Hermannsburg, Lutheran church - Explore
On Explore on May 5th, 2017, #269
Located in the Western McDonnell Ranges, Hermannsburg was established as an Aboriginal mission in 1877 by two Lutheran missionaries of the Hermannsburg Mission from Germany, who had travelled overland from Bethany in the Barossa Valley in South Australia. They named their new mission among the Aranda people after Hermannsburg in Germany where they had trained.
In 1891, the missionaries left, but the settlement was continued by lay workers until, in 1894, Pastor Carl Strehlow arrived. Pastor Strehlow learnt and documented the Aranda language, and was involved with local people in Bible translation and hymn writing.
The language became known as Arrarnta in 1980.
Pastor F. W. Albrecht succeeded Strehlow as mission superintendent in 1926. Around that time there were periods of severe, widespread droughts. Many people became sick and died. Despite these hardships, Albrecht and the community leaders succeeded in developing various enterprises: a reticulated water supply from nearby springs, a large vegetable garden and orchard, beef cattle ranching, and a tannery. They also supported the development of the school of watercolour landscape artists, which became one of the special heritages of the Hermannsburg area.
The mission land was handed over to traditional ownership in 1982. The Hermannsburg Historic Precinct was included on the Australian National Heritage List in April 2006. Much of the historic township is now protected by the National Trust.
Carl Friedrich Theodor Strehlow (23 December 1871 – 20 October 1922) was a German Lutheran missionary and ethnologist in outback Australia who headed the Finke River Mission in Hermannsburg, Northern Territory from 1894.
He was a linguist, anthropologist, genealogist, collector of natural history specimens, missionary and translator, served on two Lutheran missions in inland Australia from May 1892 to October 1922, a total of thirty years. He was at the first mission station, Killalpaninna (often referred to as Bethesda), from 1892 to 1894, and the second, Hermannsburg, eighty miles west of Alice Springs, from 1894 to 1922, first as teacher and, from 1901 onwards, manager, and it is for his work here that he is mostly known today. Strehlow was ably assisted and supported by his wife Friederike Johanna Henriette Keysser (31 August 1875 – 30 April 1957), who played the central role in reducing the high infant mortality which threatened Aboriginal communities all over Australia after the onset of white settlement. It is probable that Hermannsburg was the only Mission in Australia at the start of the twentieth century where the population was growing through natural increase. As a polymath with an interest in natural history, through his Aranda informants Strehlow provided plant and animal specimens to museums in Germany and Australia, a number of which first came to scientific notice through his collecting. This was the outcome of his collaboration with Moritz, Baron von Leonhardi of Gross Karben in Hessen, Germany, who also suggested he write his monumental anthropological work 'Die Aranda- und Loritja-Stämme in Zentral-Australien' (The Aranda and Loritja Tribes in Central Australia). Under Leonhardi’s editorship this work became the first publication of the newly founded Städtisches Völkermuseum (Municipal Ethnological Museum) of Frankfurt am Main, appearing in eight parts between 1907 and 1920. Strehlow sent what was said to be the best collection in the world of Aboriginal artefacts – both sacred and secular – to Frankfurt, unfortunately largely destroyed in the bombing of the city in World War Two.
Due to Leonhardi’s sudden death in 1910, Strehlow’s linguistic researches intended as part of Die Aranda- und Loritja-Stämme were never published, though used in manuscript form by his son Theodor George Henry Strehlow and the Hermannsburg missionaries. Strehlow also collaborated on the pioneering first complete translation of the New Testament into an Aboriginal language (Dieri), published by the British and Foreign Bible Society in 1897, and he later translated the New Testament into Aranda, parts of which were published after his death. He also produced a reader and service book in the latter language.
Falling ill with dropsy in September 1922, he tried to reach a doctor but died at Horseshoe Bend halfway between Alice Springs and Oodnadatta, leaving Frieda and fourteen-year-old son Theodor to continue south to Adelaide without him.
Professor TGH Strehlow, who is better known than Carl, built his scholarly career in part on the researches undertaken by his father.
Sources: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermannsburg,_Northern_Territory;
Hermannsburg, Lutheran church - Explore
On Explore on May 5th, 2017, #269
Located in the Western McDonnell Ranges, Hermannsburg was established as an Aboriginal mission in 1877 by two Lutheran missionaries of the Hermannsburg Mission from Germany, who had travelled overland from Bethany in the Barossa Valley in South Australia. They named their new mission among the Aranda people after Hermannsburg in Germany where they had trained.
In 1891, the missionaries left, but the settlement was continued by lay workers until, in 1894, Pastor Carl Strehlow arrived. Pastor Strehlow learnt and documented the Aranda language, and was involved with local people in Bible translation and hymn writing.
The language became known as Arrarnta in 1980.
Pastor F. W. Albrecht succeeded Strehlow as mission superintendent in 1926. Around that time there were periods of severe, widespread droughts. Many people became sick and died. Despite these hardships, Albrecht and the community leaders succeeded in developing various enterprises: a reticulated water supply from nearby springs, a large vegetable garden and orchard, beef cattle ranching, and a tannery. They also supported the development of the school of watercolour landscape artists, which became one of the special heritages of the Hermannsburg area.
The mission land was handed over to traditional ownership in 1982. The Hermannsburg Historic Precinct was included on the Australian National Heritage List in April 2006. Much of the historic township is now protected by the National Trust.
Carl Friedrich Theodor Strehlow (23 December 1871 – 20 October 1922) was a German Lutheran missionary and ethnologist in outback Australia who headed the Finke River Mission in Hermannsburg, Northern Territory from 1894.
He was a linguist, anthropologist, genealogist, collector of natural history specimens, missionary and translator, served on two Lutheran missions in inland Australia from May 1892 to October 1922, a total of thirty years. He was at the first mission station, Killalpaninna (often referred to as Bethesda), from 1892 to 1894, and the second, Hermannsburg, eighty miles west of Alice Springs, from 1894 to 1922, first as teacher and, from 1901 onwards, manager, and it is for his work here that he is mostly known today. Strehlow was ably assisted and supported by his wife Friederike Johanna Henriette Keysser (31 August 1875 – 30 April 1957), who played the central role in reducing the high infant mortality which threatened Aboriginal communities all over Australia after the onset of white settlement. It is probable that Hermannsburg was the only Mission in Australia at the start of the twentieth century where the population was growing through natural increase. As a polymath with an interest in natural history, through his Aranda informants Strehlow provided plant and animal specimens to museums in Germany and Australia, a number of which first came to scientific notice through his collecting. This was the outcome of his collaboration with Moritz, Baron von Leonhardi of Gross Karben in Hessen, Germany, who also suggested he write his monumental anthropological work 'Die Aranda- und Loritja-Stämme in Zentral-Australien' (The Aranda and Loritja Tribes in Central Australia). Under Leonhardi’s editorship this work became the first publication of the newly founded Städtisches Völkermuseum (Municipal Ethnological Museum) of Frankfurt am Main, appearing in eight parts between 1907 and 1920. Strehlow sent what was said to be the best collection in the world of Aboriginal artefacts – both sacred and secular – to Frankfurt, unfortunately largely destroyed in the bombing of the city in World War Two.
Due to Leonhardi’s sudden death in 1910, Strehlow’s linguistic researches intended as part of Die Aranda- und Loritja-Stämme were never published, though used in manuscript form by his son Theodor George Henry Strehlow and the Hermannsburg missionaries. Strehlow also collaborated on the pioneering first complete translation of the New Testament into an Aboriginal language (Dieri), published by the British and Foreign Bible Society in 1897, and he later translated the New Testament into Aranda, parts of which were published after his death. He also produced a reader and service book in the latter language.
Falling ill with dropsy in September 1922, he tried to reach a doctor but died at Horseshoe Bend halfway between Alice Springs and Oodnadatta, leaving Frieda and fourteen-year-old son Theodor to continue south to Adelaide without him.
Professor TGH Strehlow, who is better known than Carl, built his scholarly career in part on the researches undertaken by his father.
Sources: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermannsburg,_Northern_Territory;