Otto Schimming
| Otto Schimming | |
|---|---|
| Personal details | |
| Born |
Otto Ferdinand Schimming November 19, 1908 Gobabis, German South West Africa (now Namibia) |
| Died | December 7, 2005 (aged 97) |
| Spouse(s) | Charlotte Schimming, née Freiser |
Otto Ferdinand Schimming (19 November 1908 – 7 December 2005) was a Namibian teacher and early independence activist. He was the first black teacher in Namibia when he founded the Rietquelle School. A street in Katutura is named after him.
The son of a German Schutztruppe soldier and a Herero mother, Schimming was born in 1908 during imperial German rule of Namibia. His parents divorced in 1918 when the South African authorities, having conquered the area during World War I, voided interracial marriage in the territory. Schimming and his brother then moved to a farm near Otjivero where he lived with Clemens Kapuuo's sister. By the age of 10, Schimming could speak three languages.
In 1940, Schimming married Charlotte Frier, a Damara-speaker and lived with her and their three children in the Old Location of Windhoek. Shortly after the marriage, the couple had their fourth child and they soon moved to a series of different farms across the country, including ones in Grootfontein, Gobabis, Rehoboth, Seeis, Windhoek and Okahandja before settling near Witvlei - where three of his surviving daughters are still farming today. All of Schimming's children received post-secondary education in South Africa, causing suspicion of thievery by the White South African authorities and regular raids of the household in search of stolen diamonds.
During the Old Location massacre on December 10, 1959, Schimming and his wife were in Cape Town attending the graduation of his son and son-in-law who are medical doctors. In 1963, after his daughter Otillie and her husband Kenneth Abrahams had moved to Rehoboth in 1962, he took his son-in-law and others to hide away in caves, after nearly being arrested by the South Africans for their political activities, on his farm in the Rehoboth area before transporting them to Botswana. He was the father of politician Nora Schimming-Chase.
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