Thirty-five peasant families (about 188 people) from the Osnabrück-Bremen district accepted his offer and arrived in Natal on 23 March 1848.

They were settled in two adjacent areas roughly 10 km inland from Port Natal and called their new homes Neu-Deutschland (New Germany) and Westville.

Pastor Carl Wilhelm Posselt (1815–85) agreed to care for the congregation in New Germany, where he consecrated the first chapel of the Berlin Missionary Society in South Africa on 19 November 1848.

He conducted mission work among the Zulu farm labourers and in the Valley of a Thousand Hills, and in 1854 established a second station, Christianenberg, for this purpose.

Bergtheil succeeded in stemming the flow of Germans into the interior, and in 1854 Posselt returned to New Germany where he continued as missionary and pastor until his death in 1885.