The present report is intended to complement the report on the Norddeutsche Missiongesellschaft archive provided by Donna Maier in History in Africa, 8 (1981), 335-37. I worked in Bremen in the summer of 1982 and the following information may be of interest to readers. Firstly, several small organizational details have changed. The Staatsarchiv is now open from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. on weekdays, except Thursdays, when it remains open until 8 p.m. Photocopying is available at AO Pf per exposure and, once a week, on Thursdays, the archive can provide microfilm facilities at 20 Pf per exposure.

As a social anthropologist whose principal interest is the central Volta Region of Ghana, I was most concerned to examine material pertaining to the Ho and Amedzofe areas, the sites of two of the Bremen mission stations. However, the files under the index reports for these stations are mostly concerned with internal mission business: finance, station-building, the training of and reports from native catechists (from the 1880s), and the setting up of schools. On the other hand, the sub-section “Land und Leute” (reference 7, 1035: 41/1 and 41/2) contains several attempts by the missionaries at general descriptive ethnography. Included in this section are a relatively early account by Schlegel, “Zur Geschichte der Eweer;” a long account by Spieth of Avatime; accounts by Schosser and Spieth of Akpafu ironworking and smithing among the Ewe, respectively; and an account of Anlo by Hornberger.