Rheinische Missionsgesellschaft
Rheinische Missionsgesellschaft, a missionary association founded at Mettmann, Germany, on 28 September 1828, by the union of three smaller societies of the Lower Rhine area—Elberfeld, Barmen, and Cologne. It maintained a mission school at Barmen and mission stations in South and Southwest Africa and among the Chinese in New Guinea. In addition its missionaries, doctors, teachers, and deaconesses served the Batak and Nias churches in Sumatra, Nias, and Mentawei. For the Mennonites this missionary association was particularly significant in that a number of Mennonite preachers and misionaries received their training in Barmen; for example, Thomas Löwenberg and Abraham Hirschler, and the missionaries Heinrich Dirks, Gerhard Nikkel, and Nikolai Wiebe. On Sumatra, where the Association developed an extensive work among the Batak, it was closely associated with the former Dutch Mennonite mission. When Heinrich Dirks left the field in 1881 Tilmann Irle of the Association looked after the work at Pakantan until 1887, and at the death of Peter Nachtigal in 1928 the management of Pakantan was taken over until 1940 by native workers under the direction of the Association and since then under the direction of the Batak church. A considerable number of Mennonites from Russia attended the mission school at Barmen.
Bibliography
Bonn, Alfred. Ein Jahrhundert Rheinische Missionsgesellschaft. Barmen, 1928.
Hege, Christian and Christian Neff. Mennonitisches Lexikon, 4 vols. Frankfurt & Weierhof: Hege; Karlsruhe: Schneider, 1913-1967: v. III, 488.
Kriele, Eduard. Geschichte der Rheinischen Missionsgesellschaft I. Barmen, 1928.
Mennonitische Blätter (1889): 101.
| Author(s) | Christian Neff |
|---|---|
| Gustav Menzel | |
| Date Published | 1959 |
Cite This Article
MLA style
Neff, Christian and Gustav Menzel. "Rheinische Missionsgesellschaft." Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online. 1959. Web. 18 Apr 2024. https://gameo.org/index.php?title=Rheinische_Missionsgesellschaft&oldid=106652.
APA style
Neff, Christian and Gustav Menzel. (1959). Rheinische Missionsgesellschaft. Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online. Retrieved 18 April 2024, from https://gameo.org/index.php?title=Rheinische_Missionsgesellschaft&oldid=106652.
Adapted by permission of Herald Press, Harrisonburg, Virginia, from Mennonite Encyclopedia, Vol. 4, p. 315. All rights reserved.
©1996-2024 by the Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online. All rights reserved.