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German settlement in Australia
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German settlement in Australia began in large numbers in 1838, with the arrival of immigrants from Prussia to Adelaide, 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 group of Europeans in Australia.
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The first group arrived with Pastor August Kavel on the ships Prince George, and Bengalee. These first immigrants to settle from what is today known as Germany were escaping from what they considered to be religious persecution at the hands of Prussian King Frederick William III. The group was comprised of Lutheran immigrants who had left their homeland mainly because of their rejection of Prussian state enforcement of a new prayer book for church services. They developed a settlement at Klemzig, six kilometers from Adelaide.
The next group arrived in December 1838, on the Zebra with Captain Dirk Meinhertz 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 Cathrina. This group settled predominantly at Glen Osmond.
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 October 28, 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. In 1847, the first German newspaper in Australia, Die Deutsche Post, was founded in Adelaide.
The barque San Francisco landed a number of emigrants in South Australia on 14 October 1850 after leaving Hamburg on 23 June 1850. The ship almost never arrived, as it sailed straight into a major storm at Port Misery, which also wrecked the barque Grecian 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 dispursed throughout the colony.