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Life and ministry
Gebre Kristos Tekle Haymanot [ገብረ ክርስቶስ ተክለ ሃይማኖት] was born near Aksum in 1880. He was the eldest son of the Protestant aläqa Tekle Haymanot Mihirka and taught for several years at the Swedish Evangelical Mission (SEM) School in Asmara.
In 1920, Gebre Kristos moved to Addis Ababa. The Swedes wanted him to teach at their boys’s school, yet Ras Tafari Makonnen (later Emperor Haile Selassie) appointed him director of his new printing press, Berhanena Selam. He also became the editor of the Berhanena Selam newspaper. In 1927, Gebre Kristos printed an article against Mussolini (translated by the then director of the local ‘School for the Falashas’, Taamrat Emmanuel) that earned both of them an indictment from the Italian embassy.
Gebre Kristos wrote textbooks on arithmetic and world history and collaborated on a book on geography. He also supported the SEM missionary Rev. Olof Eriksson in his translation work and the revision of the Amharic version of Barth’s Bible Stories (Asmara: SEM, 1928).
Gebre Kristos Tekle Haymanot is the author of some songs that are included in the 1925 edition of the hymnal Səbhat läʼamlak.
He passed away in 1932.
Note
Both the Swedish Evangelical Mission (already in the 1920s) and the German Hermannsburg Mission (in the early 1930s) used duplicators in Oromia. Did Gebrekristos assist them in importing the machines into the country or purchasing them in Addis Ababa?
Note that Rev. Eriksson was in charge of the printing press in Asmara before moving to Addis Ababa. Did Gebrekristos already work with him back then?
Songs in hymnbooks
Səbhat läʼamlak (1925)
- No. _ _ _
Səbhat läʼamlak (1951)
- No. _ _ _
Səbhat läʼamlak (2007)
- None of Gebre Kristos’s songs is included in the 2007 edition.
Further reading
(1) Sources
1.1 Books
Gebre Kristos Tekle Haymanot. _ _ _ [Arithmetic in Amharic]. Addis Ababa, 1921/22 [1914 A.M.].
⸻. አጭር የዓለም ታሪክ ባማርኛ [A Short History of the World in Amharic]. Addis Ababa, 1924/25 [1917 A.M.].
Werqineh Eshete, with contributions from Gebre Kristos Tekle Haymanot. የዓለም ጂኦግራፊ ባማርኛ [World geography in Amharic]. Addis Ababa, 1927/28 [1920 A.M.].
Barth, Christian Gottlob. Bible Stories in Amharic. Translated by J. M. Flad. Revised by Olof Eriksson with the assistance of Gebre Kristos Tekle Haymanot. Asmara, 1928. [Libris catalogue]
1.2 Articles, etc.
Gebre Kristos, Letter to W. Fuchs, dated 1924.12.09 [plus covering letter by the German Legation], in Edward Ullendorff, “[…] Documents from the Eugen Mittwoch Nachlass,” BSOAS 43 (1980), pp. 434‒37. [View online]
(2) Literature
Arén, Gustav. Envoys of the Gospel in Ethiopia: In the Steps of the Evangelical Pioneers 1898‒1936. Stockholm: EFS förlaget; Addis Ababa: The [Ethiopian] Evangelical Church Mekane Yesus, 1999.
- See pp. 190‒92. [View online]
Kumlachew Fantahun. “Gäbrä Krəstos Täklä Haymanot,” in Encyclopaedia Aethiopica, vol. 5, edited by Alessandro Baussi in cooperation with Siegbert Uhlig, pp. 331‒33. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2014. [Sewasew]
Launhardt, Johannes. Evangelicals in Addis Ababa (1919‒1991): With special reference to the Ethiopian Evangelical Church Mekane Yesus and the Addis Ababa Synod. Münster: Lit, 2004. [See p. 34‒35]
Pankhurst, Richard. “The Foundation of Education, Printing, Newspapers, Book Production, Libraries and Literacy in Ethiopia,” Ethiopia Observer 6, no. 3 (1962): 241‒90.
Taamrat Emmanuel. “An Early Essay on Amharic Literature,” Bulletin de la Maison des Études Éthiopiennes 11 (1997):29‒68. [See p. 30]