J. L. Krapf and his role in researching and describing East-African languages.

• Main Author: Griefenow-Mewis, Catherine
• Other Authors: Humboldt Universität zu Berlin, Institut für Asien und Afrikawissenschaften
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Universitätsbibliothek Leipzig 2012
• Subjects: Swahili; Krapf; Mission; deskriptive Linguistik; Ostafrika; Descriptive Linguistics; East Africa; ddc:496; Empirische Linguistik; Johann Ludwig
• Online Access: http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bsz:15-qucosa-95605; http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bsz:15-qucosa-95605; http://www.qucosa.de/fileadmin/data/qucosa/documents/9560/3_12_Mewis.pdf

Dealing with the bibliographies and publications about and by J. L. Krapf, especially in the archives of the Basle Mission I was astonished and I got the feeling that such an amount and such a variety of work could not have been done by one person only. At fist, Krapf was a missionary by profession. He and Rebmann were called the pioneers of the East-African mission. Beyond this, however, different missionary societies were encouraged by the publications and proposals of Krapf to work in East Africa, e.g. the Church Missionary Society in the service of which Krapf and Rebmann started their work in Rabai Mpya, the Swedish Evangelical mission, the Methodist Mission, the St. Crishona Mission, the Hermannsburg Mission and the Berlin Evangelical Mission. Though all biographers cannot avoid to state that Krapf did not convince more than two (some biographies speak about only one) persons to the Christian belief during all of his missionary life there is no doubt that Krapfs visions influenced missionary work in East Africa. We can say that he was a strategist of Christian mission in East Africa