Name Heinrich Vedder | ||
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Died April 26, 1972, South-West Africa | ||
Hermann Heinrich Vedder (* 3 July 1876 in Westerenger, Westfalen, Germany; † 26 April 1972 in Okahandja, South-West Africa) was a German missionary, linguist, ethnologist and historian. Originally a silk weaver, he received missionary training by the Rhenish Missionary Society in Barmen between 1894 and 1903, whereafter he was sent to German South-West Africa in 1905 and worked as a missionary and teacher trainer until his retirement, first for the black workers and prisoners-of-war in Swakopmund, then at the small mission station Gaub in the Otavi Mountains, and from 1922 onwards in Okahandja, where he taught at the Augustineum school. After his retirement, the National Party Government of South Africa nominated his as Senator to represent the Namibian 'natives' (who had no vote) in the South African Senate, where he vehemently defended the policy of apartheid.
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Vedder spoke fluently Oshindonga, Khoekhoe, and Otjiherero. He spent a lot of his time recording oral history and folklore and wrote school textbooks in Otjiherero and Khoekhoegowab.
His best known works are the ethnographic treatise Die Bergdama on history and culture of the Damara, his work on the pre-colonial history of South-West Africa, South West Africa in Early Times, and his contribution to The native tribes of South West Africa. Vedder's historiography has been heavily criticized by recent academic historians for being not referenced and for its colonial apologetics and settler bias.
He received honorary doctorates from the Universities of Tübingen (1925) and Stellenbosch (1949). A suburb of Okahandja is named Veddersdal (Afrikaans: Vedder's valley) in his honour.