German settlement in Australia

From 1850 until World War I, German settlers and their descendants comprised the largest non-British or Irish group of Europeans in Australia.

On 23 April 1838, the barque Kinnear arrived at Sydney carrying six German wine growing families.

[1] Two Lutheran missionaries whose work later proved significant in the preservation of Aboriginal Australian languages such as Bangarla[2] and Kaurna,[3][4] Clamor Wilhelm Schürmann and Christian Gottlieb Teichelmann, arrived in Adelaide on the Pestonjee Bomanjee on 12 October 1838.

Schürmann married the German Lutheran Wilhelmine Charlotte Maschmedt, also from Osnabrück, in 1847, and moved to Victoria in 1853.

[5] The second group arrived with Pastor Kavel on the ships Prince George, and Bengalee from the Prussian Province of Brandenburg.

They settled at Klemzig, 6 km (3.7 mi) from Adelaide, named after their home town in the Prussian province of Brandenburg.

The first German language newspaper in Australia, Die Deutsche Post, was founded in Adelaide c. 6 January 1848.

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.