German Missionaries in Australia

Friedrich Wilhelm Spieseke from Brandenburg was a lay helper at the Moravian community of Gnadenberg when he followed the call in 1849 to commence the first Moravian mission in New Holland (which became Lake Boga mission). He was accepted into the Moravian Akoluthie in August 1849 a month after Br. Täger from Niesky college had been ordained for the purpose of the same mission venture. Together they travelled to Australia via London, where Spieseke had intended to spend a period to learn English, but this was declined. They left London in October 1849 and arrived in Melbourne on the migrant ship Sibella in February 1850.¹

Charles LaTrobe, the first Lieutenant Governor of the colony of Victoria, erected in 1851, was himself a member of a prominent British Moravian family. He intended to close down the government protectorate stations at Mount Rouse, Merri Creek, Mitchellstown, and Loddon, and had requested Moravian missionaries for Victoria. He selected the mission site near Archibald Macarthur Campbell's Gannawarra station and arranged introductions for the two Brethren to key people, including the mission friend Rev. Lloyd Chase, and Edward Stone Parker who oversaw the government protectorate station at Loddon (Mt. Franklin). After six weeks in Melbourne the Brothers visited Mount Franklin Protectorate Station and then moved to Gannawarra station.

Illness, sore eyes and flooding kept delaying the opening of the mission at Lake Boga, a day’s ride from Gannawarra, until October 1851. The mission was situated on land that had served as a gathering ground until several White people had been killed on the site, and was now avoided by the Wemba Wemba people.

A man called Bonaparte, a cattle drover who spoke English, collaborated with the missionaries and helped them to learn the local language. This collaboration enabled Spieseke to publish ethnographic observations on the Wemba Wemba people in 1854 and 1860.² Eventually some families settled on the mission site and in January 1854 a younger Moravian Brother, Paul Hansen, arrived to assist Täger and Spieseke. With much effort, carting in garden soil, they established gardens to grow food, and eventually were able to report the presence of up to 120 Aboriginal people at the mission station.

However, the mission did not fare well under the pressures of the gold rush that started in 1851, with trespassers crossing the mission land and neighbours tearing down the fences that the missionaries built with the help of Boney and Tommy.³ Also, their main supporter, Charles La Trobe resigned in 1852 and departed Victoria in 1854, after which the missionaries were left without support from officials. In February 1854 police killed the mission’s most promising interlocutor, Bonaparte, as well as another Aboriginal man. Spieseke knew that the crime for which these two were executed had been committed by someone else, and wrote a damning report to the Moravian Missionsblatt published in August 1854, but, as Felicity Jensz points out, his cynicism about the colonial government was edited out of his published report.^{4 5} (This incident is likely to relate to the establishment of Ebenezer mission, also close to a station owned by Archibald Macarthur Campbell, and in which a Boney also played a role.)

Spieseke, in the prime of life at age 36, may have wanted to persist, but the 45-year old mission leader Täger, wracked by illness, resorted to the Moravian practice of drawing lots to decide on relinquishing the Lake Boga mission effort. The three Brethren wound up the mission without obtaining prior permission and returned via London to Herrnhut, where the Council of Elders chastised them, though they exonerated Spieseke and Hansen.

Spieseke remained in Europe for a year, during which he studied in London and was then ordained as Diaconus in Herrnhut together with Friedrich Hagenauer (6 January 1858). Spieseke returned to Australia with Hagenauer as assistant to set up a second Moravian mission attempt, this time in the Wimmera region of Victoria (Ebenezer).

They travelled via London (15 February 1858) and arrived in Melbourne (14 May 1858) after 78-day ocean voyage on the Black Swan and seven days in quarantine. After a ‘tedious stay in Melbourne’, and ‘much fruitless negotiation’ with the government for a plot of ground for a mission, Spieseke and Hagenauer travelled inland (15 June 1858). They had a ‘joyful reunion’ with Archibald Macarthur Campbell, the former owner of Gannawarra station near Lake Boga, now established at a new station in the Grampians. After an arduous journey inspecting several potential mission sites, they arrived at H. C. Ellermann’s Antwerp station on 20 December 1858. Ellermann, whose wife was conducting an Aboriginal school, had invited a mission to his station near Lake Hindmarsh. The Brothers took possession of the site in May 1859, which was then occupied by 12 Aboriginal people.

After the Lake Boga experience Spieseke must have known how important it was to have good relations with neighbouring settlers, and he spent much effort in outreach to such neighbours. The Herrnhut Elders also drew their lessons from the Lake Boga experience. They insisted that before the two Brethren could be allocated a wife, as was the Moravian practice, the lease arrangements had to be secure. With the closure of Lake Boga mission, Ebenezer was still effectively the first Moravian foray into the Australian mission field. Spieseke and Hagenauer were keen to propel the issue of a secure lease. Spieseke wrote that seven months of 'tedious' negotiations with the government over land proved 'fruitless'⁶ and Hagenauer subsequently despaired that after fourteen months in the country 'We still have no land! And when will we receive it?'⁷

Finally three square miles were gazetted as an Aboriginal reserve on their chosen site, after the missionaries had been able to claim their first convert, with the baptism of Nathaniel Pepper on 12 August 1860. The mission brides were dispatched, and at age 40 Spieseke married Christina Johanna neé Fricke (29 May 1861), followed by the wedding of Hagenauer to Louise Knobloch (15 June 1861). The Spiesekes’ first daughter Helen was born nine months after the wedding (10 March 1862) and both parents were in Melbourne for the birth.

Though Spieseke was in charge of the mission, the tone of policy at Ebenezer was set by Hagenauer, who forbade corroborees on the mission ground, and made other policy decisions, such as accepting a refugee into the mission without consulting the local Elders, which led to an armed stand-off in 1859.

The baptism of Nathanel Pepper in 1860 rehabilitated not only Spieseke’s missionary reputation, but also that of the Unity of Brethren (Moravians) in Australia, and reverberated throughout the Australian colonies. In 1861 Hagenauer set off to establish a further mission in Gippsland (Ramahyuck) that opened in 1863, and the Lutheran Pastor Gottfried Hausmann renewed the mission effort in Queensland inspired by the Ebenezer example in 1866, the year when another Moravian mission attempt near Coopers Creek was launched (Kopperamanna). The Ebenezer example showed what by now many others, including many missionaries, had 'never thought possible': the conversion of Aboriginal people to Christianity.⁸

Spieseke played a central role in this conversion narrative. It was he who reported Pepper’s conversion experience in January 1860.⁹ However Hagenauer followed up with the amazing story of Willie Wimmera involving Pepper, Boney, and several other young local men that became a second foundation narrative for the mission (see Ebenezer- This special place).¹⁰ When the Central Board for Aborigines (CBA) was established in 1861 it invited Hagenauer, not Spieseke, to act as inspector.¹¹ In June 1862 Spieseke took Nathanael Pepper to Melbourne for the general meeting of the mission association (Victorian Association in aid of Mission to the Aborigines of Australia), which decided on the continuation of the mission that year and again in 1867.

At the 1867 meeting of the Victorian mission association, Spieseke contributed an ‘extremely long presentation’, trying to convince the local mission supporters to finance Ebenezer mission and its missionaries, who were drawing no wages, and were being sustained by money from Herrnhut. He was able to report 17 baptised converts. In 1868 the Aboriginal cricket team that toured England included Jungunjinanuke (aka Dick-a-Dick) from Ebenezer. However, as Bill Edwards observed, ‘death was ever present’ at the mission, and one after the other the residents in whom much hope had been invested succumbed to illness.¹²

Although Spieseke argued that Christianising must come first, and ‘civilisation will follow’, he railed against child marriage and alcohol consumption, and was in favour of forced removal of mixed descent girls from their parents in the camps, and for bringing ‘drunken beggars’ under the Vagrancy Act.¹³ Spieseke challenged Aboriginal spiritual leaders to put a spell on him to show their powers over the powers of the Christian God. He had learned enough Wotjobaluk language to be able to translate the hymns that Nathanel Pepper composed, and to publish ethnographic observations on religion.¹⁴

Spieseke had been working alongside the Hagenauers until 1861, then with Br. Francis Job for a few years, and from 1864 to 1872 with the Hartmanns during which period Hartmann increasingly took on the report writing and the day to day mission work. Heinrich Stähle worked at Ebenezer from 1872 to 1874, and started to build a new church before he was called to Lake Condah. Spieseke was now left without an assistant missionary and his health declined. He resented the interference of the Aborigines Protection Board (BPA) in the missions, and eventually ceased corresponding with the BPA. There are no reports after 1874.¹⁵

Carl and Emilie Kramer were posted back to Ebenezer in March 1876, and fifteen months later Spieseke succumbed to illness at age 56, after 17 years at Ebenezer. Kramer reported that his death was received with ‘great sorrow’ and the Aboriginal men walked to Dimboola to buy a coffin at their own expense for their beloved teacher. He was at that time the longest service record among the Moravian missionaries in Australia and his headstone was erected near the church.¹⁶