Adunni-Osun, a Legend in Passing

Sussane Wenger, painter, sculpture and artist of Austrian origin, but who lived almost all her adult life in Osogbo, Nigeria has died in Osogbo on January 12, 2009 at 94.

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In the early sixties, when Nigeria was a young country just finding its feet both culturally and politically, a young woman artist of Austrian origin was discovering herself in the spirituality of a people she was just meeting, by chance, in company of her Austrian husband who had come to Western Nigeria as cultural migrants. Sussane Wenger was the woman. The man was Ulli Beier, now about 90, a scholar of culure who discovered the likes of Wole Soyinka, Duro Ladiipo among many other creative young minds of the Nigerian landscape of the 60s and nurtured them to prominence.

No one could claim to know how Sussane became struck with the spirituality of the Osun people, but the general concensus was that she was indeed struck at first contact, and made up her mind there to remain a acolyte of the gods. Sussane Wenger split from her husband (who went back to Europe later), settled in Osogbo and immersed herself in the culture of the orisha. To her followers, she became Adunni-Olorisha, Adunni-Osun, or Adunni-Orisha, an embodiment of the very essense of her patron (or matron?) god(dess), Osun. Today, hundreds of sculptures, paintings and drawings attest to her touch of the Osun woods. She is credited as the sole defender of the sacred forests of Osogbo that were at many times endangered from government, and people's interest in their fuel and market value. Today, the Osogbo groove is a United Nations Heritage site, thanks to the restless efforts of the "Abami Eda", strange fellow, of Osogbo.

According to Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka, "Let this be clearly stated; Susanne Wenger never attempted nor pretended to be Yoruba. Even in her very last interviews, she took pains to stress this. She was European, Austrian, yet a being of the universal spirit who found the truths of existence not in Europe, nor Austria, but in a place she had never heard of until brought thither in the most ordinary of circumstances. Yet she recognized that space at once, intuitively, unquestioning. Austria lost an artist; Oshogbo gained one, a spiritual seeker and guide, community leader - despite herself - and creative mentor all in one."

Her legacy now bestrides the sacred shrines and grooves of Osogbo, and her passing will be thoroughly felt. An "Olorisha" to the core, it was no strange coincidence that a mild rain greeted her ascension into the land of her gods. To many, it is only a confirmation from the "Orisha" Osun the godhead herself, welcoming home a faithful servant who served faithfully even sometimes under hostile climes. As Wole Soyinka puts it rather philosophically, what a glorious end, with many lessons to teach us fanatical followers of imported religion. There is much to learn from "the career of a questing stranger who came, saw, and was conquered"

Indeed there is.