Paul Foelsche ISO (30 March 1831 – 31 January 1914) was a South Australian police officer and photographer born in Germany,[1] remembered for his work in the Northern Territory of Australia from 1870 to 1904.

At seventeen he enlisted in the Prussian cavalry which was fighting Denmark over ownership of the Schleswig-Holstein region to the north, learning the use of weapons and becoming a proficient horseman and gunsmith.

Late in 1870 his wife Charlotte and daughters Mary and Emma arrived in Darwin and for Foelsche, a dedicated family man, things looked brighter.

Apart from photography, which absorbed much of his income and spare time, he took a great interest in aboriginal culture, was a skilled armourer and a capable dentist.

[14] Historians concur in showing that Foelsche played an important role, as the chief of police forces, in the violence inflicted upon Indigenous Australians in the Northern Territory.

[16]Foelsche's active role in the brutal colonisation of northern Australia is seldom acknowledged in textbooks and mainstream historical accounts, most of which were originally based on the perspective of European settlers at the end of the 19th century.

Foelsche learned much of the art and craft of photography during the years 1869–1871 from Samuel Sweet, captain of the schooner Gulnare, the Government supply vessel.

[19] Foelsche took hundreds of portraits of Larrakia, Woolna (Djerimanga) and Iwaidja people, usefully annotated with the subjects' names and some personal details.

For E. C. Stirling, Director of the South Australian Museum, Foelsche collected numerous articles of common use by aboriginal people, annotated with their vernacular terms and usage.

Foelsche struck up a correspondence with Ferdinand von Mueller of Melbourne, perhaps through an introduction by Maurice William Holtze, who founded Port Darwin's Botanical Gardens in 1878.

It has been suggested that Foelsche's appointment to Port Darwin had much to do with the friends and contacts he made through Freemasonry: his intelligence, aptitude and courage were undoubted but he was unproven as a leader.

[4] Contrary to many reports of his being the ideal man for the job for his cheerful courage in a hostile environment, he has been described as, at least until his family joined him in 1871, "one of the most embittered of all the Europeans in Darwin".