Society began trading for profit and colonizing (rejecting his Lutheran austerity for a more Reformed Church orientation), Hahn severed his ties with them on 4 March 1872 and returned in 1873 to Germany, by which time 13 missions in Hereroland were prospering. He relocated to the Cape Colony. For the next twelve years, Hahn served as pastor of the German Lutheran congregation (St. Martini) in Cape Town. Assisted from 1875 onward by his son (the Rev. C.H. Hahn Jr.), ministering to a growing population of poorly educated and largely illiterate German settlers in the Cape Flats (arriving largely between 1877 and 1884). During his tenure, he helped found the German International School Cape Town, pay off the debts from the building of St. Martini's church on Long Street, build a parsonage, and spin off daughter churches in Paarl and Worcester. After failed efforts by Cape Colony to make South West Africa a British protectorate, the Nama-Herero war sparked anew on the "bloody night" of 23 August 1880. When, at the end of 1881, a Herero attack was rumored to have occurred on the Cape magistracy in Walvis Bay, Hahn pleaded the Herero's case and urged restraint by colonial authorities in a letter published in the Cape Times on 13 January 1882. From 1882 until his retirement in 1884 he was the Cape Government's "Special Commissioner for the Walwich Bay Territory", traveling there at the behest of Commissioner Hercules Robinson, 1st Baron Rosmead and attempting to restore peace to South West Africa in talks with Maharero in Okahandja (17–18 February 1882). Apart from a treaty between the Swartbooi Nama and the Herero, Hahn was unsuccessful and recommended in his March 1882 report to the Cape government that the Walvis Bay area be maintained as British territory. Linguistic works While in Gross Barmen, Hahn learned to speak Otjiherero (first gaining the ability to preach in the language on 29 January 1847) and translated the New Testament and other religious texts into the language of the natives. As early as 1846, he compiled the first Rhenish Missionary prayer book in Herero, and together with Rath, he released a collection of biblical stories and hymns translated into the language under the title Ornahungi oa embo ra Jehova in 1849. Additional prayer books in 1861 and 1871 book-ended his 1864 output of two further biblical narratives, a copy of Luther's Small Catechism, and a 32-song