Career
Originally a silk weaver, he received missionary training by the Rhenish Missionary Society in Barmen between 1894 and 1903, whereafter he was sent to German South-West Africa in 1905 and worked as a missionary and teacher trainer until his retirement, first for the black workers and prisoners-of-war in Swakopmund, then at the small mission station Gaub in the Otavi Mountains, and from 1922 onwards in Okahandja, where he taught at the Augustineum school. Vedder spoke fluently Oshindonga, Khoekhoe, and Otjiherero. He spent a lot of his time recording oral history and folklore and wrote school textbooks in Otjiherero and Khoekhoegowab.
His best known works are the ethnographic treatise Die Bergdama on history and culture of the Damara, his work on the pre-colonial history of South-West Africa, South West Africa in Early Times, and his contribution to The native tribes of South West Africa.
Vedder"s historiography has been heavily criticized by recent academic historians for being not referenced and for its colonial apologetics and settler bias. He received honorary doctorates from the Universities of Tübingen (1925) and Stellenbosch (1949).
A suburb of Okahandja is named Veddersdal (Afrikaans: Vedder"s valley) in his honour.