CHAPTER ONE GENERAL INTRODUCTION
7. Sources
7.2. Written Sources
The minutes of synods, mission committees, hospitals committees and church councils form an important resource when one attempts to reconstruct the history of the church or missions. Correspondence in the form of letters compensate for the lack of published material in this study. Reports formed an important aspect of communication between the mission field and the mission headquarters in Europe and America as we shall see, especially in chapter five of this thesis.
7.2.1. Minutes
This study has used minutes where they were the only sources of information, as well as where they corroborated information gathered from both written and oral sources.
Minutes are usually taken as stipulated by respective constitutions for meetings of synods, councils, boards, committees and other gatherings related to church bodies, mission societies, and in this study’s case mission hospital governing bodies.
Although minutes are meant to provide the most reliable information of a particular meeting, some minutes are deliberately aimed at avoiding disputes on certain matters or even to perpetuate disputes within the organization.
It is the duty of the historian to gauge the reliability of the minutes, as is the case with all other written and oral sources used in the reconstruction of events.
7.2.2. Other Letters
There are two kinds of letters used in this study. The first is the correspondence between the missionaries and their colleagues or their mission society officials. The second, which will be discussed later, is the correspondence between particular interviewees and this author.
Although no longer as popular as it was in the nineteenth and twentieth century, letter writing is still used extensively as a form of formal and informal communication.
Today, letters reach their destination far quicker than they did between the 1930s and the 1970s, due to improved communication technology and transport system. As will be evident, especially in chapter five, there were many letters going to and from the missionaries in the mission field and their superiors and colleagues in the mission headquarters in Europe and America. Letters form a bulk of the valuable information used in the reconstruction of Lutheran medical mission history. The importance of letters in comparison to that of minutes can be great. We need to keep in mind that the letters were confidential and were supposed to contain information often restricted between the sender and the recipient. Where not much has been written for public consumption, letters provide the only information available on particular subjects. To measure their value, there are whole chapters in books that have relied on archived private and public letters for information.46
7.2.3. Reports
Synodical meetings, general assemblies, and diocesan meetings often have reports read or at least handed out, to delegates and participants in formal meetings. This study will make use of such reports where they prove to be relevant to the research.
However, I am aware that like minutes, writers of reports also choose a particular way of reporting and leave some issues out. Report writers detail the issues they feel are
46 Vukile Khumalo, “Ekukhanyeni Letter-Writers: A Historical Inquiry into Epistolary Network(s) and Political Imaginations in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa,” in Karin Barber (ed.), Africa’s Hidden Histories: Everyday Literacy and making the Self, (ed.) Indiana University Press: Indianapolis, 2006, pp.113-142; Lynn Thomas, “Schoolgirl Pregnancies, letter-Writing, and “Modern” Persons in Late Colonial East Africa”, in Karin Barber (ed.), Africa’s Hidden Histories: Everyday Literacy and making the Self (ed.) Indiana University Press: Indianapolis, 2006, pp.180-207.
important to the particular gathering and leave other things out. As in the case of minute-taking, for the sake of keeping peace and to be seen not to be interested in incessant conflict, the reporters will leave out or at least tone down the controversial matters. As some important annual gatherings, it is discomforting to report a year later on a matter that has since been cleared and in which the conflicting parties have subsequently reconciled.
Where support and funding of the mission society and other stakeholders depends on the success of institutions like schools and hospitals, one expects the reports to be generous with such success stories. It would be counterproductive when the report writer, who still wishes to continue working in a mission hospital, amplifies the negative aspects of the work in the hospital. Reading through the reports from the Hermannsburg Mission Society in Ramotswa, Botswana, one reads about things like witchcraft in the community and the drought that plagued the area in order to justify the continued support to the Bamalete Lutheran Hospital. Similarly, the 1969 report written and read by Friedrich Dierks on the three health institutions of the Mission of the Evangelical Lutheran Free Churches (MELFC) is awash with success stories. I am in no way suggesting that such reports lack credibility as primary sources in historical research. What I am saying is that like minutes these reports are biased and must be recognized as such. A plethora of data will be acquired from such reports to reconstruct the story of the Lutheran mission hospitals that I am attempting to reconstruct.
7.2.4. Archival Documents
The archived material has proved very helpful in this research. I have visited a number of church and mission archives where finances, language and time permitted.
While the archives have primary documents of great value, such documents are not necessarily preserved for researchers and often they are not so relevant to a particular study. In Germany where most of the archives were properly organized for official use and outside researchers, the research work went smoothly.
The Evangelisches Landeskirchiches Archiv in Berlin, of the Berlin Mission Wircschaft (ELAB BMW), is in fact the archive of the Evangelical Church but it also houses the archives of the BMS. It is situated in Kreuzberg. I found the work tedious as I had to immediately learn on the spot how to read the old German orthography called sütterlin. The archivist, Mrs. Unterhalter, who had taught herself how to read this script, helped to acquaint me with it. However, since the script had developed over many years and because some letters were not standardized, her knowledge was found wanting in the deciphering of the later 1800s script. The script developed over many years and one should appreciate it that it was finally standardized. However, the documents of the mission in the 1800s and the early 1900s remain inaccessible to those unfamiliar with that script.
As with the BMS archives, the HMS archives provided me with an assistant in the form of Mr. Peter Schildknecht who had worked in Bamalete Lutheran Hospital, Botswana for over fifteen years and who was on furlough in Germany. Besides going into the restricted area to fetch folders for my reading, Mr. Schildknecht also helped to speed up my slow reading of the German text. Of all the archives visited, the HMS was the most organized one with properly labelled boxes and folders and with strict written declarations for researchers before written access-permission was granted.
The Archives of the MELFC are housed in the headquarters of the Mission of the Lutheran Church in Bleckmar, Germany. This was the least organized archive. There were many minutes and reports missing or misfiled with regard to the meetings of the Hospital Committee, the Mission Committee and even the church council that met exclusively in South Africa. For instance, the reports that Dr. Kurt Bergter and the representatives of Botshabelo and Dierkiesdorp health centres gave to the Conference on the Hospital were nowhere to be found.47 That was the situation despite the fact that an undertaking was made during the same conference (Konferenz der Hospital- und Laienmitarbeiter 29 April-May 1974) to send future reports on the hospital’s work to Germany.48
47 The reports are referred to in items 8, 9, 10 of the minutes written in German of the conference held at the Natal Spa, KwaZulu-Natal from 9 April to 1 May 1974.
48 Item 18. Die Berichte über die Hospitäler sollen in Zukunft auch nach Deutchland geschickt werden.
Despite this, the space provided by the MLC was conducive to research and studying.
The large collection of photographs from the southern African mission field was valuable as one could put faces to the many names that passed through the mission field. Here also, there was a South African missionary on furlough, Rev. Christoph Weber, who spent some time helping the present author to translate some of the difficult German sentences into the English language. Since the archive was not yet organized for easy use, there were many extra copies of documents from reports and minutes from where I could extract information for later reference later in South Africa.
The South-Eastern Diocese (SED) of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Southern Africa (ELCSA) has kept the archives of the many Lutheran mission societies that worked in Natal and Zululand in the head office in Umpumulo near Kranskop in KwaZulu-Natal. The office has a staff member who among many other duties, boxes and files all the documents previously scattered haphazardly in the archives room.
The work of finding documents proved quite tedious as the archivist had not completed the task of sorting out all the documents regarding the medical missions.
Private archives have also proved to be valuable in this study. For instance, a short unpublished history of the Kashile Hospital in Swaziland compiled by the retired Reverend Leonora Schiele could only be found from Schiele’s archives. Similarly, other people like the Schmidts in Pretoria were the only people who had photographs and copies of their awards while they were working in the BLH in Ramotswa. These bits and pieces of information form an integral part of the entire study because without them, there would be gaps begging to be filled.