1. Skip to content
  2. Skip to main menu
  3. Skip to more DW sites
In focus
LA firesTrump inaugurationGerman election 2025
Latest audioLatest videos
Live TV
Religion

Successful Evangelizing - Revisiting Africa

January 8, 2023

We accompany a 92-year-old woman on a journey from Germany to Tanzania — a pilgrimage to the country of her birth and a revisiting of German Protestant missionary work in East Africa. Both Ruth Köhne’s father and her grandfather were sent out by the Berlin-based Protestant missionary society "Bethel” to Bukoba on Lake Victoria in what is now Tanzania.

https://p.dw.com/p/4Lrp8

There they ran a school, a music academy and vocational training institutions. It appears that the two pastors approached their work without colonialist prejudices. Ruth Köhne had great admiration for her father, who quickly mastered two local languages. In Bukoba he is still revered, and the local bishop keeps in touch with Ruth and her siblings. Bishop Keshomshara has repeatedly invited Ruth to visit the diocese, and now at the age of ninety-two she has decided to go. Following the story of Ruth’s father, Otto Hagena, through the memories of his now elderly daughter, our report focuses on German Protestant missionary activity in East Africa yesterday and today. Did the Church make mistakes in the past? How was missionary activity perceived by the local population? And what is the current situation in Kigarama? What remains of the missionaries’ ’legacy, and what are the challenges now facing the East African Church?

Skip next section About the show

About the show

DW Sendungslogo Glaubenssachen englisch (Faith Matters)

Faith Matters — The Church Program

What people build on, what gives them support and the values they hold: For many, that is a question of faith. Every first Sunday of the month DW's monthly feature on religion gives insights into matters of faith.

Go to show Faith Matters