Heinrich Vieter, SAC, was a German Pallottine missionary to the German colony of Kamerun (today Cameroon).
Heinrich Vieter arrived in Douala with seven other members of the mission on 25 October 1890. [1] Over the next 13 years, Vieter led the Pallottines as they opened missions and schools across the territory. [2]
He befriended the young Ntsama Atangana at the mission school in Kribi; Atangana would later gift the Pallottines with land in Jaunde (Yaoundé). [3]
When a Bulu leader Martin-Paul Samba was sentenced to death for treason against Germany in 1914, Vieter appealed for a stay, but his requests were ignored. [4]
Vieter taught at the Seminar für Orientalische Sprachen (SOS), (usually known in English as the Oriental Seminary) in Berlin sometime between 1909 and 1915, along with Hermann Nekes . [5] [6]
A process of beatification of Vieter was initiated by the Archbishop of Jaunde in early 2005, on the 100th anniversary of the establishment of the Apostolic Vicariate of Cameroon.[ citation needed ]
Cameroon, officially the Republic of Cameroon, is a country in Central Africa. It shares boundaries with Nigeria to the west and north, Chad to the northeast, the Central African Republic to the east, and Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, and the Republic of the Congo to the south. Its coastline lies on the Bight of Biafra, part of the Gulf of Guinea, and the Atlantic Ocean. Due to its strategic position at the crossroads between West Africa and Central Africa, it has been categorized as being in both camps. Cameroon's population of nearly 31 million people speak 250 native languages, in addition to the national tongues of English and French, or both. Early inhabitants of the territory included the Sao civilisation around Lake Chad and the Baka hunter-gatherers in the southeastern rainforest. Portuguese explorers reached the coast in the 15th century and named the area Rio dos Camarões, which became Cameroon in English. Fulani soldiers founded the Adamawa Emirate in the north in the 19th century, and various ethnic groups of the west and northwest established powerful chiefdoms and fondoms.
The Bakweri are a Bantu ethnic group of the Republic of Cameroon. They are closely related to Cameroon's coastal peoples, particularly the Duala and Isubu.
The Cameroon People's Democratic Movement is the ruling political party in Cameroon. Previously known as the Cameroonian National Union, which had dominated Cameroon politics since independence in the 1960s, it was renamed in 1985. The national president of the CPDM is Paul Biya, the president of Cameroon, while the secretary-general of the party's Central Committee is Jean Nkuete.
The Pallottines, officially named the Society of the Catholic Apostolate, abbreviated SAC, is a Society of Apostolic Life of Pontifical Right for men in the Roman Catholic Church, founded in 1835 by the Roman Catholic priest Saint Vincent Pallotti. Pallottines are part of the Union of Catholic Apostolate and are present in 45 countries on six continents. The Pallottines administer one of the largest churches in the world, the Basilica of Our Lady of Peace of Yamoussoukro in Côte d'Ivoire.
The Duala are a Bantu ethnic group of Cameroon. They primarily inhabit the littoral and southwest region of Cameroon and form a portion of the Sawabantu or "coastal people" of Cameroon. The Dualas readily welcomed German and French colonial policies. The number of German-speaking Africans increased in central African German colonies prior to 1914. The Duala leadership in 1884 placed the tribe under German rule. Most converted to Protestantism and were schooled along German lines. Colonial officials and businessmen preferred them as inexpensive clerks to German government offices and firms in Africa. They have historically played a highly influential role in Cameroon due to their long contact with Europeans, high rate of education, and wealth gained over centuries as slave traders and landowners.
Charles Atangana, also known by his birth name, Ntsama, and his German name, Karl, was born in 1880. He was the paramount ruler of Douala.
Martin-Paul Samba, born Mebenga m'Ebono was a Bulu military officer during the Imperial German colonial period of Cameroon. M'Ebono became a favourite of the German colonials during his upbringing in Kribi, a coastal settlement in southern Cameroon. He was sent to Germany in 1891 to enter the German Military Academy; he was baptised Martin-Paul Samba while abroad. Upon graduation, Samba returned to Cameroon and accompanied German military expeditions across the colony.
Neukamerun was the name of Central African territories ceded by the Third French Republic to the German Empire in 1911. Upon taking office in 1907, Theodor Seitz, governor of Kamerun, advocated the acquisition of territories from the French Congo.
Mvolyé or Mvolye is a neighbourhood of Yaoundé, Cameroon. Around 1900, during Cameroon's colonial period, the site was part of the lands ruled by Karl Atangana. Atangana donated part of the area to the German Pallottine Fathers, a Roman Catholic missionary group. The Ewondo people had previously been unable to settle it due to a large rock there. The Fathers built a permanent mission, which opened Central and Eastern Cameroon to Christianisation. Atangana remained chief of the area.
The Pallottine Mission to Kamerun was a Roman Catholic mission to the German colony of Kamerun run by the Pallottines in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. When the German Empire became the colonial power of Kamerun in 1884, French Catholic groups were denied permission to set up a mission in the territory. The Germans were not eager to allow Catholics in at all, let alone foreign ones. They relented two years later when the German and Swiss-run Pallottines requested entry. Permission came with the following conditions: The Pallottines were not to compete directly with the already established Protestant Basel Mission, they were to accept no orders from any non-German authority, they were to employ only German or African staff, and they were to use and teach only the German language.
Jaunde-Texte von Karl Atangana und Paul Messi is a book written by Karl Atangana and Paul Messi and edited by linguist Martin Heppe. Atangana compiled the book while living in Hamburg, Germany, from 1911 to 1913. It consists of his letters and of the folklore and oral history he had learned as a young Ewondo boy in Africa prior to the establishment of the German Kamerun colony. It was published in Hamburg in 1919. Today, the Jaunde-Texte is an important source on the early history of the Ewondo and related peoples.
Marie-Thérèse Assiga Ahanda was a Cameroonian novelist, chemist, and paramount chief of the Ewondo and Bene people. Early in life, Ahanda worked for the Chemistry Department of the University of Yaoundé. She later moved to the Republic of the Congo with her husband, Jean Baptiste Assiga Ahanda, and took to writing. When they returned to Cameroon, Ahanda became an elected delegate in the National Assembly of Cameroon, a position she held from 1983 to 1988. Ahanda became the Ewondo paramount chief in 1999. In December 2000, she began renovating her father's palace at Efoulan, Yaoundé, a project that cost an estimated 150,000,000 francs CFA. Ahanda is the daughter of Charles Atangana—paramount chief of the Ewondo and Bene peoples under the German and French colonial regimes—by his second wife, Julienne Ngonoa.
Rudolf Duala Manga Bell was a Duala king and resistance leader in the German colony of Kamerun (Cameroon). After being educated in both Kamerun and Europe, he succeeded his father Manga Ndumbe Bell on 2 September 1908.
A Council of Notables is a political body comprising persons of note in a community who are chosen by the governing authority in the region for their special knowledge, experience, skills, status or accomplishments. Such councils have existed in many regions and countries throughout the world. "Whether in village, province, or capital, there is, a conclave of local authorities of whose opinion the ruler — be it conqueror, governor, or sovereign — is bound to take account, though he is not bound to obey their decisions."
Joseph Merrick was a Jamaican Baptist missionary who, assisted by Joseph Jackson Fuller, established the first successful mission on the Cameroon coast of Africa.
The Cameroonian economic crisis was a downturn in the economy of Cameroon from the mid-1980s to the early 2000s. The crisis resulted in rising prices in Cameroon, trade deficits, and loss of government revenue. The government of Cameroon acknowledged the crisis in 1987. Outside observers and critics blamed poor government stewardship of the economy. The government instead placed the blame on the fall of the prices of export commodities, particularly a steep drop in the price of petroleum. President Paul Biya announced that "all our export commodities fell at the same time."
The Kamerun campaign took place in the German colony of Kamerun in the African theatre of the First World War when the British, French and Belgians invaded the German colony from August 1914 to March 1916. Most of the campaign took place in Kamerun but skirmishes also broke out in British Nigeria. By the Spring of 1916, following Allied victories, the majority of German troops and the civil administration fled to the neighbouring neutral colony of Spanish Guinea. The campaign ended in a defeat for Germany and the partition of its former colony between France and Britain.
The Cathedral of Saints Peter and Paul - situated in Douala, Cameroon - is the cathedral of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Douala and dedicated to St Peter and St Paul.
The following is a timeline of the history of the city of Yaoundé, Cameroon.
Ernst Friedrich Gustav Worms, also known as Ernest Ailred Worms or Ernst Alfred Worms, was a German Catholic missionary and anthropologist who lived and worked among Aboriginal Australians in Western Australia. He became an expert in Aboriginal languages, and an important contributor to the development of both Australian studies of native languages, and to the ethnography of the continent's Indigenous peoples.