Bernardo Kohnen
Bernardo Kohnen (1876-1937), German by birth, born near Hannover, moved as a young boy with his parents to Bosnia, where he attended the famous Jesuit gymnasium in Travnik. He devoted about 30 years of his life to the evangelization and study of life of Shiluks (southern Sudan), at that time one of the most isolated tribes in Africa, and other Nilot tribes (Denka, Nuer, etc). “Father Shiluk”, as he was called by the Shiluks themselves, wrote first dictionaries, grammars, and translated holly and liturgical books into their language, praised by the english scholars. Although born as German, Kohnen spoke and wrote in Croatian. He donated some of the artifacts of African culture to the Zagreb Ethnographic museum. See [Zoric].