Overview: German History In South Australia (1/4)

Germans have comprised a significant part of the population of South Australia almost since the State's foundation. This has been variously estimated at between 7% and 10% until the outbreak of World War I in 1914. The first British setters arrived in South Australia in 1836. Some years earlier in 1817 in Prussia, Friedrich Wilhelm III had made the first moves to unite all the Protestants in his Kingdom in a Union Church by the introduction of a common official liturgy. This was not entirely successful and many congregations continued to use the old Lutheran form of worship. In 1830 Friedrich Wilhelm ordered that all congregations should use the church order. Pastors who did not conform were sent to prison and their goods confiscated. Parishioners who followed the old liturgy found it impossible to hold services or have their children baptised and confirmed.

By the year 1855 Germans and their children already constituted over 8% of the population of South Australia. The early German settlers who had emigrated to South Australia as early as 1838, only two years after the foundation of the province, were followed by many others. The first German settlers had come because they were suffering religious persecution in their homeland. Later settlers came to enjoy the freedom, the sun and the economic prosperity of the new colony. Many came because they had friends or relatives already in the province.

By the year 1850 Germans and their children already constituted some 10% of the population of South Australia. Today I should like to look at two particular aspects of German immigration into Adelaide: the rights of Germans as citizens and secondly, to try and illustrate how the German community was in every sense, disunited. Unlike it was perceived by many British-Australians, it was anything but monolithic.

The 1850s were politically important years for the German settlers. Two German newspapers had been launched, Die Deutsche Post (The German Post) and Deutsche Zeitung für Südaustralien, (German Newspaper for South Australia) and a German Hospital had been opened. The Liedertafel started as did the famous Brunswick Brass Band. Der Deutsche Club (German Club) began in 1854 and was to flourish as a centre of German culture and learning until 1907. German miners from the Harz Mountains were active in the colony's copper fields while German smelters brought their skills of how to smelt with timber to the Glen Osmond and the Burra mines. In the 1850s numerous German silver and goldsmiths arrived in the colony to settle in Adelaide, as did cabinet and piano makers.

Witchcraft: A European phenomenon of Medieval times? No, it flourished in South Australia only last century, and may still persist today. In this article on our German settlers, Adelaide historian, Dr Ian Harmstorf, discusses some of the beliefs, both sacred and profane, of the superstitious country folk who came here from Prussia.

Along with their cakes, carts, culture and religion, the Germans brought to South Australia a little-publicised aspect of their European heritage-witchcraft!

Exactly when witchcraft came to the new colony is impossible to determine, but the knowledge necessary to practise the black art is believed to have been brought here by at least 1842.