About us

The Posaunenverband brings together the brass choirs of Lutheran congregations in southern Africa. Since 1924 we have played to the glory of God: in Sunday worship, on feast days, at funerals and at our brass festivals. Our choirs are diverse, rural and urban, with roots in both Germany and South Africa. On one thing we are united: praising God is at the heart of what we do, and our choirs belong in the worship of the congregation.

Roots in Hermannsburg

Our story begins on the Lüneburg Heath in Germany. In 1849 Ludwig Harms called his brother Theodor to Hermannsburg to lead the mission seminary. Theodor Harms, the “father” of brass music in northern Germany, founded a brass choir there with his students. The first instruments came from people who had found faith in the revival and no longer played for dances.

When Hermannsburg missionaries and settlers arrived in Port Natal, today’s Durban, on the sailing ship “Kandaze” in 1854, a brass chorale rang out from the ship. The Berlin missionary Posselt heard it, came aboard and won the Hermannsburg brethren for service among the Zulu. Brass music therefore helped bring the Hermannsburg Mission to Natal. From New Hermannsburg the missionaries built up the Zulu mission and, alongside it, German Lutheran congregations with church and school.

The missionaries brought their instruments with them and taught Zulu and Tswana Christians to play. From the very beginning, choirs formed on African soil, probably first at Bethanie near Rustenburg under Missionary Behrens, and later at Ehlanzeni, Müden and Nazareth. As German settler congregations grew in Natal and the Transvaal, further brass choirs followed.
For many years the choirs worked alone. The 75th anniversary of the Hermannsburg Mission brought them together. On 28 October 1924, the choirs of Hermannsburg, Verden, Wartburg and New Hanover, 32 players in all, played together at Hermannsburg in Natal. On that day the “Posaunenverband der Hermannsburger Synode” was founded, led by Missionary Otto Dedekind. The first brass festival followed at Moorleigh in 1926.

After the Second World War, Pastor Reinhard Drews brought the association together again, and Walter Dedekind then shaped it for more than two decades. In 1966 the association adopted its constitution and a common fingering system (Kuhlo); by 1968 around 400 players gathered at the festival. The close bond with the brass work of the Hanoverian Church and the Posaunenwerk in Germany continues to this day.

In the middle of the apartheid years, Pietermaritzburg hosted the first joint brass festival with players from our sister churches, among them the Moravian choir from Genadendal. Fellowship with the choirs of the Lutheran churches in southern Africa has grown ever since, closing a circle that began on the mission stations.

Today we are the Brass Band Association of the Northeastern Evangelical Lutheran Church in South Africa (NELCSA). The association council leads the work, the representatives’ meeting of the choirs deliberates on shared matters, and the choirs are linked in northern, central and southern circuits. Alongside the general brass festivals, the circuits hold their own festivals, in 2023 for example in Bethanie, Braunschweig and Kempton Park. The Braunschweig choir celebrated its centenary in 2022.

Training players and conductors has mattered since the visits of the Hanoverian cantors Friedrich Meyer in 1953 and Hans Jürgen Lange in 1964. A training director on the association council plans courses for beginner teachers and choir directors, so that all choirs share a common standard and can take up new music. Prospective conductors from several churches train together in the D-course; the 2023 to 2024 course had twelve students from BBSA, FELSISA and NELCSA.

Fellowship with other churches led to an umbrella body, the Evangelical Brass Band Associations of Southern Africa (EBBASA). Its driving force was brass director Randolf Drews, inspired by the Evangelischer Posaunendienst in Deutschland and Landesposaunenwart Günther Marstatt. Every five years a member association hosts a joint festival: Port Elizabeth in 2010 and Cape Town in 2015. The festival planned for 2020 was cancelled because of the pandemic and took place in Johannesburg in September 2025. Around 400 players from BBSA (Western and Eastern Cape), Namibia, Botswana, FELSISA, NELCSA and ELCSA congregations played together there.

The bond with Germany remains alive. Our brass director takes part in the conferences of the German regional brass directors, guests such as Traugott and Gesine Fünfgeld rehearse with our choirs and lead brass services, and in May 2024 around 60 players and guests travelled to the German Evangelical Brass Festival in Hamburg, as groups had done in 2008 and 2016.

In 2024 the Posaunenverband celebrated its centenary with a brass festival in Hermannsburg under the motto “There is room for you”. For 175 years, Hermannsburg in Germany and Hermannsburg in South Africa have been joined by a shared mission: to carry God’s word into the world, in words and in music.

That remains our calling. We do not play for ourselves but in the service of Christ: in the worship of the congregation, at the graveside, in old age homes and on the street. Our music seeks to win people for God and to show everyone that with Him there is room for all who seek Him. What began in 1854 with a chorale on the “Kandaze”, we joyfully continue: serving Christ in music.