African Today
Originally published in 1934, and inevitably a product of the time in which it was published this book nevertheless remains an important volume in African sociology and psychology. Topics such as race, economics, family and kinship, tribal organization, ritual and the supernatural, language and education are discussed in a balanced way, especially given the era of publication.
Diedrich Hermann Westermann was a German Africanist and ethnologist . He belongs, together with Carl Meinhof , to the founders of scientific African studies , whose first chair he held for 24 years. Westermann did an apprenticeship as a postmistress after school before applying to the North German Mission in Bremen . From there he was sent to the Mission Seminar in Basel in 1885 . In addition to teaching he taught himself without permission autodidactic Arabic. In 1900 he received the assignment to the German colony Togo . He began his ministry in Ghana today and learned the Ewe language. He became the first European to become a competent speaker. An illness forced him to travel home in 1903.