"Strömberg to Basel"

He discusses building plans and reports difficulty with the sawyer’s work because of laziness. Strömberg replies to criticisms made to him by Inspector Josenhans, especially over his suggested wife over whom he had asked the Basel Committee to open negotiations on his behalf. The lady was mentioned in an earlier letter to Basel as a daughter of Dr. Fjellstedt. The Basel letter seems to have raised some questions about her social background. Strömberg protests that he was raised in the upper classes just like the members of the Basel Mission Committee, and since the missionaries of the Basel Mission come from the same class, too he has to battle inter alia with the characteristic spirit of that class. He is not convinced that he should find his wife from the same social class as the missionaries on the Gold Coast. There is an article in Heidenbote 1862 pp55ff entitled 'The crisis in our West African Mission' which is partly concerned with the problem of relations between wives from different social and national background. There is a reply from Josenhans (Series D-2, No 7 in the Kibi letter book, folio 100) from 12th December 1862 which is addressed to both Kromer and Strömberg. Strömberg does not seem to have noticed this in his reply. Paragraph 2 deals with the wives, and the sentences to which Strömberg appears to have taken exception is 'eine solche Tochter in die Afrikanischen Verhältnisse hineinsenden nach Kibi, das ist eine Unmöglichkeit. Von uns hat niemand den Muth bei Fjellstedt anzuhalten. Das musst Strömberg selbst thun’. This follows a sentence which states that Fjellstedt's elder daughter had married a Baron, and the other two were likely to go the same way. Most of the paragraph is about the dangers of having wives in a station before the accommodation was ready - this had been the root of the trouble over the Haas’ family at Gyadam according to Josenhans.

03.02.1862

03.02.1862

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