Carl Christian Reindorf, He was a Gold coast pastor of the Basel Mission, a historian, teacher, farmer, trader and physician in the Gold Coast ( Now Ghana).
He was born at PramPram, east of Accra on 31 May 1834, to Carl Hackenburg Reindorf, a Danish soldier, and Anowah Cudjoe, a Ga woman from the Asare district of Accra.
In Accra he was sent to Danish school at Christiansborg Castle (1842–46) where he was
taught catechism and arithmetic in Danish and was baptized a Christian in 1844.
He left the Danish school at Christiansborg in 1846 to attend the Basel Mission (1846–55)
school under Rev. Johannes Zimmerman, but Zimmerman’s way of teaching the Ga
language displeased him, and he left school and started trading for one of his uncles (1850–52).
Carl Christian Reindorf parents wanted him to finish school, so he was brought back to the Basel Mission where a high school had been established.
After the bombardment of Christiansborg by the British naval vessel H. M.S. Scourge during
the poll tax riots of 1854, the mission had moved to Accra, and then to Abokobi, 15 miles
(24 km) from Accra, where a new mission house was built.
Carl Christian Reindorf had to interrupt his education again and worked as a catechist in
the same area, where he taught his pupils to read Ga books and interpreted the Bible to them.
In 1856, Carl Reindorf married Juliana Ayikai Mansah Djebi from a notable household.
The couple had eleven children including a prominent Gold Coast physician and a 1910
medical graduate of the Durham University, Dr. Charles Elias Reindorf, who died in 1968.
Teaching
Carl Christian Reindorf himself worked as a teacher of history at the catechists and
teachers’ seminary at Akropong (Akuapem) from November 1860 to April 1862.
In late 1863 Reindorf was appointed teacher at the newly founded middle school at Osu.
In 1866 he took part in the local war between the Ada (a Ga-Adangme group) and the
Awunas (Ewes from the Volta Region), acting as assistant surgeon.
After the war he was appointed head teacher of the Osu Middle School.
The course for students from the ages of fourteen to eighteen included subjects such as
biblical exegesis, theology, history and geography, English, and, for the senior classes, Greek.
Carl Christian Reindorf worked as a teacher at Osu until 1872.
He established a boarding school at Mayera with a dozen Ga boys from Accra. He lived and
worked in Mayera for a decade before returning to Christiansborg, Osu.
Works
Carl finished work on his notable book, A History of the Gold Coast and Asante in 1889.
This literary piece was originally written in the Ga language.
The English translation of the book was published in Basel in 1895.
Carl Christian Reindorf ’s History of the Gold Coast and Asante has a special place in West African historiography.
Drawing a colorful and lively picture of historical events, it was written from an African
point of view; in it Reindorf gave Africans a voice and the ability to actively shape history, in marked contrast to the views of his European predecessors and contemporaries.
In 1903, he was part of the committee at Abokobi that revised the Ga Bible, including
Ludwig Richter, Jakob Wilhelm Werz, Christian Kölle and Daniel Sabah.
The revision committee completed its work in 1912
Carl Christian Reindorf died at the age of eighty-three on July 1, 1917.
Good one.