Researching the missionaries was a relatively straightforward exercise involving detailed archival investigations in the mission headquarters in Wuppertal and other centres of missiology in Germany, particularly Hamburg. However, establishing the oral tradition of the present day citizens of New Guinea would have involved extensive and prolonged field work in the region and for this Dr Schütte was denied a visa by the Port Moresby government, having been declared a prohibited immigrant, even though the Madang authorities supported the project. This unaccountable obstructionism has only resulted in the frustration of an enquiry which would have been of considerable benefit to the indigenous peoples themselves as they are required more and more to adopt not only the technology of the white man but also to become familiar with his ways of scientific enquiry. Admittedly, the task imposed on Melanesians by the necessity of both preserving their indigenous culture and simultaneously acquiring a western education is a daunting one, but sooner or later it must be faced. Dr Schütte’s project was and is an eminently friendly one to the indigenous, so it remains a mystery why he was prevented from carrying out his original project.

So, what is here presented is modestly described by the author as a preliminary exercise, being only, as it were, the missionaries’ side of the story. Was this worth doing at all? The answer must be a resounding affirmative, because the author has most thoroughly and critically evaluated the voluminous reports of the various mission stations, comparing their internal ones with the sanitised ones prepared for the German government. Consequently, the result is a an enrichment of our understanding of not only missionary self-perception but also of the official goals of the German colonial administration. But this is only made possible by the efforts of a most sophisticated scholar who has both the critical faculty and the mastery of methodology equal to the task.

One wishes that this work were available in English for the benefit of Australian historians because of the cautious and judicious way in which Dr Schütte has evaluated the documentary record. His modus operandi would have much to teach local practitioners. For example, Dr Schütte laid aside his Marxian commitments and entered into the mentality of the missionaries, a feat made possible not least through the years of consultation with present day missiologists of New Guinea such as Professor Theodor Ahrens, now of the University of Hamburg, and missionary Rufus Pech, formerly of New Guinea. Dr Schütte is aware, for example, that the Rhenish Protestants represented a unique form of Christianity and presented the Gospel in a uniquely Wilhelmine style that was radically different from the Roman Catholic way of the time. Schütte, therefore, suggests the need for a separate study of Catholic missionary enterprise in the region because their impact on the indigenous would be at least subtly different from the Rhenish.

As well, Schütte’s research clearly augments that of other studies in the area, such as (among others) K.O.L. Burridge’s Mambu (1960), Peter Lawrence’s celebrated Road Belong Cargo (1964), Charles Rowley (1965) and the works of Peter Sack (1972, 1979), Peter Hempenstall (1978, 1984) and Stewart Firth (1983) on aspects of the German colonial administration. This is not simply because Schütte is more focussed on the self-perception of the missionaries and their spiritual/intellectual context but because of his ability to see the subject as a dialectic process between the will of the colonial power on the one hand and the initiative of the indigenous to retain their cultural identity on the other in the context of conversion to Christianity. So Schütte wants to enquire 1) when, why and under what conditions did conversion to Christianity take place, and 2) what did this conversion really mean, i.e. in what ways was the content of the new white man’s religion comprehended in terms of traditional political, intellectual and material structures and expectations? (p.41).

Conversion was/is, after all, a major cultural factor in the history of all Pacific Island peoples. To answer these questions, Schütte has made what he calls snapshots. That is to say, he has written thirteen essays on a range of themes which cover subjects from how the missionaries perceived their impact on the indigenous, the latter’s reception of European technology, their customs and beliefs down to political resistance. In all this Schütte keeps reminding the reader that misconceptions were automatically built into the missionaries’ perceptions. Nevertheless, their presence in the region, first as an accompaniment to imperial German rule and planter domination, and then as arguably the major factor in education, has to be taken into account. What the missionaries stood for in every respect was to some degree incorporated into the social, economic and spiritual life of the Melanesians, but by no means totally re-structuring these elements. But Christianity is a very powerful force. As Schütte observes: “Within the framework of the German colonial presence”, the Christian mission offers a new vision of practical things, a new social practice, a guide to behaviour in a world that is fundamentally changing. But beyond that it offers a changed way of perceiving human beings themselves and their relationship to nature; in other words: Christianity encompasses faith, action, world view and ethos, practical spirituality (praktische Innerweltlichkeit) and a relationship for the faithful to the world beyond; it is potentially a total cultural model (p. 269). But, since ideas possess a life of their own and guide the behaviour and decisions of individuals, the Melanesian reception of Christianity has been syncretistic. Its content has been modified to fit into a pre-existing spiritual and social matrix. The present spiritual and intellectual life of the New Guinean, however, has emerged undeniably out of a confrontation with the values and ideas brought by missionaries. There has occurred a reciprocal interaction between the official Christianity of the former German colonial masters and the stone age belief systems of the indigenous. Finally, though, the requirement to learn to read the Bible, i.e. to acquire literacy has made one hugely important change in Melanesian societies, namely it has made them actors on the stage of world history. It was the long-term effect of this aspect of missionary activity that Dr Schütte was frustrated in investigating since he was denied the opportunity to carry out his field work. Nevertheless, what he has been able to achieve has to be obligatory reading for all would-be New Guinea experts, both indigenous as well as foreign.