Karl Wilhelm Posselt, Date of Birth, Date of Death
TweetKarl Wilhelm Posselt
German missionary
Date of Birth: 20-Jun-1815
Date of Death: 12-May-1885
Profession: missionary
Nationality: German Empire
Zodiac Sign: Gemini 
About Karl Wilhelm Posselt
- Karl/Carl Wilhelm Posselt (20 June 1815 Diekow, Berlinchen, Neumark, Prussia – 12 May 1885 Christianenburg, Natal, South Africa), was a German missionary from the Berlin Missionary Society and was active in South Africa where he became known as "the missionary with the violin". Posselt initially trained as a teacher at Neuzelle, but became inspired by mission work during his training and attended a seminary in Berlin from 1834-39.
- On 21 December 1839 he disembarked at Table Bay after a voyage from Hamburg on the Devonshire.
- He arrived as a member of the Berlin Missionary Society and in the company of fellow missionaries Ludwig Liefeldt and Johannes Winter. Posselt served his apprenticeship under Carl Friedrich Schultheiss (1815-1855) at the Itemba mission station on the Kubusie River near Stutterheim in Kaffraria.
- Here he also learnt the rudiments of the Xhosa language.
- Itemba was razed during the Frontier War of 1846-47, rebuilt and redestroyed in 1850.
- Posselt and Liefeldt started a new mission station Emmaus, which was renamed Wartburg, on the Indwe River, only to have that sacked as well.
- Posselt then started work among the Zulu people living below the Drakensberg in Natal and near the modern-day Bergville.
- With Wilhelm Guldenpfennig he founded a new station there, again named Emmaus, and existing to this day.
- In 1856 when hostilities again broke out, Posselt fled to Pietermaritzburg.
- There he served the community of Neu-Deutschland which had been founded in 1848 with the arrival of 182 German settlers from Bremen, and whose main activity was growing cotton.
- Then it was located just outside Port Natal, but today forms part of Westville in Durban.
- The settlers had been recruited from Bramsche near Osnabrück by a director of the "Natal Cotton Company", Jonas Bergtheil in order to cultivate cotton.
- The cotton-growing project soon failed and the colonists started growing vegetables to supply the demand in Port Natal.
- Some of the Germans moved inland and started the settlement of Neu-Hanover or New Hanover near Pietermaritzburg. Posselt returned to Emmaus when the community of Neu-Deutschland seemed to be on the point of dissolving, but went back when the rifts were healed.
- In 1858 he settled at the mission station he had founded in 1854 and named Christianenburg after his first wife, situated close to Neu-Deutschland and forming part of present-day Clermont Township.
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