German Missionaries in Australia

Gottlieb Meissel was a teacher at the Moravian school in Ebersdorf and answered the call for a mission in Australia in December 1863 at age 26. Together with three others who had accepted this call, he was accepted into the Akoluthie on 14 January 1864 and was ordained as Diakonus in Herrnhut on 31 July 1864.

Teacher Meissel and shoemaker Julius Kühn were then trained in basic surgery skills while the other two Brothers were sent to London to learn English.¹ On their arrival in Melbourne the two teachers, Meissel and Heinrich Walder. were allocated to Ebenezer mission while the other two Brothers were sent to Ramahyuck. Meissel left Ebenezer on 1 April 1865 and arrived in Adelaide on 7 May 1865, while Walder followed on 31 July. However, it was still too soon to depart for the inland, so Meissel was sent to Point McLeay where he spent another eight months, while Walder stayed in the Moravian community of Bethel in the Barossa Valley. On 31 July Meissel and Wilhelm Kramer met up with Walder at Bethel, and Kramer went to fetch Boney from Ebenezer.²

Their experiences at Lake Hope, Coopers Creek, Lake Kopperamanna and Bukaltaninna are described in the entry for Killalpaninna mission. In the second half of 1868 they gave up this Moravian inland mission effort and Meissel and Walder were called for missionary service in Suriname. Meissel stayed in Melbourne during the early part of 1869, from where he left on 26 May 1869, and arrived at St. Thomas in the Virgin Islands on 12 September 1869.³