The year 2014 marks a century of the German language being officially taught in India. To commemorate this, the Indo-German Teachers’ Association (InDaF) and the Goethe-Institut Chennai / Max Mueller Bhavan have been conducting a conference for German teachers engaging with issues such as language teaching and Indo–German cultural links in the city.
At a time when teaching German in schools has courted controversy, Prabhakar Narayanan, head of Language Department, Goethe Institut, draws attention to the long tradition of the language in India. “German was first taught in Pune’s Fergusson College and then, in St Xavier’s College in Bombay in 1914.”
However, the Tamil people have a longer association with the language. According to C.S. Mohanavelu’s book ‘ German Tamilogy ’, it was in Tranquebar, Tamil Nadu that the Bartholomaeus Ziegenbalg, the first Protestant missionary sent to Tamil Nadu, arrived in 1706. The missionaries, chartered by the Royal Danish Order to propagate the gospel among ‘Malabarians’ (as people of the region were known in Europe), also took to learning about the residents of the area and their language. Not surprisingly, the first Indian people to master the German language, it is said, were the Tamils.
Moreover, a Tamil scholar, Peter Malleiappen, is believed to be the first Indian to have set foot on German soil.
According to Ziegenbalg’s diary, on October 26, 1714, a Danish ship heading to Bergen in Norway left the Madras harbour carrying the Tamil scholar along with the missionaries.
It is reported that Ziegenbalg took him along to Europe at the Danish government’s expense to ensure that he did not forget the language he learnt during his stint in India. They also met their royal patron King Frederick IV and Melleiappan delivered a speech in German in front of the king and his officers.
299 years on, the legacy of Peter Melleiappan and Ziegenbalg continues to thrive. Mr. Narayanan says, “In Chennai, German was introduced by Ellen Sharma around 60 years ago when she taught the language at Madras University to a handful of students. Now at Max Muller alone, we teach 25,000.”
