Diedrich Hermann Westermann

Diedrich Hermann Westermann ( * June 24, 1875 in Baden, † May 31, 1956 ) was a German Africanist and anthropologist. He is, along with Carl Meinhof, one of the founders of scientific African whose first chair he held for 24 years.

Westermann made ​​by the school as a teaching assistant post, before he competed in the North German Mission to Bremen. From there he was sent in 1885 to the mission seminar in Basel. In addition to the lessons he taught autodidact without permission in Arabic. In 1900 he received the Entsendeauftrag in the German colony of Togo. He began his service in what is now Ghana and learned the Ewe language. He became the first European to become a competent speaker. However, an illness forced him to return home in 1903.

In Germany he evaluated his records and produced a training manual for German - Ewe - speakers to a dictionary and a grammar of Ewe. In Tübingen, he worked on the translation of the Bible into Ewe. In 1907, he again traveled to Togo, but again he had to return home due to illness.

1908 called him Carl Meinhof as a language teacher for Ewe at the Department of Oriental Languages ​​in Berlin. In 1909 he was appointed as Professor Meinhof's successor.

Westermann was 1938-1941 chairman of the Berlin Society for Anthropology, Ethnology and Prehistory. In 1955 he was awarded the Rudolf Virchow plaque.

Author ( selection)

• Africans tell their life. Eleven self-portrayals of African natives of all educational levels and professions and from all parts of Africa. Essen Publishing Company, 1940, passim, last Evang. Verlagsgesellschaft, Berlin (GDR) 1965 - Französ. Version Payot, Paris
• With Hermann Baumann & Richard Thurnwald: Ethnology of Africa. With particular reference to the colonial task. Essen Publishing Company 1940
• The African Today and Tomorrow ibid. 1937
• Together with Ida C. Ward: Practical Phonetics for Students of African Languages, for the International African Institute, Oxford University Press, London 1933