Seminar Series: Abstract

Containing Chimbu ‘Witchcraft’ in the 1930s
Gabriele Richter

The German missionary Wilhelm Bergmann (1899-1987) was the Lutheran ‘pioneer missionary’ of the Highlands in the 1930s and head missionary of Ega station (near Kundiawa). Coming to Chimbu in 1934, Bergmann was surprised how openly Chimbu people welcomed the foreign newcomers in comparison to reactions he had experienced in other parts of the New Guinea Highlands. Chimbu people did not seem to fear that foreigners could harm them with ‘magic’. With time, Bergmann learned that it was not so much foreigners as people from within the communities who pose the real threat to Chimbu communities, because they could engage in Kumo – a phenomenon often called ‘witchcraft. Kumo presented a way to harm only people of one’s own group. People accused of Kumo were either killed or had to flee into exile.

Wilhelm Bergmann identified Kumo as the major danger to Chimbu society and labeled Kumo as the ‘bulwark of heathendom’. Up until World War II and again after the war, Lutheran mission personnel gave shelter to people accused of Kumo. If a person accused of Kumo came to live on a mission station, this was a kind of exile and nobody menaced this person further. He or she was still in the area, but belonged to a different group and different place then.

Taking into account missionaries’ texts (both Lutheran and Catholic) as well as later ethnological studies, the story of Lutheran mission dealings with Kumo shows why the Lutheran mission back then was initially so successful in countering the effects of Kumo. It was, however, no lasting success once the Lutheran mission expanded.

Gabriele Richter is a doctoral student at Rostock University (Germany) and visiting fellow in Pacific and Asian History.