Ernst Karl Alwin Hans Dammann (6 May 1904 in Pinneberg, Holstein – 12 July 2003 in Pinneberg[
]) was a German Africanist. With Walter Markov, he was one of the founders of African Studies in the DDR,[ and as a student of Carl Meinhof and the successor of Diedrich Hermann Westermann, was part of the "second wave" of German Africanists.]
Biography
Education, NSDAP membership
Dammann grew up in Schleswig-Holstein, in an atmosphere of "Evangelical-Lutheran piety and Prussian virtues". His mother died young (in 1916), and his father left for Africa in 1908, where he spent three years working on Tanganyika Railway in Tanzania.[ He attended the Gymnasium Christianeum in Hamburg,][ before going to Berlin.][ During this period he also had an appointment as in Hebrew at the University of Kiel.][ According to Ernst Klee, he joined the Nazi Party in 1931;][ other sources have him join on 1 August 1933, with membership number 609,464.][Meyer-Bahlburg/Wolff 1986, p. 60.] 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.
In and out of Africa
From 1933 to 1937 he was a missionary in Tanga, Tanzania,[ working for a German settler community.][) he collected the verse of the Swahili poet Zahidi Mngumi; his was said to be "the most complete collection" of Mngumi's poetry.][). In this position "he discredited himself" in conflict with the Bethel Mission, German East Africa, and he was removed from the mission.][
]
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,[ (thesis: Dichtungen in der Lamu-Mundart des Suaheli][) where he was teaching by 1940.][ During World War II he served in the army in Denmark and then Tunisia,][ where he was captured by US forces.][ From 1943 to 1946 he was a prisoner of war][ 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.][ In 1949 he was teaching missiology at the Baltic University, then became professor at the .][
]
In 1957 he was appointed as chair of African Languages and Cultures at the Humboldt University of Berlin, as the successor of Diedrich Hermann Westermann.[ 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.][ 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.][ Throughout his life he held a number of positions outside of his academic appointments—he taught at the , and was president of the Berlin Missionary Society.][
]
Research interests, legacy, and politics
Dammann traveled regularly to Africa and taught a large number of African languages, including Swahili language, Zulu language, Hereo language, Name language, and Oromo language.[ His students include Hildegard Höftmann (Berlin), Thilo C. Schadeberg (Leiden), Brigitte Reineke (Berlin), and Gudrun Miehe, all Africanists of note.][ A Festschrift was published to honor him on his 65th birthday][ 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.][
]
Bibliography
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Dichtungen in der Lamu-Mundart des Suaheli. Hamburg 1940.
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Die Religionen Afrikas. Stuttgart 1963 ( Die Religionen der Menschheit, vol. 6).
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Studien zum Kwangali. Hamburg 1957.
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Grundriss der Religionsgeschichte. Stuttgart 1972.
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Ndonga-Anthologie. Berlin 1975.
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Die Übersetzung der Bibel in Afrikanische Sprachen. Munich 1975.
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Was Herero erzählten und sangen: Texte, Übersetzung, Kommentar. Berlin 1987.
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Herero-Texte. With Andreas Kukuri. Berlin 1983.
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70 Jahre erlebte Afrikanistik: ein Beitrag zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte. Berlin 1999.
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Menschen an meinem Lebensweg. Groß Oesingen 2002.
[
]
Festschrift
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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.
Further reading
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Die Afrikawissenschaften in der DDR. Ulrich van der Heyden. Münster: LIT Verlag, 1999.
Notes
Bibliography
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Florian Balbiani: Mission – Kolonialismus – Nationalsozialismus. Ernst Dammann und die Hamburger Afrikanistik, 1930–1937 (= Hamburger postkoloniale Studien. vol. 8), München 2023, .
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Eckart Krause et al. (eds.): Hochschulalltag im Dritten Reich. Die Hamburger Universität 1933–45. Reimer, Berlin 1991.
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Hilke Meyer-Bahlburg, Ekkehard Wolff: Afrikanische Sprachen in Forschung und Lehre. 75 Jahre Afrikanistik in Hamburg (1909–1984). Reimer, Berlin/Hamburg 1986, .
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Autorenverzeichnis. In: Namibiana. , Heft 11, SWA Wissenschaftliche Gesellschaft (Hrsg.), Windhoek 1987.
External links
