Biography

German missionary. Johann Christian Friedrich Heidmann apprenticed as a glazier in his native city of Lübeck. According to his memoirs, after leaving home to work as a journeyman he led a dissolute life for many years until a bout of pox brought on a religious conversion: "I promised my Lord and Saviour that if he would give me back my health I would honour him by devoting myself with all my strength to the service of the heathen. The Lord accepted my promise with grace and, despite my advancing age, accepted me into the missionary, and richly blessed my life. Now after completing my preparations I am destined for the De Tuin in South Africa."

He arrived in north-western Cape Colony in 1865 to minister to the Basters at De Tuyn and Schietfontein. In December 1868, shortly after transferring to the Rhenish mission at Pella, south of the Orange River, he joined approximately 90 Baster families on their trek northwards into Namibia. Settling at Reheboth, which had been deserted for several years, they declared the territory a free republic, with its own flag and constitution, in 1872. Heidmann served the congregation for 40 years without any home leave. During the Ovaherero Nama War, he mediated peace talks between the Basters and Ovaherero; and later he worked with the German authorities to obtain Baster cooperation against the Nama leader, Hendrik Witbooi, which eased the German annexation of Namibia. He retired in 1906 to Steinthal, near Tubagh, but later suffered from dementia and was placed in a mental institution at Valkenburg, near Cape Town, where he died.

Encouraged by the Swiss botanist Hans Schinz, who visited the mission in 1886 on his Namibian expedition, Heidmann collected and sent specimens from the territory to Zürich, including type material of Crotalaria heidmannii Schinz, which was dedicated to him. Although he had three Christian names, he signed all his letters F. Heidmann, and, as indicated in a letter to relatives in Germany, referred to himself as Fritz.