Carl Meinhof and the German influence on Nicholas van Warmelo's ethnological and linguistic writing, 1927-1935

The influence of German linguist Carl Meinhof on the work of his student, Nicholas van Warmelo, was substantial and has been underexplored. They met in the 1920s, when van Warmelo went to the University of Hamburg to study under Meinhof, and was essentially ‘groomed’ to join his faculty of African and Pacific Languages. Van Warmelo never did work in Hamburg and instead returned to South Africa, where he became Government Ethnologist in 1930. Even so, Meinhof and van Warmelo remained close, and from the late 1920s collaborated on the English translation of Meinhof's magnum opus, Grundriss einer Lautlehre der Bantusprachen (Introduction to the Phonology of the Bantu Languages). This book, which in its English translation offered phonetic descriptions of six Bantu languages considered important to British and South African colonialists, was completed only shortly before the appearance of van Warmelo's Preliminary Survey of the Bantu Tribes of South Africa. I will demonstrate that the influence of the Grundriss and other texts by Meinhof was evident in the Survey as well as in certain of van Warmelo's other ethnological writings. Moreover, the classification of African languages and ‘tribes’ as carried out by Meinhof and van Warmelo was very political; in van Warmelo's case, fixing ‘tribal’ ethnicity provided order to what, for whites, may have appeared a jumbled mass of peoples whose relationships to one another were not immediately discernible. This was perhaps significant in an era when issues of detribalisation and urbanisation were of increasing concern to white South Africans. The certainty of van Warmelo's ethnic constructions, even if these were still not entirely worked out, may have suggested a direction for resolving these perceived crises. Further, Meinhof's impact on van Warmelo points to a need to examine more fully the role of German philology and anthropology in shaping South African anthropology in general and Afrikaner volkekunde in particular. Notes R. Gordon, ‘Early Social Anthropology in South Africa’, African Studies, 49, 1 (1990), pp. 15–48. These schools were founded in 1920, shortly after the end of the First World War. I would like to acknowledge the Basler Afrika Bibliographien for publishing an earlier version of this article in their BAB Working Papers Series, and the Institut füer Afrikanistik und Äesthiopistik in Hamburg for allowing use of their archives. I also want to give special thanks to Patrick Harries, Caroline Jeannerat and Shula Marks. The programmes were located at schools such as the École des Langues Orientales Vivantes in Paris or the School of Oriental and African Studies in London. See S. Pugach, ‘Afrikanistik and Colonial Knowledge: Carl Meinhof, the Missionary Impulse, and African Language and Culture Studies in Germany, 1887–1919’ (PhD thesis, University of Chicago, 2001). Archive of the Institut für Afrikanistik und Äethiopistik at the Universität Hamburg (hereafter referred to as AIAÄ), BII 1, Ubersetzung ‘Grundriss’ und Warmelo allgemein, Lebenslauf Nicholas van Warmelo, n.d., ca. 1927. W. D. Hammond‐Tooke, Imperfect Interpreters: South Africa's Anthropologists 1920–1990 (Johannesburg, Witwatersrand University Press, 1997), pp. 109–110. AIAÄ, BII 1, Ubersetzung ‘Grundriss’ und Warmelo allgemein, ‘Prospekt’ concerning the translation of the Grundriss into English, n.d., ca. 1932. N. J. van Warmelo, ‘Early Bantu Ethnography from a Philological Point of View’, Africa, 3 (1930), pp. 31–48. C. Meinhof, ‘Einwirkung der Beschäftigung auf die Sprache der Bantustämmen Afrikas’, Globus: Illustrierte Zeitschrift für Länder‐ und Völkerkunde, Bd. LXXV, Nr. 23, (17/6/1899), pp. 361–364. P. Cocks, ‘Max Gluckman and the Critique of Segregation in South African Anthropology, 1921–1940’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 27, 4 (December 2001), pp. 739–756. H. Giliomee, ‘The Growth of Afrikaner Identity’, in W. Beinart and S. Dubow (eds), Segregation and Apartheid in Twentieth‐Century South Africa (London and New York, Routledge, 1995), pp. 189–205. J. Peires, ‘Ethnicity and Pseudo‐Ethnicity in the Ciskei’, in Beinart and Dubow (eds), Segregation and Apartheid, pp. 256–284. N. Worden, The Making of Modern South Africa, Third Edition (Oxford, Blackwell, 2000), p. 85. S. Pugach, ‘Theories of Language and Race in German Studies of Africa’, in A. Jones (ed.), Jan Czekanowski: Africanist Ethnographer and Physical Anthropologist in Early Twentieth Century Germany and Poland, History and Culture Series No. 10 (Leipzig, Institut für Afrikanistik, University of Leipzig Papers on Africa, 2002), pp. 63–90. Hammond‐Tooke, Imperfect Interpreters, p. 114; C. Jeannerat, ‘The Classification of Tradition in van Warmelo’s Writing' (unpublished paper, Johannesburg, 1998); L. Rizzo, ‘N. J. van Warmelo: Anthropology and the Making of a Reserve’, in G. Miescher and D. Henrichsen (eds), New Notes on Kaoko: The Northern Kunene Region (Namibia) in Texts and Photographs (Basel, Basler Afrika Bibliographien, 2000), pp. 189–206. W. Bleek, A Comparative Grammar of South African Languages (London, Trübner, 1869). O. Bremer, Review of Carl Meinhof's Grundriss einer Lautlehre der Bantusprachen in Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes, 14 (1900). C. Meinhof, Grundriss einer Lautlehre der Bantusprachen, Second ed. (Berlin, Dietrich Reimer/Ernst Vohsen, 1910), pp. 18–47. Ibid., V. AIAÄ, BII 1, Ubersetzung ‘Grundriss’ und Warmelo allgemein, letter from C. Meinhof to N. J. van Warmelo, 11 September 1927. Ibid., Meinhof to van Warmelo, 23 September 1927. Ibid., Meinhof to W. Freytag, Director of the Hanseatic Mission, Hamburg, 12 March 1931. Ibid., Meinhof to van Warmelo, 18 March 1929. Ibid., Meinhof to van Warmelo, 31 December 1929. P. Furlong, Between Crown and Swastika: The Impact of the Radical Right on the Afrikaner Nationalist Movement in the Fascist Era (Hanover and London, Wesleyan University Press, 1991). H. K. Haeberlin, ‘The Theoretical Foundation of Wundt’s Folk Psychology', in R. W. Rieber, A. Blumenthal, K. Danziger and S. Diamond (eds), Wilhelm Wundt and the Making of a Scientific Psychology (New York, Plenum Press, 1980), pp. 229–249, originally published in Psychological Review, 23 (1916), pp. 279–302. S. C. Krige, ‘ “Should Education Lead or Follow the Social Order?” The Welsh Report and the Policy of Segregation, 1935–1940’, South African Historical Journal, 28 (1992), pp. 151–176. C. Kros, ‘Economic, Political and Intellectual Origins of Bantu Education’ (PhD thesis, Johannesburg, 1996). Jeannerat, ‘The Classification of Tradition’; Rizzo, ‘N. J. van Warmelo’; C. Meinhof, ‘The Soul of an African Language’, International Review of Missions, 16 (1927), pp. 76–84. AIAÄ, BII 1, Ubersetzung ‘Grundriss’ und Warmelo allgemein, Meinhof to van Warmelo, 4 June 1929; Meinhof to van Warmelo, 2 July 1929. Ibid., Meinhof to van Warmelo, 8 October 1932. Ibid., Meinhof to van Warmelo, 28 March 1931. Ibid., van Warmelo to Meinhof, 26 November 1929. C. Meinhof, ‘Aus dem Seelenleben der Eingeborenen’, Jahrbuch über die deutsche Kolonien, II (1909), pp. 47–52. C. Meinhof, ‘Das Ful in seiner Bedeutung für die Sprachen der Hamiten, Semiten und Bantu’, Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft, 65 (1911), pp. 177–200. When journeying through East Africa in 1902–1903, Meinhof worked mainly in missionary circles; see C. Meinhof, ‘Ein Besuch bei der Universitäten‐Mission in Sansibar’, Die Evangelischen Missionen, 9 (1903), pp. 14–19. When he went to Egypt and the Sudan in 1914, he was flanked by his colleague, A. Klingenheben, and also met with various government and mission representatives; see C. Meinhof, Eine Studienfahrt nach Kordofan (Hamburg, L. Friedrichsen & Co., 1916). AIAÄ BII 1, Übersetzung Grundriss und Warmelo allgemein, van Warmelo to Meinhof, 4 March 1930. Ibid., van Warmelo to Meinhof, n.d., ca. October 1928. Ibid., van Warmelo to Meinhof, 22 July 1930. Bundesarchiv Berlin (hereafter BBA) R 1001 6171, correspondence of C. Meinhof to the Kolonialabteilung des Auswärtigen Amtes, 3 November 1899. AIAÄ BII 1, Übersetzung Grundriss und Warmelo allgemein, Meinhof to van Warmelo, 23 September 1927. C. Meinhof, Introduction to the Phonology of the Bantu Languages, N. J. van Warmelo trans. (Berlin, Dietrich Reimer/Ernst Vohsen, 1932), p. 82. Pugach, ‘Afrikanistik and Colonial Knowledge’, pp. 37–120. See for instance C. Meinhof, Sprachen der Hamiten (Berlin, L. Friedrichsen & Co., 1912), among other works. See A. J. Norval, Deconstructing Apartheid Discourse (London, Verso, 1996), pp. 18–24ff., for further discussion of how Afrikaners formulated the ‘native question’ in the 1930s and beyond. Van Warmelo, A Preliminary Survey of the Bantu Tribes of South Africa (Pretoria, Government Printer, 1935), p. 7. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid., p. 59. Ibid., p. 70. C. Meinhof, ‘The Language of the Hottentots’, Addresses and Papers Read at the Joint Meeting of the British and South African Associations for the Advancement of Science (Johannesburg, South African Association for the Advancement of Science, 1905), pp. 111–118. Van Warmelo, ‘Early Bantu Ethnography from a Philological Point of View’, pp. 31–48. Van Warmelo, A Preliminary Survey, p. 122. Ibid., p. 5, and personal communication from Patrick Harries, February 2002. Van Warmelo, A Preliminary Survey, pp. 5–6. C. Kros, ‘Eiselen: Idealists and Idealism Revisited’ (unpublished paper, Scottburgh, 1993), cited in Hammond‐Tooke, Imperfect Interpreters, p. 66. Kros, ‘Economic, Political and Intellectual Origins of Bantu Education’, especially chapter four. Norval, Deconstructing Apartheid Discourse, p. 162. Hammond‐Tooke, Imperfect Interpreters, p. 65. Ibid., p. 66. Ibid., p. 114. Hammond‐Tooke, ‘N. J. van Warmelo and the Ethnological Section’, African Studies, 54, 1 (1998), pp. 119–128. See for example BBA R 1001 6172, A. W. Schreiber, mission inspector from Barmen, to the Kolonialabteilung of the German foreign office, Berlin, 18 March 1901. Schreiber here argued that Meinhof’s methods were antithetical to the purpose of training missionaries for ‘practical’ work in Africa. C. Meinhof, Open Letter to Businessmen (Berlin, Druck von Gebrüder Jacob, 1908). AIAÄ BVIII 1, Intern. Inst. Gründung, Agenda for the conference of September 21–22, 1925, during which the primary organisational matters concerning the foundation of the International Institute of Languages and Cultures was discussed. AIAÄ BVIII 14, Intern. Inst., Meinhof, Gutachten über Orthogr., Seminar für Afrikanistik, correspondence of Lord Frederick Lugard to Carl Meinhof, November 28, 1927, and Meinhof to Lugard, 3 December 1927. Staatsarchiv Hamburg (hereafter StaH) 361–1, Hochschulwesen, Doz. u. Pers. Akten, I 290 Bd. 4, Beurlaubungen, Erkrankungen, 1910–1936 (Meinhof), Report by Meinhof on his trip to South Africa, submitted to the Hochschulbehörde, Hamburg, 13 June 1928. AIAÄ BII 1, Übersetzung ‘Grundriss’ und Warmelo allgemein, correspondence from Meinhof to Edgar Brookes, 21 September 1928. Hammond‐Tooke, ‘N.J. van Warmelo and the Ethnological Section’, pp. 123–125. Van Warmelo, Preliminary Survey, p. 9. Norval, Deconstructing Apartheid Discourse, p. 14, pp. 16–24. S. Dubow, ‘The Elaboration of Segregationist Ideology’, in Beinart and Dubow (eds), Segregation and Apartheid, pp. 145–175; M. Legassick, ‘British Hegemony and the Origins of Segregation in South Africa, 1901–14’, in ibid., pp. 43–59. Cocks, ‘Max Gluckman’. N. J. van Warmelo, Contributions Towards Venda History, Religion, and Tribal Rituals (Pretoria, The Government Press, 1932), p. 2. Ibid., p. 52. Rizzo, ‘N. J. van Warmelo’, pp. 189–206. Ibid., p. 205. Van Warmelo, A Preliminary Survey, p. 51. W. Ustorf, Sailing on the Next Tide: Missions, Missiology, and the Third Reich (Frankfurt a. M., Peter Lang, 2000), p. 10ff. For example, Doke contributed to the obituary of Meinhof that was published in African Studies in 1948. University of Cape Town Archives (hereafter UCT), BC 255 B 2 K 3, Lestrade Papers, G. P. Lestrade, ‘A Great Africanist’, n.d., ca. 1927–1928. Ibid. StAH 361–1, I 290 Bd. 4, Beurlaubungen, Erkrangungen, 1910–1936 (Meinhof), Renner to the auswärtige Amt, Berlin, copied to the Senat, Hamburg, 6 May 1928. Staats Archiv Hamburg (hereafter StAH) 361–1 I 290 Bd. 4, Beurlaubungen, Erkrangungen, 1910–1936 (Meinhof), Carl Meinhof to the Hochschulbehörde, Hamburg, 13 March 1928. ‘Study of African Languages: Meinhof on his Life Work’, Cape Times, 26 January 1928, p. 9. P. Kallaway, ‘F. S. Malan, the Cape Liberal Tradition, and South African Politics, 1908–1924’, Journal of African History, XV, I (1974), pp. 113–129. See J. Zwernemann, Culture History and Anthropology: a Century of Research in Germany and Austria (Uppsala, Ubsaliensis Academiae, 1983), p. 26ff. Meinhof, ‘The Language of the Hottentots’, pp. 111–118. G. Stocking, After Tylor: British Social Anthropology, 1888–1951 (Madison, University of Wisconsin Press, 1995), p. 106. C. G. Seligman, Races of Africa (London, Thornton Butterworth, 1930). H. Stoecker, ‘The Advancement of African Studies in Berlin by the “German Research Foundation”, 1920–1945’ (forthcoming, in R. Gordon and H. Tilley (eds) Anthropology, European Imperialism, and the Ordering of Africa, Manchester University Press). R. Gordon and A. D. Spiegel, ‘Southern African Revisited’, Annual Review of Anthropology, 22 (1993), pp. 83–105. T. D. Moodie, The Rise of Afrikanerdom: Power, Apartheid, and the Afrikaner Civil Religion (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1975), pp. 22–25ff. Gordon, ‘Serving the Volk with Volkekunde’, in J. Jansen (ed.) Knowledge and Power in South Africa (Johannesburg, Skotaville, 1991). J. S. Sharp, ‘The Roots and Development of Volkekunde in South Africa’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 8, 1 (1981), pp. 16–36. L. Poliakov, The Aryan Myth. A History of Racist and Nationalist Ideas in Europe (New York, Barnes and Noble, 1974, [1971]); G. Mosse, The Crisis of German Ideology: Intellectual Origins of the Third Reich (New York, Schocken, 1964); but see also Norval, Deconstructing Apartheid Discourse, pp. 77–79, for a contrary opinion on the influence of German thought on Afrikaner intellectuals. K. Benes, ‘Urheimat Asien: German Conceptions of Nationhood and the “Indo‐Germanic” Language Family, 1806–1830’ (unpublished PhD chapter, Seattle, 2001). See S. Dubow, Scientific Racism in Modern South Africa (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1995), p. 66ff. W. Bleek, ‘ “Grimm’s Law” in South Africa; or, Phonetic Changes in the South African Bantu Languages. I. – In the South‐Eastern Branch', Transactions of the Philological Society (1843), p. 4. Moodie, The Rise of Afrikanerdom, pp. 22ff. U. Trüper, Die Hottentottin: Das kurze Leben der Zara Schmelen (ca. 1793–1831), Missionsgehilfin und Sprachpionierin in Südafrika (Cologne, Rüdiger Köppe Verlag, 2000). K. Roller, ‘ “Wir sind Deutsche, wir sind Weiße und wollen Weiße bleiben” – Reichstagdebatten über koloniale “Rassenmischung” ’, in U. van der Heyden and J. Zeiler (eds), Kolonialmetropole Berlin: Eine Spurensuche (Berlin, Berlin Edition, 2002), pp. 73–79. G. Haussleiter, ‘Die Stellung der Mission zur Rassenfrage’, Verhandlungen der XII. Missions Konferenz zu Bremen vom 6. bis 10. Mai 1909 (Bremen, Kommissionsverlag der Norddeutschen Missions Gesellschaft, 1909), pp. 22–31. C. Meinhof, Die erziehende Kraft der Mission (Berlin, Buchhandlung der Berliner evangel. Missionsgesellschaft, 1910), pp. 13–14. Kros, ‘Economic, Political and Intellectual Origins of Bantu Education’, especially chapter three, which is entitled ‘Son of the Berlin Mission’. Ibid. S. Pugach, ‘Christianize and Conquer: Carl Meinhof, German Evangelical Missionaries, and the Debate over African Languages, 1905–1910’, in J. Becher and U. van der Heyden (eds), Mission und Gewalt: Der Umgang Christlicher Missionen mit Gewalt und die Ausbreitung des Christentums in Afrika und Asien in der Zeit von 1792 bis 1918/19 (Berlin, Franz Steiner Verlag, 2001), pp. 509–524. Kros, ‘Economic, Political and Intellectual Origins of Bantu Education’, chapter three. Norval, Deconstructing Apartheid Discourse, p. 162. C. Meinhof, ‘Die Bedeutung der experimentellen Phonetik für die Erforschung der afrikanischen Sprachen’, Vox (1913). As in G. L. Cleve, ‘Die Lippenlaute der Bantu und die Negerlippen, mit besonderer Berücksichtigung der Lippenverstümmelungen’, Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, 35 (1903), pp. 681–701

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