German Missionaries in Australia

Frank Hanke from a small town near Dresden lost his mother at age 9 and attended Volksschule (public elementary school, probably to grade 8) before he came to Limburg in 1919. He completed a vocational training in carpentry and cabinet making at the Pallottine college in Olpe, received his habit in 1922 and made his profession in 1924. He worked in Olpe, Hofstetten and Frankenstein and in the kitchen at the Pallottine centre in Freising for two years before sailing from Naples to Australia in June 1934.¹ He travelled with Fr. Johann Herold and Br. Heinrich Schafer (the latter left the Pallottines in 1949).²

As carpenter at Beagle Bay he built a number of altars and church furnishings from local timber and mother-of-pearl inlay. He added a redgum communion rail to the Beagle Bay church and built the Aboriginal Sisters’ chapel funded by August Sixt. ³ In 1940 he was arrested at Beagle Bay with eight other German staff but allowed to return for the remainder of the war.

He also built the monastery at Tardun, designed as a novitiate for lay brothers and with room for three priests and ten brothers. It was a brick bungalow with verandah all around and was opened with a crowd of 400 present on 4 September 1938. In 1945 he helped to re-erect disused RAAF buildings from Geraldton, five dormitories, a school, kitchen and cool-room and various smaller buildings. Once the Presentation Sisters arrived these were turned into a boys’ and a girls’ dormitory with a new refectory and kitchen to start the long-awaited boarding school for Aboriginal children. When it was all completed, Br Frank went on a holiday to Perth with Brs. Basil Halder, Hubert Belderman and Valentine Ochsenknecht.⁴

In January 1948 he was diagnosed with Hansons disease, a type of leprosy ‘not as dangerous as the Asian variety’⁵ together with Br. Paul Ratajski, and both were hospitalized at the Derby leprosarium, where they build its church together with Aboriginal patients. Both were released in March 1952 and considered cured. However the strong medication affected his liver and kidney. He went to Perth while Brother Paul Ratjaski returned to Tardun, but by February 1954 Br. Frank was also back at Tardun and planning the roof for the new monastery at Tardun (which was still only half-finished in 1957 and completed a month after his death). ⁶ He remained under permanent medical supervision, and in August 1957 he was in the Subiaco hospital, where he died from the effects of the disease at age 53. Tardun received news of his death on 31 October 1957. ⁷

At the time of his death the Limburg motherhouse did not have any up to date address for his family to notify them of the death, but contact was established with a descendant in Leipzig in 1958.

Brothers Kupke, Donhauser, Birker, Hanke and Halder     Source: Australien  - Missionsstationen Kasten 18, ZAPP