Regina Hesse

Regina Hesse (1832–1898), also Rottmann, was a Euro-African schoolteacher in colonial Ghana. As an educationist, she was one of first women exemplars on the Gold Coast to become a school administrator.

Early life and education

Regina Hesse was born in Christiansborg, Accra in 1832 to a Euro-African merchant, Herman Hesse and a Ga woman, Charlotte Lamiorkai, who hailed from a trading family at Shai Hills. The Hesse family was an influential Euro-African trading family from Osu Amantra with German-Danish ancestry and active in coastal commerce. Clerk had arrived on the Gold Coast in 1843 with a group of 24 West Indian mission recruits under the sponsorship of the Basel Mission and leadership of the Danish minister, Andreas Riis. Regina Hesse also had other sisters, Mary (Mrs. Richter) and Wilhelmina, who later became Mrs. Briandt. Her brother, William Hesse (1834–1920) was a minister of the Basel Mission. Regina Hesse also had a brother, John Hesse who was a trader. In 1854, after the British authorities bombarded Osu using the naval vessel, “HMS Scourge”, over the refusal of indigenes to pay the poll tax, another brother John Hesse, fled inland to Akropong and engaged in petty trading, together with other Ga-Dangme trader–refugees who had also been displaced by the conflict. Earlier, one of her schoolmates was the Gold Coast Basel Mission pastor and historian, Carl Christian Reindorf (1834–1934), whose seminal book, The History of the Gold Coast and Asante, was published in 1895. The castle school, originally opened in 1722 and owned by the Danes, was handed over to the Basel Mission after the Danish colonial administration sold its assets on the Gold Coast to British authorities in 1850. Rottmann's father was a German tobacco manufacturer. H. L. Rottmann had earlier completed his education in commerce in Hamburg, Germany's "Gate to the Seven Seas." In approving his marriage to Regina Hesse, the committee saw the Hesse family's local mercantile connections as beneficial to Basel Mission trading activities. The couple had eight children but three died at an early age. All surviving children worked with the Basel Mission in one capacity or the other. The oldest son became an employee of the Basel Mission Trading Company while her two younger sons went to the Basel Mission Seminary in Switzerland and were consecrated as Pietist priests. They both married German women and lived in Württemberg, Germany for the rest of their lives. Regina Hesse's two daughters, Bertha and Theodora both married German missionary-traders and were widowed shortly after their marriages. Bertha Rottmann's second marriage ended in divorce while her sister, Theodora was widowed again in 1895 after her second husband, Hermann Lieb passed away. Theodora Rottmann eventually relocated to Korntal, Germany. Thus, only Regina Hesse's eldest son lived on the Gold Coast for his entire professional career. Regina Hesse often went to Europe with her husband, Hermann Rottmann on his yearly furloughs. In 1897, the Hesse-Rottmann couple travelled to Basel to seek medical treatment for illness.

Death and legacy Regina Hesse died in 1898 in Basel, Switzerland. As an educator, she was both a teacher and a spiritual mentor to a generation of young Euro-African and Ga-Dangme women of Christiansborg and played a major role in increasing the female literacy rate in the town.