Friedrich Augustus Louis Ramseyer also Fritz Ramseyer (7 October 1840 – 6 August 1914) was a Swiss-born Basel missionary, who was captured by the Asante in 1869 in colonial Ghana, together with his wife Rosa Louise Ramseyer (née Bontemps), Basel mission technical staff, Johannes Kühne and French trader, Marie-Joseph Bonnat. Ramseyer was later released in 1874 and pioneered the Christian mission in Kumasi and the rest of Asante. Additionally, he spearheaded the planting of churches in Abetifi. Apart from his evangelism, Ramseyer was instrumental in the expansion of opportunities in the fields of education, artisan industry training, land acquisition for building design and manpower development in the areas he lived and worked in.
Early life and education
Friedrich "Fritz" Augustus Louis Ramseyer was born on 7 October 1840, in Neuchâtel in the Francophone region of Switzerland. Dating to 1646, Ramsyer's ancestry can be traced to the Emmental in the canton of Bern, known for its cheese-making industry. There is a village named Ramsei in Emmental, a valley in West Central Switzerland surrounded by limestone-rich ranges of the Jura Mountains. The Kwahu mountain range in Ghana is analogous in topography to the Jura Mountains.
At the age of eighteen, he studied German at a college where he became interested in missionary work and was involved in a Christian Youth Group, before completing his mandatory military service. Taking after his father who was a building contractor, Ramseyer trained as a builder and a mason in his hometown. In 1861, when he was twenty-one years old, he proceeded to the Basel Mission Seminary in Basel, Switzerland, to train as a mission technical staff. In 1864, Fritz Ramseyer arrived on the Gold Coast for the first time to assist the mission in its structural work, completing the construction of the Basel Mission Seminary buildings at Akropong. The Basel Mission then appointed Ramseyer the principal of the boys’ middle school at Akropong, where he began to learn the Twi language. He was later ordained a Protestant minister during a furlough home in 1875.
Work on the Gold Coast
Socio-political context In 1865, the British colonial government was contemplating abandoning the Gold Coast as a colony due to perceived economic unviability in the impenetrable forested middle belt of Ghana. Eager to keep its missionary presence on the Gold Coast, the Basel Mission Home Committee assigned one of its missionaries, Elias Schrenk (1831–1913), on a fact-finding and diplomatic task; proving to Westminster that the development of infrastructure, particularly roads would open up the natural resource-rich forest Akan hinterland. He sailed to London and argued his case before the parliamentary committee after petitioning the Colonial Secretary. Schrenk was successful in his mission and the Gold Coast remained a British colony.
Between 1854 and 1859, Elias Schrenk studied at the Basel Mission Seminary in Switzerland before embarking to Ghana, where he lived until 1872. Schrenk, a believer in Pietist faith healing, was the General Treasurer of the Basel Mission Trading Company in Christiansborg and later experimented with cocoa planting in the early 1870s in Ghana. Gravely ill in 1858, Schrenk had visited faith healers in Germany, Johann Blumhardt at Bad Boll and subsequently Dorothea Trudel at Mannedorf between 1858 and March 1859, where he was fully healed.
In mapping out a route to Kumasi, the missionaries considered two options. Firstly, they sought to build up a focal station in Kyebi, the capital of the humid and densely forested Akyem area – a region with a non-conducive climate to European missionaries. The Akyem paramount chieftain or Okyehene, Nana Amoako Atta I, was hostile to the work of the Basel missionaries. Atta owned 100 to 200 slaves who had converted to Christianity and had been freed by the British colonial authorities. Amoako Atta lost his revenue as a result. Eventually, he was exiled to Nigeria on charges of cruelty. The chief in turn accused the converts of pilfering £3500. After his sudden death, Christians were banished from the town and the chiefdom seized the mission station and chapel using them as the new king's official residence and durbar hall respectively. Amid various skirmishes, colonial soldiers stormed the town and restored law and order, leading to the eventual flourishing of the mission at the beginning of the twentieth century.
The alternative chartered route to Asante was through the Northern Kwahu Mountains, where the Basel missionaries had set up a mission station. The insights into the terrain were gleaned by Fritz and Rosa Ramseyer during their capture in 1869 by the Asante army during their forced march from Anum, located on the Volta River's eastern bank to Kumasi, via the Kwahu State where the mountain range is situated. Thus, they were able to acquaint themselves with the topography during the journey to the Asante capital. Earlier in 1868, Fritz and Rosa Ramseyer were sent to Anum to aid in the operationalisation of the new mission station there. Their captivity also allowed them to observe firsthand Asante geography, culture, customs, political philosophy and statecraft. Based on their experiences, the Ramseyer couple were well suited to act as consultants to the Basel Mission as the society made plans for establish a mission station in Asante.
The subsequent propagation of the Gospel in Kumasi, by the Basel missionaries paved the way for mission work in the western and northern parts of the country until World War I. The mission had a presence at Yendi – homeland of the Dagomba people, by 1913 and were in the early stages moving eastwards towards Northern Togoland. There were pockets of Christian communities along the away that had been pioneered by native alumni of Basel mission –education system along the coast. An example of a town that had Christian coverts, was Tamale, a town that had 6000 inhabitants in 1914. On 25 December – Christmas Day, passages from the Nativity of Jesus were narrated in the Dagbani language for the first time.
The First World War terminated the activities of the Basel mission on the Gold Coast as the Germans were opponents of the British during the war. The Basel missionaries who were mostly German or Swiss German were expelled from the colony. The Colonial Secretary wrote to G. Zurcher, the General Superintendent of the Basel Mission on the Gold Coast on 10 December 1917 with a deportation order. A propaganda piece by now-defunct Cape Coast-based newspaper, the Gold Coast Leader published in May 1917 accused the German missionaries of "seeking to persuade the people of the inevitability of a German victory." The missionaries were summoned to Accra in the second week of December 1917 and deported on 16 December 1917. Eight missionaries, six Swiss, one Australian and one American, were forced to leave the Gold Coast. They were H. Stricker who was in charge of the Akropong College, G. Zurcher and H. Dewald at Christiansborg, P. Dieterle at the Abokobi station, E. Scherrer of the Aburi station, N. Rhode and H. Henking at Abetifi and F. Jost at the Kumasi station. On 12 January 1918, it became unlawful for any European missionary to remain in Akuapem. By 2 February 1918, the Secretary of State in London had ordered all Basel missionaries to exit the Gold Coast with immediate effect. The colonial government also confiscated all Basel mission assets on the Gold Coast.
Missionaries from the United Free Church of Scotland, who were then based in Calabar, Nigeria took over the operations of the Basel mission's practice in Ghana. A new structure was set up handing over administration of the mission to Ghanaians, under a new name, the Presbyterian Church of the Gold Coast.
Life in captivity On 12 June 1869, Fritz and Rosa Ramseyer, together with their nine-month old son, Fritzchen, were captured by the Asante troops led by the army captain, Aduboffour while on their first official assignment in Anum. Ramseyer and his family had arrived in Anum on 29 December 1868. He was put in charge of the mission station and the church there. The Asante army were in Anum at the behest of the Akwamuhene to join the war against the Krepis, now Peki in 1868. The Asante army defeated the Anum commune in the tribal conflict. The Akwamu used the war against Peki to punish their neighbour, Anum. On rumours of war in Anum, Ramseyer noted in his diary, "We scarcely believed anything we heard, and concluded that as there was still a mixed population of young and old left in the town, the danger could not be imminent." The Ramseyers hoped the cordial relationship between them and the natives of Anum would insulate them from the war. He believed that the enemy was only interested in material wealth so he hid jewellery and about £200 in the backyard garden. Ramseyer further stated, "No idea of imprisonment or captivity in Coomassie [Kumasi] ever occurred to us." His fellow missionaries in Ho were willing to host Rosa Ramseyer and their baby but she refused to leave her husband given the uncertainties. Also taken in as captive of the Asante was the Brother Johannes Kühne, a Prussian who was a technical mission staff of the Basel Mission whose main responsibility included the industrial processing and export of cotton from the Gold Coast to Europe. The main site of the cotton ginning was Labolabo, a village near Anum. The Ramseyers and Kühne were taken on foot from the Volta Region through the Afram Plains and the Kwahu Range and finally to the Asante capital, Kumasi.
After several weeks of walking, the captives arrived on the outskirts of Kumasi in a small hamlet called Abankoro, where they were joined by the French merchant, Marie-Joseph Bonnat who had been captured in Ho, a few miles from the Ghana-Togo frontier. Abankoro was a transit point for prisoners as Asante customs required waiting there for many weeks or months before the captives were presented before the Asante king. The prisoners were housed in a traditional hut which Fritz Ramseyer christened "Ebenezer", meaning "Thus far the Lord had brought us". The name, Ebenezer, became commonplace in Ghana for religious buildings such as the stone-built Ebenezer Presbyterian Church, Osu which was constructed by the Basel Mission in 1902. A small museum was built next to the central shrine of Abetifi by the Ghana Museums and Monuments Board as a testament of the first dwelling of the Ramseyers at Abetifi and a symbol of interreligious dialogue between traditionalists and Christians.
At Abankoro, the Asante soldiers removed the iron shackles around the captives’ ankles which had become sore from the long trek. At this point, their clothing and footwear were completely worn out and in tatters. The absence of proper washing and soap resulted in skin rashes. Carbuncles festered on Rosa Ramseyer's scalp as she had no access to a hair comb and a pair of scissors. The captives were also bitten by several insects along the way. The escort leader of the prisoners, Ageana was noted for his cruelty. The missionaries wrote accounts of the reception of local chiefs and their subjects as they passed through the towns and villages within the Gold Coast territory. Fritzchen Ramseyer, the infant son of the Ramseyers died from malnutrition when the party was close to Juaben/Asokore. His remains were buried under a banana tree on the periphery of Asokore, in the infant cemetery. To the Ramseyers, they perceived their son's death as "God's will".