Johann Gottlieb Christaller (19 November 1827 – 16 December 1895)[1] was a German missionary, clergyman, ethnolinguist, translator and philologist who served with the Basel Mission.

He was instrumental, together with African colleagues, Akan linguists, David Asante, Theophilus Opoku, Jonathan Palmer Bekoe, and Paul Keteku in the translation of the Bible into the Akuapem dialect of Twi.

[11] To make ends meet, his mother and sister started a sewing business and lending books from his late father's library.

[11] J. G. Christaller spent his childhood days honing his talent in philology and linguistics by reading his father's books.

[11] Christaller, influenced by the Pietist movement within the German Lutheran church, decided very early in his life to become a missionary.

[2][3] Later, from 1841 to 1844, Christaller was an apprentice and an assistant to a town clerk in the mayor's printing office in Winnenden[11][12] Among his options after his apprenticeship were entering the public service, going to a university to study languages or going to the seminary in Basel.

[14] By the end of his seminary education, in addition to his native German, he had become fluent in English, Greek, Hebrew, and Latin.

[2][3] According to scholars, Christaller was “deeply influenced by the sociohistorical theories of Johann Gottfried Herder (1744–1803), whose views on the life cycle of communities and on the equality of different cultures was opposed to the historical conception of the Enlightenment, which considered Western civilization as superior to other cultures and as the ideal and goal toward which other cultures did or should aspire.”[15] In 1853, Johann Christaller was posted to Ghana by the Basel Mission Home Committee, stationed at Akropong, about 32 miles (51 km) north of Accra while his classmate August Steinhauser was sent to Christiansborg, Osu.

[11] After his arrival on the Gold Coast, he became an instructor at the recently founded Basel Mission Seminary at Akropong-Akuapem, established in 1848.

[11] It became apparent to Christaller that without a written local language, the efforts by the mission to propagate the Gospel would prove futile.

[2][3] Hans Nicolaus Riis who he had earlier met in Basel had done philological work on the Gold Coast in 1845: Elemente des Akwapim Dialects de Odschi Sprache (1853) and Grammatical Outline and Vocabulary of the Oji Language with Special Reference to the Akuapem Dialect Together with a Collection of Proverbs by the Natives (1854).

[2][3] Based on these literary works, Christaller chose the Akuapem dialect to be the written form of Twi even though he learnt the version spoken at Akyem Abuakwa while living in Kyebi.

[2][3] Moreover, the Basel Mission on the Gold Coast had its headquarters at Akropong and the dialect of spoken Twi first assumed a written form by 1853.

"[2][3] To buttress his point, his fellow linguist and native Akan missionary, David Asante added, "Akuapem easily admits of enrichment and admixture from Akyem and even Fante; and Fante also admits and receives such foreign elements; but if the same should be done in the Akyem dialect, it would not sound well.”[2][3] Due to ill health, he returned to Germany between 1858 and June 1862 just before he was stationed at Aburi.

[2][3] The Twi translations of several Pauline epistles were also published in Basel: Letter to the Romans, 1 and 2 Peter, James and Jude, 1, 2 and 3 John, Revelation (1861); 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, and 1 and 2 Thessalonians (1862); 1 and 2 Timothy, Titus, Philemon, and Hebrews (1863).

[2][3] Johann Christaller married Christiane Emilie Ziegler, a fellow missionary and a native of Waiblingen on 27 January 1857 at Akropong.