to The Native Tribes of South West Africa. Vedder's historiography has been heavily criticized by recent academic historians for being not referenced and for its colonial apologetics and settler bias.Brigitte Lau: 'Thank God the Germans came'. Vedder and Namibian historiography. In: Brigitte Lau: History and historiography, 4 essays in reprint. Windhoek, Discourse/MSORP, 1995
He received honorary doctorates from the universities of Tübingen (1925) and Stellenbosch (1949). A suburb of Okahandja is named Veddersdal (Afrikaans: Vedder's valley) in his honour.
Youth and education Vedder was the third and youngest child of Wilhelm and Anna Margarethe Vedder, small-scale farmers who also weaved and plied other handicrafts. They farmed a small plot near Lenzinghausen, Westphalia. According to the inheritance laws, as the youngest son, he was set to inherit the farm. Hermann Heinrich, known by his second name from childhood, never identified with his first. He was raised in a strict, devout home and attended the local primary school (Volksschule), where under the influence of his skilled teacher, Decius, became a diligent student, especially of languages. At twelve years of age, he began learning Greek with the help of a Greek New Testament and grammar; he learned cursive the same way.
Missionary calling Initially, Vedder wanted to become a teacher, but his mother influenced him to become a missionary. When he was five, his mother told him something that shaped the rest of his life. She told him of the church in Gütersloh, where the missionary Carl Hugo Hahn sermonized at length on his missionary adventures in South West Africa, including his 15-year-long struggles that culminated in the baptism of the first Herero Christian, his maid Johanna Gertze, on July 25, 1858. He brought Johanna with him to Germany, both out of fear of leaving her among the unconverted and for help translating books into the Herero language. The "Black Johanna" spoke fluent German and made a major impression on the young Anna Vedder. "If there had been anything I could have done to help, Heinrich," she told her son, "I would have gone with Johanna to Africa. I did not know how, though. We often went at night to [suburb of Melle, Germany Hoyel, where the mission inspector Louis Harms, of the Hermannsburg Mission, told stories of the missions to Africa. If you, my son, go later to minister to Africa, I will not stand in your way, but I believe your father will firmly oppose it."
While these sentiments impressed a missionary calling on Heinrich, neither he nor Anna could dream that he would one day teach Gertze's niece in South West Africa.
Permission to join the mission At the insistence of his father, Heinrich Vedder left school after his confirmation to help on the family farm and learn the weaving trade. The young Vedder was determined to be a missionary, but he was afraid to tell his father, serving him as a soldier in person then writing to express his true feelings. But at seventeen, another minor incident brought clarity. One August evening, Heinrich and his older brother, August, were walking through the stubble in the moonlight when it came out that August was going to marry and leave the farm to establish himself. Seized by a grave anxiety, Heinrich promised that he would stay on the farm in his brother's stead while he prepared to become a missionary. Heinrich knew his father liked to soak his aching feet in warm water each night, but his rheumatoid arthritis prevented his hands from reaching his feet, so Heinrich had to pull off the patriarch's socks and wash them himself. Wilhelm seldom spoke during this work, but he always was in a more relaxed mood then.
One Saturday night, Heinrich took this foot-washing as an opportunity to broach the news of August's pending engagement and leaving the farm. Wilhelm said that he was aware of this. "But will it be good for our farm," he asked Heinrich. Heinrich replied "He is better versed in farming than I. Wouldn't it be better if he stayed instead?" "Where do you want to go?" Wilhelm asked surprised. "If you have nothing against it," Heinrich replied, "I would like to study at the [Rhenish Missionary] Institute in Barmen to become a missionary." "Then go," his father said. And that was all that father and son said on the subject.
In German South West Africa Training as a missionary After his father allowed him to become a missionary in 1894, he soon enrolled at the Rhenish Institute in Barmen, on April 1 of that year. From 1895 to 1901, he underwent his religious training, and after a gap year of military service, he passed his final exam in 1903. He was ordained on August 5, 1903. When it came time to dispatch him, he thought he was best suited to China, given his passion for China's ancient literature and civilization. The decision was up to mission inspector Johannes Spiecker, however, who had just returned from South West Africa and already decided to send Vedder to Swakopmund. To those on the committee who countered with Vedder's aptitude for China, he had a short, succinct retort: "Of all the missionary languages, Chinese is spoken in four pitches; Vedder is completely unmusical; therefore he cannot learn the language. So he can't go to China either!"
After the committee meeting, Vedder was given his orders to go to Swakopmund, first living with the missionary Johannes Friedrich Albrecht Böhm in Walvis Bay. But because Dutch and English were spoken there, he first went to Holland to learn Dutch and London to learn English. The meeting took place in August 1903, and his voyage to South West Africa set for December. Given a mere six months to learn both languages, he was able to preach in Dutch by the end.
Arrival in Africa On November 28, 1903, Vedder boarded the SS Helene Woermann on the Woermann-Linie for German South West Africa. On December 27 of that year, Vedder and his fellow missionary Friedrich (Fritz) Eisenberg disembarked at the beach near Swakopmund and traveled on foot the 30 km to Walvis Bay. In the wooden church of Walvis Bay, he preached his first sermon on African soil in Dutch with a schoolmaster interpreting in Khoekhoe. He then left with a Dutchman, the Rev. Hermann Nijhof (Nyhof), for Rooibank (Scheppmansdorp) on the banks of the Kuiseb River, where some impoverished Nama people lived who could teach him Khoekhoe. Since there was no authoritative primer on the language, Vedder worked with a pair of linguistically gifted missionaries to write the first such work. In February 1904, six weeks after the outbreak of the Herero Wars, Vedder took the opportunity to relocate to Karibib, where the missionary August Elger offered him lodging and training in the Herero language. The journey from Swakopmund to Karibib took two days, with a stop each night, on an old narrow-gauge railroad. While he was assigned to work specifically with the Topnaar Nama of Walvis Bay, his year-long journey between Scheppmannsdorf, Karibib, and Otjimbingwe allowed him to learn Khoekhoe, Herero, and the Ndonga dialect of the Ovambo language.
In Karibib, Vedder would be able to visit Johanna Gertz, who lived in the local black neighborhood and had so inspired his mother and himself to his missionary career path. She lived entirely alone in the last cottage in the Damara quarter. A linguistic prodigy herself, Johanna had traveled with Hahn throughout Namaqualand and Cape Colony, eventually speaking Khoekhoe, Herero, Afrikaans, English, and German fluently and later teaching in Otjimbingwe. Baptized at 20, she had married a Baster, Johannes Gertze, with whom she had many children. She was renowned as the most renowned midwife in the area of Karibib, Otjimbingwe, and Omaruru, by white and black families alike, for her cleanliness, competence, and diligence. Vedder left Karibib for Otjimbingwe with Johannes Olpp, a missionary who furthered his instruction in Khoekhoe.
Settling in Swakopmund In January 1905, Vedder settled in Swakopmund to minister to the local Nama dockworkers and Herero prisoners of war. At first escorted to services by soldiers, the POWs were later allowed to go to church on their own, which they allegedly used as a pretense to roam around the community. He learned that the Herero considered the "passiona" they requested from the military authorities a leave pass rather than a request to the "mission" for services. While he informed the military authorities of this tendency, he also tried to negotiate with them to provide better living conditions.
In Swakopmund, Vedder lived with the missionary Hammann in a small rectory built out of floorboard, which resembled a giant casket from afar. The surroundings were anything but agreeable: behind the rectory lay a bar where arriving and departing soldiers drank, sang, and gambled their wages away; in front of it lay a large barn where 100 Ovambo laborers slept, only to lay their blankets out in the sand and sun during the day to drive out the chigoe fleas or sand fleas, which proceeded to flee the heat for the cool of the rectory. By the custom of the day, Vedder visited his fellow townspeople in his top hat and tails, but was given a frosty reception by white settlers that blamed missionaries for the Herero uprising. Only the lonely tollbooth operator greeted him back.