Ruth Dittli and Dr. Cindy Brewer, German and Slavic Languages
In the era of imperialism Germany came late to the scene, but quickly attempted to catch up to its colonist neighbors and established colonies throughout the “heathen” lands such as China, India, and Africa. To generate interest and support for the colonist efforts a new genera of literature emerged called “colonial literature”. The literature was written by Europeans for Europeans. For my research I wished to discover how those publications dealt with and portrayed the character of the native in African literature.
As part of my research I traveled to Vienna, Austria, which I knew had a large national library containing thousands of original texts. To better understand what I’d be dealing with and gain a better understanding of the context surrounding mission colonial literature, I studied colonial literature and rhetoric in general. Colonial texts such as Robinson Cruso, Wie Gretta hoerte auf einen Kind zu sein (how Gretta stopped being a child), and The Betrothal in Santo Domingo helped me gain an understanding of typical colonial rhetoric. In the former two texts the colonial idea that mastery of self can be achieved through colonial success.
Similarly I studied texts explaining typical colonial discourse as well as rhetorical devices. Colonists often portrayed themselves as taming a savage land, yet also frequently implied that the wild land (and natives) are yearning to be tamed and made productive by the hand of the European. The natives are portrayed as lacking and desiring what the white Europeans have, but frequently don’t quite understand how to be civilized and never quite become like the Europeans.
In Vienna I was first introduced to the European library system, which I found frustrating because I would have to use a catalog to decide what texts I might be interested in, then request them, then wait for a librarian to collect them from the shelves for me. I was looking specifically for colonial mission dramas dealing with African characters, but wasn’t able to find as many as I would have liked, particularly dramas. Names frequently don’t reveal which texts are dramas and it is easiest to simply sort through, which we couldn’t do. As a result, Professor Brewer, four other student researchers, and I traveled to Basel Switzerland where we went to Mission 21, an archive where documents from three mission societies were stored. Since a large part of my project was collecting texts, this archive was a great place to be. The number of texts available there was staggering. For the entire week that we were there we copied all day long. The archive was very accommodating and allowed us to come and go at all hours. The last night I and another girl even copied through the night so we could be ready to leave the next day.
By the end of the week we had copied several thousand pages and over one hundred and fifty texts that can now be transcribed or posted directly to BYU’s Sophie Project (SOPHIE: A Digital Library of Works by German-Speaking Women. Sophie.byu.edu)
The number of texts was overwhelming to me and I had trouble figuring out where to start, particularly since I the old Gothic lettering, which everything was written in, takes me longer to read. I finally decided to analyze the covers of a series of publications called “Wasserquellen in dürren Lande” (fountains in a drought), which were stories from the Mohamed mission.
When I return from my mission I intend to expand my research into my Honors Thesis and I look forward to increasing my understanding of German history. Without funding from O.R.C.A., I wouldn’t have been able to collect the texts vital both my research and the research of others who will be able to access them through the Sophie Website.