HELDSBACH - THE GERMAN MEANING

By Warime Guti

Heldsbach came into the spotlight beginning of this year when the ELCPNG 30th Synod was hosted there.But how many of us know where the mission station got its name and what it means."Heldsbach" is made up of two German word."Held" is the last name of a German missionary "Friedrich Held" and "Bach" in German would mean a creak or stream"Helds" could be writen in English as Held'sso Heldsbach would mean Held's Creek. 

Rev. Johaness Flierl name the station Heldsbach after this young missionary.The creak might be referred to the current Balic river that still flows near Heldsbach mission station proving the drinking water source and the power source where a dam for the 40kva mini-hydro is built there.

Picture Courtesy of Tanya Alone Zeriga

A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE LUTHERAN CHURCH IN PAPUA NEW GUINEA 

Johann Flierl (16 April 1858 – 30 September 1947), was a pioneer Lutheran missionary in New Guinea. He established mission schools and organised the construction of roads and communication between otherwise remote interior locations. Under his leadership, Lutheran evangelicalism flourished in New Guinea. He founded the Evangelical Lutheran Mission in the Sattelberg, and a string of filial stations on the northeastern coast of New Guinea including the Malahang Mission Station.

Flierl's old policy at Simbang, and the one that prevailed at Sattelberg, focused on education and called for preliminary language study and literacy development; how else could someone study the Bible, a fundamental precept of post-Reformation with them. The Kâte adults seemed more interested in the practical aspects of European life, particularly the ironware. The local communities, though were curious and frequently ascribed the presence of the missionaries to returning ancestors, benevolent spirit powers bearing material goods, and called them the Miti.[15] To the Kâte, these men were different from the land-hungry planters, who rarely left the confines of their plantations; missionaries, on the other hand, were friendly, willing to explore the interior, and interested in knowing the people, their language, and their country-side.[16] In part the variation in attitudes of the commercial and official interests, geographically located on the coast, and the evangelical attitudes, primarily located inland, but with supply, cultural and language links to the coast, is called by historians of colonialism "the rule of colonial difference."[17] The "rule of difference" explains the ways in which colonizers, and the colonised, legitimate policy and reaction. Primarily it focuses on the ways in which the Europeans justify their own actions, how they view the "colonized" and how they structure policy.[18]

Two groups of Germans inhabited Kaiser-Wilhelmsland. By far the largest group were the entrepreneurs, plantation owners, officials of the German New Guinea company, and government functionaires living in Finschhafen and Madang, and at plantations along the coast. They viewed the Kâte, and the other groups they encountered, differently from the evangelical Lutherans at Finschhafen and Sattelberg and their filial mission stations along the coast. For the businessmen and functionaires, the natives were another resource to be managed: for example, as rail tracks were laid along the coast, the products were loaded on to rail cars and pushed or pulled from point to point using human energy, rather than propelled by steam. Official visitors, both German and British, noted that the German plantation owners in particular were far more likely to use the lash than other groups.[19]

This was unacceptable for Flierl. Although the Kâte were indeed different, and some groups occasionally ate their enemies, he still saw them as children of God. For him, it was necessary to bring all children of God to the understanding of salvation. The first baptisms—those of two adult men—were performed in 1899, injected encouragement into the mission life. Personal acceptance of salvation was a fundamental precept of Lutheranism, and the instruction of the two men in Lutheran doctrine had preceded the baptism, although the work was slow and painstaking.[20] Flierl petitioned the Synod in Australia frequently for new missionaries, and in 1899, it sent Christian Keysser, who, it turned out, offered the spark needed for the great breakthrough in 1905.

Keysser understood better than Flierl the corporatist outlook of the Kâte people, and identified ways to bring them closer to the Word, primarily because he grasped a central feature of Guinean life that Flierl never understood: the Kâte could not conceive of themselves as autonomous individuals. Kâte concepts of self were woven inseparably into the context of extended families, clans, and ancestors. Consequently, the Kâte could not come individually to Christ—to do so would place one outside all social and cultural relationships—but rather, they had to come as a group. Keysser invented the method of group conversion, resulting in the first group baptisms in 1903, and mass conversions in 1905 and 1906.[21]

Recognizing that his own usefulness in the Sattelberg had ended, in 1904, Flierl handed the directorship to Keysser, and moved himself and his family—which now included four children—to Heldsbach, 5.8 kilometres (4 mi) away on the coast.[22] There, he started a commercial coconut plantation and acquired the Mission's first large vessel, The Bavaria, in 1907. He also took an extended trip to Europe, Australia and the United States, extending his contacts outside of Germany, and developing the Mission's financial resources.[23][24]


Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Flierl


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