German Missionaries in Australia

Stähle (also misspelled as Staehle, Stahle, Stoele) was a leatherworker by trade, and after receiving a call into missionary service was quickly processed for departure. He was accepted into the Moravian Akoluthie (16 December 1871), ordained the next day at Herrnhut (17 December 1871) and married (29 December 1871) to the early childhood teacher Marie Magdalene Stamm¹ (born 4 March 1850) from Switzerland. When they sailed from London on 22 January 1872 he was 32 and his wife was 21 years old.

They reached Ebenezer mission on 16 May 1872 and took on the school. By this time Marie was pregnant and Stähle in high spirits. His early letters self-deprecatingly describe his struggle with English and how he once got lost in the scrub during an afternoon walk, and a bell was hung out for him to find his way back.² He was devastated when his young wife died in childbirth on 16 October 1872 and the baby also died four weeks later.

Stähle left Ebenezer to 'further his theological education'³ (presumably to qualify for ordination in the Church of England). He became manager at Coranderrk where he met his second wife Mary Ann Chisholm née McLean, the Coranderrk schoolteacher.⁴ The Moravians repeatedly declined his request that his wife be accepted into the Akoluthie and at some time in 1874 Stähle left the Moravian church.⁵ The Bishop of Ballarat neither recognised his Moravian ordination nor agreed to re-ordain him, so he was not able to hold services with the Holy Communion.⁶

After two years at Coranderrk Stähle became the superintendent of Lake Condah (1875) also run by the Anglican Church Missionary Society. One of his predecessors at this mission had been Rev. Job Francis, who had also had to leave Ebenezer because he married outside the Moravian church. Stähle's first report in 1876 compared Lake Condah unfavourably to Ebenezer.⁷ Stähle conducted a choir, which gave two public performances in 1879 with 'good press'.⁸ In 1880 he reported that the mission women were attending sewing classes twice a week and were making nice jackets for their husbands.

A sympathetic history claims that 'Aborigines who lived at Lake Condah were glowing in their appreciation of the work of the man and his wife that many called "Papa" and "Mama"'.⁹ Cole describes Stähle as a strict disciplinarian, hardworking, painstaking, practical, and businesslike.¹⁰ The residents of Lake Condah were subject to close personal scrutiny. The children were examined 'every morning to see that their bodies are clean and their garments mended. Each child receives a warm bath at least once a week'. The girls 'under my wife's training are taught domestic work'.¹¹ Lake Condah was a second home for many residents of Framlingham (who had been relocated to Lake Condah but soon left again) and Stähle objected to the fluidity of traffic between the two stations.¹²

In 1880 one of the mission residents threatened Stähle with a gun. Unbeknown to him his wife Mary wrote to the BPA to ask for help, which is the only record of that incident.¹³ At this time the future of Coranderrk and Famlingham was hanging in the scale, and Stähle was apparently considered as a superintendent for Coranderrk, but ¹⁴

The number of residents at Lake Condah increased under Stähle supervision and the mission was considered well-managed. A stone church for Lake Condah was largely funded by money raised by the mission choir, which toured the townships in the mid-1880s, accompanied by Stähle's young daughter as organist.¹⁵ Heinrich and Mary Stähle also had a son, Herbert, one of the eighteen young men from Lake Condah who died in World War I and appear on its honour board (now at Heywood). ¹⁶

In March 1880 Stähle visited Carl and Emilie Kramer at Ebenezer, and Kramer returned the visit in 1885. Kramer had been able to gain admission to the Akoluthie for his wife, while Stähle was forced to leave the Moravian church as a result of his second marriage. Stähle also visited the mission conducted by the Aborigines Friends Association at Point Pearce in 1891, and was impressed with the work there.¹⁷ This mission had been conducted by Julius Kühn, also a former Moravian brother. During the 1880s Stähle, like several of his colleagues, supplied information to Alfred Howitt and was considered 'generally reliable' as a source on language specifically on the Gournditch-marra of Lake Condah.¹⁸

Under the impact of the Aboriginal Protection Act in 1887 the number of residents at Lake Condah dropped rapidly. The Stähles retired in 1913 to Portland, after which the mission was managed by the Aborigines Protection Board and during World War I, amidst widespread fear of fifth column activities in Australia, it was superintended by Captain S. Crawford.