Franz Heinrich Kleinschmidt

Franz Heinrich Kleinschmidt (1812–1864) was a German missionary and linguist who worked in southern Africa, now in the region of Namibia.

Kleinschmidt was born on 25 October 1812 in the village of Blasheim, today a suburb of Lübbecke, then in the Kingdom of Prussia.

When Wesleyan missionaries arrived in 1844, also at the invitation of Jonker Afrikaner, Kleinschmidt and his colleague Carl Hugo Hahn moved northwards into Damaraland in order to avoid conflict with them.

[4] At that time Jonker Afrikaner oversaw the development of the road network in South-West Africa.

[6] Their missionary work was not very successful, and while Hahn visited Europe between 1853 and 1856 to gather support for his endeavors,[7] Kleinschmidt moved back south to the Nama communities, where he founded the mission station and town of Rehoboth in 1845.