German settlement in Australia began in large numbers in 1838, with the arrival of immigrants from Prussia to Adelaide, in the then colony of South Australia. German immigrants became prominent in settling South Australia and Queensland. From 1850 until World War I, German settlers and their descendants comprised the largest non-British or Irish group of Europeans in Australia.
On 23 April 1838, the barque Kinnear arrived at Sydney carrying six German wine growing families. Johann Justus, Friedrich Seckold, Johann Stein, Caspar Flick, Georg Gerhard and Johann Wenz, were the first German vinedressers in Australia. Hundreds of Germans followed their arrival in Australia. They worked in the vineyards belonging to John Macarthur's son William Macarthur in what is now Camden Park. These six families were recruited from the Rheingau region of Hesse by Major Edward Macarthur. [1]
Two Lutheran missionaries whose work later proved significant in the preservation of Aboriginal Australian languages such as Bangarla [2] and Kaurna, [3] [4] Clamor Wilhelm Schürmann and Christian Gottlieb Teichelmann, arrived in Adelaide on the Pestonjee Bomanjee on 12 October 1838. [5] Schürmann founded a mission at Encounter Bay and was also involved with missions in the Port Lincoln area, and the pair founded a school for Kaurna people at Piltawodli in the Adelaide parklands. [6] Teichelmann married the Scottish Margaret Nicholson in 1843, and they went on to have 14 children and settled on a farm at Morphett Vale. Schürmann married the German Lutheran Wilhelmine Charlotte Maschmedt, also from Osnabrück, in 1847, and moved to Victoria in 1853. They had nine children. [5]
The second group arrived with Pastor Kavel on the ships Prince George , and Bengalee from the Prussian Province of Brandenburg. The group was composed of Lutheran immigrants who had left their homeland escaping what they considered to be religious persecution at the hands of Prussian King Frederick William III, mainly because of their rejection of Prussian state enforcement of a new prayer book for church services. They settled at Klemzig, 6 km (3.7 mi) from Adelaide, named after their home town in the Prussian province of Brandenburg.
The next group arrived on 28 December 1838, on the Zebra with Captain Dirk Meinerts Hahn. Captain Hahn, assisted this group in acquiring land in the Adelaide Hills, where they settled Hahndorf.
The last of the initial wave of immigrants arrived in January 1839, on the Catharina . This group settled predominantly at Glen Osmond.
Sixty-three German passengers from Silesia, Prussia arrived March 31 on the GH Wappaus. Dr. Asscheanfeldt, surgeon-superintendent and among whom are two Roman Catholic missionaries. The Wappaus had sailed from Hamburg.
In 1840 a letter was sent to the Old Lutherans in Prussia to encourage others to also emigrate. Included in this letter was a request for a second pastor to be sent also. The group set sail for Australia, on 11 July 1841 on the Skjold . On a trip beset with sickness, 55 people, mainly young children and the elderly, died. On 28 October 1841, 213 emigrants from Prussia arrived at Port Misery in South Australia. With them was Pastor Gotthard Fritzsche, who had been encouraged to emigrate because of the Prussian government's requirement for a Pastor to accompany the emigrants. The migrants settled at Lobethal, and Bethenien.
In 1842, Langmeil was settled.
Early German immigrants were instrumental in the creation of the South Australian wine industry. One of the earliest wine makers, whose descendants still produce wine, was Carl August Sobels. Born in Dresden in 1802, he arrived in South Australia on the Hermann von Beckerath in 1847. At first he farmed at Macclesfield before moving to Tanunda where he produced table wines. After his death in 1863 the business was conducted by his son Ferdinand.
By the mid-1840s, the German community in South Australia had become large enough to warrant its own German-language newspaper. The first German language newspaper in Australia, Die Deutsche Post , was founded in Adelaide c. 6 January 1848. [7]
The barque San Francisco (a three masted barque of 450 tons (nm) built in Bjornberg, Sweden in 1846 and owned by J C Godeffroy & Sons) landed a number of emigrants in South Australia on 14 October 1850 on 15 June 1850 after leaving Hamburg. [8] [9] The ship almost never arrived, as it sailed straight into a major storm at Port Misery (Port Adelaide), which also wrecked the barque Grecian (three-masted, built at Sunderland, England in 1841) earlier that day. It was reported in a local newspaper of the time that the newly arrived emigrants on the ship were from the linen-producing Prussian province of Silesia. Like previous German emigrants to South Australia, the passengers then dispersed throughout the colony.
The Kaurna people are a group of Aboriginal people whose traditional lands include the Adelaide Plains of South Australia. They were known as the Adelaide tribe by the early settlers. Kaurna culture and language were almost completely destroyed within a few decades of the British colonisation of South Australia in 1836. However, extensive documentation by early missionaries and other researchers has enabled a modern revival of both language and culture. The phrase Kaurna meyunna means "Kaurna people".
Uraidla is a small town in the Adelaide Hills of South Australia, Australia. At the 2016 census, Uraidla had a population of 575. However it also sits at the centre of a larger population catchment of rural townships which include Summertown, Piccadilly, Ashton, Basket Range, Carey Gully, Norton Summit and Cherryville.
Bonython Park is a 17-hectare park in the north-west Park Lands of the South Australian capital of Adelaide. The park was opened in 1962 and named in honour of prominent South Australian politician and journalist, Sir John Langdon Bonython. It is situated on the north-western side of the River Torrens, bordered by Port Road. It is on the opposite side of the river to a golf course, and adjacent to the old Adelaide Gaol and the Police Barracks.
Kaurna is a Pama-Nyungan language historically spoken by the Kaurna peoples of the Adelaide Plains of South Australia. The Kaurna peoples are made up of various tribal clan groups, each with their own parnkarra district of land and local dialect. These dialects were historically spoken in the area bounded by Crystal Brook and Clare in the north, Cape Jervis in the south, and just over the Mount Lofty Ranges. Kaurna ceased to be spoken on an everyday basis in the 19th century and the last known native speaker, Ivaritji, died in 1929. Language revival efforts began in the 1980s, with the language now frequently used for ceremonial purposes, such as dual naming and welcome to country ceremonies.
Gotthard Daniel Fritzsche was a Prussian-Australian pastor who became instrumental in furthering that religion in South Australia. He was born in Liebenwerda, in the Electorate of Saxony, Germany, and migrated to Australia in 1841. From 1842 to 1863, he was pastor of the Evangelical Lutheran Church. He died and was buried at Lobethal, South Australia.
August Ludwig Christian Kavel was a founder of Lutheranism in Australia.
The Catharina was a barque, built 1810 in Kiel, and weighing 350 tons.
The Skjold was a Danish three-mast Barque, built in Sønderborg 1839, and displacing 460 tons. It was owned by C. Petersen, Sønderborg.
The history of theLutheran Church of Australia is the sequence of events related to divisions, mergers and affiliations of Lutheran church organisations from the time Lutheranism first arrived in Australia, to the time of unification of the two main synods in 1966.
German Australians are Australians with German ancestry. German Australians constitute one of the largest ancestry groups in Australia, and German is the fifth most identified European ancestry in Australia behind English, Irish, Scottish and Italian. German Australians are one of the largest groups within the global German diaspora.
The following lists events that happened during 1838 in Australia.
Wasleys is a small town north-west of Gawler, South Australia. Roseworthy College is located around 6 km (3.7 mi) south of the town.
Klemzig is a suburb of Adelaide in the City of Port Adelaide Enfield. It was the first settlement of German immigrants in Australia and was named after the village of Klemzig in what was then German Prussia and is now Klępsk in western Poland.
Old Lutherans were German Lutherans in the Kingdom of Prussia, especially in the Province of Silesia, who refused to join the Prussian Union of churches in the 1830s and 1840s. Prussia's king, Frederick William III, was determined to unify the Protestant churches, homogenize their liturgy, organization, and architecture. In a series of proclamations over several years the Church of the Prussian Union was formed, bringing together a group that was majority Lutheran and minority Reformed. As a result, the government of Prussia had full control over church affairs, with the king recognized as the leading bishop.
Yankalilla is an agriculturally based town situated on the Fleurieu Peninsula in South Australia, located 72 km south of the state's capital of Adelaide. The town is nestled in the Bungala River valley, overlooked by the southern Mount Lofty Ranges and acts as a service centre for the surrounding agricultural district.
Wilhelm Iwan, author, historian, and Lutheran theologian lived from 1871 until 1958. As a historian, he documented the 19th century exodus from Prussia (Germany) to America and Australia by a group who sought religious freedom. In 1945 he fled from his homeland and lived the remainder of his life as a refugee in West Germany.
Peramangk, also known as Merildekald, is an extinct Pama-Nyungan language of the Peramangk lands in South Australia. Like its congener the Kaurna language, it was previously listed as endangered.
Pestonjee Bomanjee was a wooden sailing ship built in 1834 by James Lang of Dumbarton, Scotland. She was a three-masted wooden barque of 595 tons, 130 feet in length, 31.5 feet in breadth, first owned by John Miller Jnr and Company, Glasgow. Her last-known registered owner in 1861 was Patrick Keith & George Ross, Calcutta, India.
Christian Gottlieb Teichelmann, also spelt Christian Gottlob Teichelmann, was a Lutheran missionary who worked among Australian Aboriginal people in South Australia. He was a pioneer in describing the Kaurna language, after his work begun at the Piltawodli Native Location in Adelaide, with fellow-missionary Clamor Wilhelm Schürmann.
Clamor Wilhelm Schürmann was a Lutheran missionary who emigrated to Australia and did fundamental pioneering work, together with his colleague Christian Gottlieb Teichelmann, on recording some Australian languages in South Australia.