Jakob Erhardt

Johann Jakob Erhardt ( born April 17, 1823 in Boennigheim; † August 14, 1901 in Stuttgart ) was a German missionary who worked in Africa and India.

Life

Erhardt was the son of a master tailor, and went to his native town at a cooper in teaching. About working in Boennigheim Pietists he came to Basel Mission, where he was trained as a missionary until 1846. From 1846 to 1848 he was with the Church Mission Society in London, where he was ordained in 1848. Then he was sent to East Africa, where he was active in mission with Johann Ludwig Krapf and Johannes Rebmann. How Krapf and Rebmann and Erhardt was active except for the missionary work still to research on geology and language and took care of later when Krapf almost only dedicated research trips, together with Rebmann to the expansion of the mission station Rabbai Mpia in Mombasa.

For health reasons, Erhardt 1855 returned to Europe. In 1856 he married in Basel and East Africa published a card, which also results from the research of Krapf and Rebmann had been incorporated and which was doubted by contemporaries initially (including held to snow-capped mountains in Africa to be impossible ). 1857 Erhardt put a dictionary to transfer the Masai language into English before.

Until 1891 he worked for the Basel Mission still at four different mission stations in India. Even there he pursued language studies and wrote two song books in the local languages.

His retirement spent Erhardt in Stuttgart, where he died in 1901. In the Boennigheim Jakob Erhardt Street was named after him.