Andreas Riis (12 January 1804 – 13 January 1854) was a Danish minister and pioneer missionary who is widely regarded by historians as the founder of the Gold Coast branch of the Basel Evangelical Missionary Society. A resident of the Gold Coast from 1832 to 1845, Riis played a critical role in the recruitment of 24 West Indian missionaries from Jamaica and Antigua in 1843 to aid the work of the mission in formal education, agriculture and the propagation of the Gospel in colonial Ghana.Anquandah, James (2006). Ghana-Caribbean Relations – From Slavery Times to Present: Lecture to the Ghana-Caribbean Association. National Commission on Culture, Ghana: As the first Basel missionary in Akropong in 1835, he laid the groundwork for the first mission house, eventually resulting in the founding of the first Christian church there which later became the Christ Presbyterian Church, Akropong.
Early life and education
Andreas Riis was born on 12 January 1804 in a small artisan town, Løgumkloster in northern Duchy of Schleswig near the German-Danish border. Historians have described the town as one in which inhabitants had a strong work-ethic and missionary interests, in line with the Württemberg Pietism of the late 18th and early 19th centuries, inspired by German theologians Philipp Spenern and August Hermann Francke. In Pietist towns and villages, a traditional rural lifestyle was commonplace as were the local production and supply of food and occupations in the crafts such as carpentry, welding and blacksmithing. Andreas Riis' father, Andreas Petersen Riis (c. 1744 – 1819) was a farm owner, a window maker and a glazier. His mother was Anna Maria F. Philipsen (1765–1850). Riis' father had been married previously to an older woman, Maren Petersdatter (1728–1791). In his teenage years, Riis became an apprentice in his father's workshop. According to Riis, he "engaged in frivolous behaviour" in his youth. He later went through an existential evangelical experience, resulting in his personal decision to become a Christian missionary. He applied to the Basel Mission Seminary in Basel, Switzerland. In his application essay, he noted, "for some time, I pursued in the carelessness of youth and when my conscience spoke, I tried to quieten it by saying: 'there is yet ample time for the conversion, I want first to enjoy the pleasures of this world.' But I could not find any rest until I had surrendered my whole life to the dear Saviour." In 1827, Andreas Christian Matthiesson, a Lutheran minister wrote a recommendation letter for Riis for his admission to the seminary. Although Riis did not have much prior exposure to formal education, he easily received an admission offer based on his bilingualism in German and Danish, his conviction, work ethic, sense of purpose and determination – values conveyed in his application essay. After completing mandatory military service, Riis enrolled at the Basel Mission Seminary in 1828. He studied for almost five years at the training school and was consecrated a missionary at the Basel Minster in 1832 and shortly thereafter ordained a minister at a Lutheran church in Lörrach in Baden, Germany.
Missionary activities on the Gold Coast
Early years Riis then sailed to Accra on the Gold Coast together with Peter Petersen Jager, a Schleswig native, born in 1808 and Christian Friedrich Heinze, a medical doctor from Sachsen, born in 1804. They arrived in Christiansborg on 21 March 1832 and were received by a Ga-Danish Euro-African friend of the mission, George Lutterodt who assisted them in renting a house.
Earlier in March 1827, the Basel Mission had selected four young men from rural Switzerland and southern Germany between the ages of 23 and 27 years. These recruits were Karl F. Salbach (27), Gottlieb Holzwath (26), Johannes Henke (23) and the Swiss-born Johannes Gottlieb Schmidt (24). The men were skilled tradesmen with practical training experience in pottery, carpentry, shoe-making, masonry, joinery hat-making and black-smithing. The four missionaries arrived in Christiansborg on 18 December 1828 and had their first church service at a coastal enclave, Osu Amanfon on 28 December 1828. All but Johannes Henke died within eight months of their arrival (August 1829) from malaria and other tropical diseases. Henke eventually died on 22 November 1831.
Five weeks after the arrival of Riis and his colleagues, Christian Heinze died from malaria-induced fever and dysentery on 26 April 1832. In a letter dated 6 June 1832, to the Basel Home Committee, Riis described in graphic detail the debilitating nature of Heinze's illness. Peter Jager also died on 18 July 1832. At that point, the missionaries had just begun learning the Twi language. As the lone survivor of the trio, Riis sought to permanently return to Europe. Riis highlighted the bleak prospects of the mission due to the high death toll, in a letter to the Home Committee, dated 10 August 1832. The missionary mortality was accentuated in a bulletin on 9 January 1833 in which the Home Committee noted the death of as many as six missionaries by the summer of 1832. A follow-up letter on 16 January 1833 even suggested to Riis to entirely close the mission station.
After becoming ill from tropical fever two months later, Riis sought treatment with the Danish doctor at Christiansborg, Dr. Tietz but his condition worsened each day for the next week. Upon the recommendation of his mulatto trader friend, George Lutterodt, he went to a native African herbalist for treatment. The healing process consisted of washing the body with soap, lemon and cold water and drinking a boiled potion containing naturally occurring quinine from tree bark, which proved to be quite effective. Riis' decision to visit the traditional healer for his medication was considered an "abomination" by Westerners at the time due to misconceptions about the local culture which they perceived as "heathenism". However, his recovery vindicated him.
After his recovery, Riis, on the request of the then Governor, Helmuth von Ahrensdorf, became a minister at Christiansborg, under the supervision of the castle chaplain. Shortly after his appointment, the chaplain died and Riis assumed additional responsibilities as the chaplain, teacher and school manager in charge of the boys' and girls' castle schools for the next two years.
Lutterodt then advised Riis to move to the more isolated woody hilly countryside in Akropong – Akuapem where the climate is much cooler and had a more conducive environment for evangelisation due to a lack of acculturation in comparison to coastal towns. Riis also wanted to master the Twi language. As the Basel Mission was a separate non-political, international entity, Riis did not want to be viewed as colonial agent of the Danes.
The Danish colonial government did not take kindly to the decision by Riis to relocate to Akropong. The Danish authorities viewed the relocation as an intrusion on colonial control on the coast and a rejection of Danish Crown policies. As a result, Riis was legally prevented from abandoning the Christiansborg office of the chaplain until the arrival of a new Danish pastor in 1835. There were prior tensions between Riis and the Danes as well as colonial rivalry between the Danes and British – the English Governor, George Maclean (2 February 1801 – 22 May 1847) at the Cape Coast Castle had invited Riis to start a mission there which the Danish colonial administration objected to, as this could have created a political standoff with the Danish Governor, Frederick Siegfried Moerck. Riis had also been critical of the Danish Governor, Moerck's outward religiosity while pursuing a paganist hedonistic lifestyle. As punishment, Riis was detained at Christiansborg from May to June 1837. Moerck also meddled in Akuapem state politics, including a chieftaincy dispute between the Akwapem and the Guan, fearing the growing influence of the British in that area.
On 18 January 1834, Andreas Riis set out to visit Akropong with his friend George Lutterodt, arriving exactly a week later on 25 January after a respite on Lutterodt's inland plantation along the way. Amid fanfare and drumming, the duo were warmly received, on friendly terms, by the then Omanhene of Akuapem, Nana Addo Dankwa I. The king asked Riis to seek permission from the Danish Governor before the traditional stool could allow him to settle at Akropong. Akropong was then a town that was part of the Danish protectorate. He embarked on his next trip to Akropong on 19 March 1834 accompanied by a Danish colonial soldier, two servants and a "mulatto" interpreter. After consultation with his traditional elders and fetish priests, the paramount chieftain, Addo Dankwa gave land to Andreas Riis to set up a mission station. In the edition of the Mission Magazin in 1839, the Basel Mission's magazine, an article, "Riis: Missionsreise von Akropong in das Aquambu", celebrated Riis' exploits in the establishment of the Akropong mission station as a preliminary triumph of the sole Basel missionary survivor on the Gold Coast.
Ethnography Andreas Riis finally moved and settled at Akropong on 26 March 1835. Riis built his solid timber house on stone foundation, almost entirely on his own as he refused to pay the Akropong natives in kind with brandy or gin. By February 1836, his house had been fully built. Furthermore, the locals were used to building round mud structures as opposed cuboid stone buildings. The locals named him "Osiadan", meaning "builder" in the Akan language. Riis ate local foods and spoke Akuapem Twi just like the people of Akropong. Riis lived like the locals at the time, spending weeks in the forest, sleeping on palm branches and feeding on peppersoup, snails and wormfish by some accounts. He also enjoyed the locally brewed beer, Pito, and freshly tapped palm wine, often whiling away the night in the palm wine tapper's hut with his friends.
In his role as an amateur naturalist and experimental ethnologist, Andreas Riis wrote several ethnographic and cartographic extracts on the natural landscape and cultural observations situated against his own European upbringing and experience. In the late 1830s and 1840s, he even sent specimens of seeds, insects and stuffed birds to Basel to be studied by experimentalists and for eventual display in the city's museum. With a pair of binoculars he had obtained on 14 June 1837 from arriving missionaries, Riis and two other missionaries, Andreas Stranger and Johannes Murdter toured the northeast towns and villages near the Volta River. Johannes Stanger died on Christmas Eve in 1837 and by 1840, Murdter had succumbed to tropical ailments too. In 1840, Andreas Riis, travelled through Akwamu, Shai, Kroboland, Akim Abuakwa, and Cape Coast and around New Year, arrived in the Ashanti capital, Kumasi where he spent two weeks and wrote observations on the traditional society there and what he perceived as the unfavourable and grim prospects for mission work.
Recruitment of West Indian volunteers