The Norddeutsche Mission archives are located in the Staatsarchiv of Bremen, that is, the archives of the Staat or province of Bremen in West Germany. The headquarters of the Norddeutsche Missionsgesellschaft (the North German Mission Society) is also in Bremen, but their historical archives were given to the Staatsarchiv in the late 1960s because the mission no longer had space to store them properly. The Norddeutsche missionaries were active the Ewe areas of eastern Asante, the Gold Coast, and Togoland from the 1840s to the present. Consequently the material has great potential use for the west African historian. To my knowledge the archives have been used previously by Arthur Knoll (before the material was indexed and sent to the Staatsarchiv) for his Togo Under Imperial Germany 1884-1914 and by Peter Bühler in “The Volta Region of Ghana, Economic Change in Togoland 1850-1914,” (Ph.D. dissertation, University of California-San Diego, 1975). I feel, however, that these books and my own research in the archives barely touch the surface of the Bremen data.

The Staatsarchiv is open to the public, though I believe it is considered polite to write in advance and introduce yourself. The address is as follows:

Herr Director

Staatsarchiv Bremen

Präsident-Kennedy-Platz 2

2800 Bremen 1

West Germany

You should bring some evidence of institutional affiliation. I obtained the permission of the Norddeutsche Mission before going to the Staatsarchiv but I believe this is not necessary.

The Staatsarchiv file number for all the mission material is 7,1025. The index for this classification is approximately twenty pages and is divided into five quite unequal parts: Neuseeland (a brief attempt at missionary work there); West Africa; Die Missionare; Heimat; Bildarchiv.