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.
He was born in the Saxon village of Dahme (part of Prussia from 1815), the son of a master clothmaker, and, after an early schooling, was apprenticed as a carpenter's assistant at the age of 14.
During this period Teichelmann, after mixing with students who had missionary contacts, enrolled in Jaenicke's Mission school in 1831, where Clamor Wilhelm Schürmann was a fellow-student.
The German missionaries at the time were the only ones thoroughly at home in native languages and gifted with a practical empathy for the customs and modes of Aboriginal life.
They recorded around about 3000 words, a sketch grammar, hundreds of phrases and sentences along with English translations, traditional songlines, and textual illustrations of differences among dialects.