Description

Hans Christian KNUDSEN (1816 – 1863).

Cape Town: Pike & Philip, 1845. 

 

The Nama (or Khoekhoe) language is an ancient and distinct tongue, best known for its signature ‘click consonants’, is spoken by the Nama, Damara and Haiǁom peoples, traditionally nomadic pastoralists, who are variously native to Namibia, northwestern South Africa and western Botswana, all members of the larger Khoisan (non-Bantu) ethnic group.

 

The Nama language has a very rich oral tradition but was historically never written.  The first European to seriously study the Nama language and apply it to paper was Georg Friedrich Wreede (1635-72), a German adventurer and official of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) who was stationed in Cape Town from 1659 to 1665, before becoming the Governor of Mauritius.  Sadly, Wreede’s manuscript lexicon, which was never published, is thought to have perished, although small fragments of his work were preserved within the printed works of some of his contemporaries, like Hiob Ludolf.  For well over a century thereafter, very little effort was made to study the Nama language.

 

The Nama people were originally native to the Orange River Valley (which marks the modern South Africa-Namibia frontier), but over the centuries, migration saw their territories expand across much of Namibia, the ‘Namaqualand’ region of South Africa and western Botswana. 

 

From the early 19^th century, the trajectory of the Nama tribes in southern Namibia was dramatically altered by the arrival of European missionaries.  The first missionaries to live amongst the Nama were Abraham and Christian Albrecht of the London Missionary Society (LMS), who in 1806 set up a station at Warmbad, in the deep south of Namibia.  In 1814, Johann Heinrich Schmelen established an LMS mission station at Bethanie, to the north, which became a nucleus for the other missions.  The LMS missionaries were soon joined by their allied colleagues from the Rhenish (German Lutheran) Missionary Society.  The leading member of that organization was Hans Christian Knudsen, a Norwegian missionary, who was based in Bethanie from 1842-7 and briefly again in 1849, who was the first of his colleagues to seriously study and write the Nama language, and to translate it into European languages.

 

The influence of the missionaries in Namibia caused many of the Nama tribes to change their lifestyle from being nomadic pastoralists to settling in villages, from where they tended their herds.  While the missionaries (including Knudsen) suffered many setbacks, Christian evangelical activities became so widespread in Namibia that for many decades the country had the highest percentage of Christians than any other place in Africa.

 

Germany assumed colonial control of Namibia in 1884, creating the protectorate of Deutsch-Südwestafrika.  Tragically, during the Herero Wars (1904-8), or the Herero Uprising (German: Herero-Aufstand), the Germans committed a genocide that led to the deaths of a large percentage of the Nama people.  The Nama, who were to suffer further under the Apartheid regime of the Republic of South Africa (which ruled South West Africa from 1948 to 1990), have taken generations to recover from the genocide.

 

Fortunately, as of late, the Nama people and their language are enjoying something of a renaissance.  Upon Namibia’s independence in 1991, the Nama regained a level of self-determination, while Nama became one of the official national languages.  Today, there are an estimated 167,000 speakers of Nama, and the language is being formally studied and preserved by a new programme at the University of Cape Town.

 

The Present Work in Focus

 

This lovely little gem is historically significant as the first Nama (Khoekhoe) language primer and one of the earliest language primers published in Sub-Saharan Africa.  It is the first of what were Knudsen’s three foundational Nama language works, with the present example being a gorgeous unsophisticated example, unbound and tied with original string, exactly as it was issued by the publisher in Cape Town in 1845.

 

The primer was initially intended to be used by missionaries to teach the Nama basic English and to introduce to them the tenets of Christianity, although it was also employed by Europeans to learn how to basically communicate with the Nama in their native tongue.  The subtitle of the work translates as the ‘Shouting Together and Reading Book’, as the Nama tended to learn orally in group settings.  Knudsen’s application of Nama to the Latin alphabet is typified using punctuation to denote the language’s signature “click consonants”, which Knudsen called “Smacktones”.

 

The contents of the work include: a basic multiplication table (p. 2); a Roman to Arabic numeral conversion (p. 2); an explanation of pronunciation, noting “. , ,, *” – “Smacktone – marks always prefaced to words” and the pronunciation of specific Latin characters as pertaining to Nama (p. 3); a Nama Alphabet in Latin characters noting “The 10 letters that are to be pronounced with and without Smacktones” (p. 3); a lexicon translating categorized Nama terms into English, including I. Monosyllables, II. Dissyllables, III. Words consisting of three or more Syllables (pp. 4-9); and IV. Miscellanies translating the 10 Plagues of Egypt, months and days, Biblical names, and the books of the Old and New Testament (pp. 9-12), V. ‘The five Divisions of the Catechism’, the Ten Commandments, part of St. Augustine’s creed and the Lord’s Prayer, &c. (pp. 13-6).

 

Hans Christian Knudsen: Missionary, Artist and Pioneering Recorder and Translator of the Nama Language

 

Hans Christian Knudsen (1816 – 1863), a Norwegian missionary, linguist and artist, was one of the most consequential figures of mid-19^th century Namibia and the study and appreciation of various Khoisan cultures.  A native of Bergen, he studied painting and lithography at the Bergen Academy of Art and Design, and while highly talented, he found no career path in these fields.

 

In 1836, Knudsen joined the Rhenish Missionary Society, in Elberfeld-Barmen (in the German Rhineland), whereupon he completed four years of training for being an overseas missionary.  In 1841, he was dispatched to Namibia to serve with the legendary, but now elderly, German missionary Heinrich Schmelen (1776–1848), the founder of the Bethanie mission.  He completed a short sojourn with Schmelen, who became his mentor, in the Komaggas region of Namaqualand (northwestern South Africa).

 

In November 1842, Knudsen arrived in Bethanie to take charge of what was the ‘mother mission’ of the Rhenish Society in Namibia.  He formed an immediate love for the Khoisan peoples and their languages and cultures.  He worked with Nama chiefs to develop a code of laws to govern their tribes (traditionally this had been done in an arbitrary manner), some key aspects of which are still followed to the present day.

 

Knudsen, who was known locally by his Nama name, *Kunudsib, travelled widely throughout southern and central Namibia, venturing as far north as Windhoek, whereupon he executed numerous high quality paintings and drawings of Khoisan chieftains, the daily life of the indigenous peoples and landscapes, some of which preserved today in German and South African institutions, and are considered to be amongst the most important historical documentary artworks of Namibia.

 

For a time, Knudsen encountered great success in converting the Nama in the Bethanie area to Christianity.  Paul Goliath, the local chief of the Oorlam subtribe of the Nama, was an enthusiastic convert, and was instrumental in encouraging his brethren to join the faith.  Knudsen rebuilt Schmelen’s House (today considered to be the oldest surviving building in Namibia) and founded a new station at Gudbrandsdalen (named after Knudsen’s childhood home near Bergen).

 

Knudsen developed an impassioned talent for the Nama language, and from 1844 to 1846 engaged in intensive daily training with two Nama translators to master its challenging pronunciation and ‘click consonants’.  This led him to write the three foundational works on the Nama language, the present NAMA- A.B.Z. Kannis… (1845); the .’Gai.:Hoas sada ‘Kub Jesib Kristib dis, .zi ‘naizannati. [The Gospel of St. Luke translated into Nama by H.C. Knudsen, to which are added Forty Hymns in Nama, and an Explanation in the Same Language of the Foreign Words occurring in the Translation] (Cape Town: Pike & Philip, 1846), 69 pp.: and the Spelling Leaf in the Namaqua Language (Cape Town: Pike & Philip, [1846]), 4 pp.  Additionally, the National Library of South Africa (Cape Town) holds his manuscript works “Südafrica: Das Hottentot-Volk: Notizzen” [South Africa: The Khoikhoi: Notes], and “Stoff zu einer Grammatik in der Namaquasprache” [Fundamentals of Grammar in the Nama Language].

 

From 1847 to 1849, Knudsen took leave to Europe, where he visited Norway and the Rhenish Society’s headquarters in Germany.  During this time, he published an account of southern Namibia, Groß-Namaqualand: Freunden und Freundinnen in herzlicher Liebe gewidmet (Barmen: Joh. Friedr. Steinhaus, 1848), 59 pp.

 

Upon Knudsen’s return to Bethanie, in 1849, he was horrified to see that almost all his efforts had become undone in his absence.  The locals were no longer adhering to Christianity and seemed to be entirely fixated on following the Oorlam head-chief Jonker Afrikaner on raids against the Herero peoples.  When Knudsen declared that he was opposed to the raids, the head-chief expelled him from Bethanie.

 

Knudsen became despondent upon the collapse of his mission in Bethanie, a state of mind not helped by the fact that his wife fell mentally ill (and eventually had to be institutionalized).  For almost five years, he roamed around the northwestern part of the Cape Colony, half-heartedly assisting in various missionary endeavours, but his passion was gone.  In 1854, Knudsen returned to Norway, where for the rest of his days he made a hardscrabble living as an itinerant preacher.

 

Knudsen left an estimable legacy in that his Nama works became the foundation of the formal study and conservation of the language.  In the short term, J.C. Wallmann, inspector of the Rhenish Missionary Society, relied heavily upon them to create his groundbreaking Vocabular der Namaqua Sprache nebst einem Abrise der Formenlehre derselben [Vocabulary of the Nama Language and Fundamentals of its Grammar] (Barmen: Joh. Friedr. Steinhaus, 1854), while people continued to refer to Knudsen’s works for many sears.

 

A Note on Rarity

 

The present work is very rare, consistent with virtually all South African imprints from the first half of the 19^th century.  We can trace 6 institutional examples, held by the National Library of South Africa (Cape Town); University of Witwatersrand Library; University of Cape Town Library; New York Public Library; Lilly Library (Indiana University); and the Universiteit Leiden.  We can trace 2 other examples of the work as having appeared on the market since 1963, one of which one was sold at a South African auction in 2013 (for U.S. $4,998), while the other was offered by Bonham’s London in 2008.

 

References: National Library of South Africa (Cape Town) G.39.c.24 [Sir George Grey Collection]; University of Witwatersrand Library: PL 8541.4 KNU, Cullen Africa Pam; University of Cape Town Library: BBL 496.25703 KNUD 50/1576; New York Public Library: *KF 1845 (Knudsen, H. C. Nama- A.B.Z. : kannis, :gei); Lilly Library (Indiana University): PL8541 .K58 1845; Universiteit Leiden: Closed Stack 3 ; 8000 E 9; OCLC: 1017309829, 41309119, 68982296.  Cf. Walter Moritz (ed.), Das älteste Schulbuch in Südwestafrika, Namibia, H. C. Knudsen und die Namafibel (Swakopmund, South West Africa [Namibia], 1978).