Karl Wilhelm Posselt

Posselt served his apprenticeship under Carl Friedrich Schultheiss (1815-1855) at the Itemba mission station on the Kubusie River near Stutterheim in Kaffraria.

There he served the community of Neu-Deutschland which had been founded in 1848 with the arrival of 182 German settlers from Bremen, and whose main activity was growing cotton.

The cotton-growing project soon failed and the colonists started growing vegetables to supply the demand in Port Natal.

[2] In 1858 he settled at the mission station he had founded in 1854 and named Christianenburg after his first wife, situated close to Neu-Deutschland and forming part of present-day Clermont Township.

Karl Wilhelm married his first wife, Christiane Schönheit (d17 April 1848 Pietermaritzburg), on 1 April 1841 in Uitenhage and had 3 children - Johannes, Nathaniel, Christiane He married his second wife, Sophie Elizabeth Königkrämer (10 December 1834 - 30 November 1913), on 11 June 1851, producing 11 more children: Nathaniel, Mathilde, Emilie Christiana, Felix Albrecht Wilhelm, Sophie Lisette, Hermann Eberhardt, Erna, Emma Anna, Theodor Wilhelm, and Otto Helmuth and Therese.