QUEENSLAND'S GERMAN CONNECTIONS - PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE

Mission to Queensland

Between 2006 and 2009, Associate Professor Regina Ganter and a small team of students from Griffith University documented the work of German missionaries in Queensland. The mission movement in Queensland only really commenced in the mid-1880s, when all available land was taken up except at Cape York Peninsula. The impetus to focus on Cape York came from German Moravians in Victoria and the German Lutherans in South Australia, responding to the German acquisition of New Guinea. Germans shouldered an inordinately large share of the mission effort in the Australian colonies – practically half of the early missions were staffed with Germans. Of the 14 missions established in 19th century Queensland, eight had German staff, including the very first mission established at Zion Hill in 1838. The Zion Hill group actually became the first German settlers in what was to become Queensland. Not having an empire of their own until the mid 1880s, the Germans were more willing to embark on difficult ventures in distant locations than their British brethren, who could find more convivial placements in India, Africa or China. The British missionary societies often had difficulties in recruiting missionaries for Australia, and so German missionaries arrived in South Australia, Western Australia and Queensland before any German settlers. There were some significant differences between English and German speakers in their approach to indigenous societies. Germans showed great interest in learning and recording local languages, and were themselves outsiders in the British empire. What set the German missionaries most apart from British ones was that their English was generally poor. This meant they were more ready to preach and teach in an indigenous language. Lutherans, moreover, have always had a strong commitment to vernacular languages. To reach the soul of a people one had to speak and understand their language. German Lutheran saw the engagement with a local language as a useful and legitimate missionary activity. German speakers were also more likely to come with a different approach to language, different instructions for the conduct of science, and different conceptual maps of evolution. The greater propensity among German speakers in the indigenous encounter to record vernacular traditions, to acquire local languages, and to record folklore ( Volksgut ) as the defining characteristic of a people ( Volk ) arises from their training and from the broader contexts of intellectual tradition.

During the height of the British Empire, Germans were ‘sitting on the sidelines’ and felt ‘free to critique other colonial powers’. This attitude characterised a number of the German missionaries who became quickly unpopular for voicing criticism of colonial governments. The German missions had wavering government support and much bad press, and were largely funded by the Lutheran communities in South Australia and the mission institutions in Germany. The long-term survival of a mission depended on the staying power of individual missionaries. Some spent a lifetime engaged in what they saw as an important personal calling to make a difference. Reverend Georg Schwarz spent 55 years as a missionary at Cape Bedford assisted by Rev. Poland for 21 years. Gottfried Haussmann spent 22 years on missionary effort, and became its lone beacon in Queensland in the late 1860s and 1870s. missionaries.griffith.edu.au

Mapoon Weipa Aurukun

Cape Bedford (Hope Vale) Bloomfield River (Wujal Wujal)

Mari Yamba

Zion Hill (Nundah, Brisbane)

Bethesda (Logan)

Nerang Creek

Material on these pages has been reproduced by kind permission of Associate Professor Regina Ganter and Griffith University. Regina collaborated with her third-year History students to research the history of German missions in Queensland published at http://missionaries.griffith.edu.au/ She teaches Australian history and heritage studies in the School of Humanities and her speciality is interactions between indigenous, Asian and European peoples in northern Australia. Her books include The Pearl-Shellers of Torres Strait (1994) based on award-winning research, and Mixed Relations (2006) which received the Ernest Scott Prize in Australian History in 2007. Regina commenced this project in 2006 with fieldwork in German missionary archives funded by a Griffith University Research Grant.

112