Abenteuer Mission. Lebensgeschichten von Missionarinnen als Beitrag zur expatriate-Forschung

The article examines life stories of Catholic missionary sisters. By analysing them within the framework of three social and geographical spaces (the ‘space of social background’, the insti-tutional ‘convent space’ and the ‘mission space’), different narrative aspects are identified. The self presentations of the missionary women, who were sent to the ‘mission space’ in the decades after 1945, are interpreted as tales of a „controlled adventure“. Missionary societies are thus considered as transnational ‘companies’ which, much like business companies, keep up a transnational network of members sent abroad. The patterns of the narrated experiences of missionary sisters follow classical scripts of adventure tales, as it was also shown for the life stories of business expatriates.