Jooseppi Mustakallio

Jooseppi Mustakallio (June 18, 1857 in Säräisniemi – April 20, 1923 in Parikkala), originally Josef Schwartzberg, was a Finnish minister and the fourth mission director of the Finnish Missionary Society, after Akseli Hirn. He was also a poet and a lyricist. His best known poem is called “Evening Song”.
Background.
Mustakallio's parents were chaplain Henrik Schwartzberg ja Laura Katariina Stenbäck. Mustakallio graduated from the Kuopio Lyceum in 1878 and obtained a bachelor's degree in philosophy in 1883.
Mustakallio first worked as teacher in Pori, teaching religion and the Finnish language. In 1889 he was ordained a minister. After that he taught religion in Savonlinna and Kuopio.
Mustakallio became an employee of the FMS in 1897, first as a teacher of the FMS Mission School. During the summer of 1898 he travelled to Germany, in order to acquaint himself with the work of the various German missionary societies.
Tenure as the mission director 1898–1913.
Mustakallio was elected mission director in 1898.
Inspection trip to Ovamboland in 1900.
The FMS had long been planning an inspection of the mission field in Ovamboland in South West Africa, which was at the time the only mission field of this organization. The Finns had worked there for 30 years, without a single visit from Finland.
During the last few years, the Finnish missionaries had been criticized heavily in Finland, for an apparent lack of results. For this reason the missionaries had been hoping for a visit from by the director of the FMS. At that time there were four missionaries in the field with their families, along with two unmarried female missionaries.
Mustakallio left for Africa on 31 January 1900, and he arrived there on 22 June the same year, together with Emil Liljeblad, who now began his first term in Ovamboland. Mustakallio stayed on the field for six weeks. He first visited the mission station of Olukonda. The 30th anniversary of Finnish mission work was held there, and there were 600 persons present at the festivities. Mustakallio inspected all the schools and the mission stations of Olukonda, Ondangwa and Oniipa as well as the auxiliary mission station of Omulonga. He was due to stay for four months on the field, but the visit was shortened to six weeks, one of the reasons for this was that he fell ill with malaria.
Before the visit, the livelihood of the missionaries had been a big problem, the allocated monies having been insufficient, but as a result of this inspection trip, the wages of the missionaries were raised.
Mission work is begun in China.
The experiences of other mission societies had shown, that the work benefited from having more than one mission field. For this reason, the board of trustees of the FMS began to contemplate the opening of another mission field, preferably somewhere closer to Finland than the mission field in SW Africa. In the annual convention of 1899, Mustakallio suggested that another mission field be opened somewhere in Northern China. The convention approved of this idea.
One of the ideas behind this decision was that interaction between missionaries of different mission fields would be fruitful for the work of the mission society as a whole. It was also surmised that with a new mission field, support for mission work would grow in Finland. The third argument went as follows: if the mission society only had one mission field, and for some unforeseen reasons the work there would have to be abandoned, then the mission society would have nowhere to pursue its goals. In Ovamboland the society was already in a difficult situation, as its work was confined to the kingdom of Ondonga with a population of only some 21000 persons. For these reasons it was considered wise to open a second mission field.
At first the FMS considered work in Manchuria, or at least somewhere in Northern China, but in the end Hunan was chosen, because it had been inaccessible for foreigners for a long time and had only recently been opened for mission work. When the Boxer Rebellion and its aftermath were over, the first Finnish missionaries to China were sent along, and they stepped ashore in Shanghai in October 1901. It seems that Hannes Sjöblom made the final choice of the location of the new mission field, after he had consulted a number of mission societies that worked in China.
Moving to parish work.
The post as the mission director had been a demanding one for Mustakallio, and his tenure had been marked by restlessness. This was due to his intensive approach towards his duties, along with his impatient nature, as he wanted to make quick decisions and achieve more or less instant closures. It seems that in 1910 he was beginning to contemplate moving to a post in some parish of the Finnish church. He stated that his nervous system had been overburdened and his energy was insufficient for the work as the mission director, and in February 1911 he informed the board of trustees that he had sought a job as the dean of Porvoo. However, he was not elected to this post.
Around this time, a new inspection trip to Ovamboland was planned, and due to Mustakallio's situation, the vice director Hannu Haahti was sent there. Mustakallio now felt that he had been excluded from some of his most important duties and protested, but the board did not change their decision.
In 1913 Mustakallio applied for the post of the vicar of Viipuri Rural Parish. He received the majority of the votes, and then moved to his new post later during the same year. Matti Tarkkanen was elected as his successor in the mission society, but he only assumed this post in February 1914.
After the mission society.
Mustakallio worked as the vicar of the Viipuri Rural Parish from 1913 to 1919. He was granted the title of a provost in 1915. He moved to Parikkala in 1919, becoming the local vicar there. He was appointed the rural dean of the area in 1920. He worked as the assessor of the Savonlinna cathedral chapter from 1918 to 1912.
Private life.
Mustakallio married Agnes Selma Helena Lampén in 1886.