German Missionaries in Australia

 

Johann Nikolaus Hey was born on 7 March 1862 in Dörrenbach near Bergzabern in the Palatine as the third of eight children of the farmers Jakob and Philippine Hey. His father died in 1874, when Nikolaus was 12. He had seven years of public school education (Volksschule) from 1868 to 1875. In a class of ten pupils he usually came third or fourth, although his school leaving results at age 13, show excellent results.

 

He then had to work the family farm and continued to attend Sunday school for three years. He was able to avoid military service due to ill health. His mother died in 1886, when he was 24, and this caused him to think of abandoning the farm where he struggled along with his sister. He and his brother both applied for admission to Basle, but while his brother was accepted there, Nikolaus was rejected for being too old.^[1]

 

When he asked for admission to the Moravian mission college at Niesky he was already 26 years old. He recommended himself as apt at carpentry, gardening and other skills, frankly admitting a lack of academic talents. He also emphasised very strongly that he was a sinner returning to the fold.

 

I have been very irresponsible because early on a tendency towards sin manifested itself in me. I ran with the pack, perhaps not visibly but internally with thoughts and plans and an appetite for sin and the rejection of everything Godly. But I know that the Lord’s spirit worked itself in me since my sixth year, how I sometimes shed tears because of my sins, and that I could never sin with a clean conscience. My mother was very strict in this regard because she knew the dangers of the world especially for young people, but on the other hand she was also full of love. …  

Up to my 20^th year I was deep in the terrible darkness of sin. Twice I left home to vent my lust for the devil and the world. I had drifted far away from God. I am ashamed of this period. …. The prayers of my mother followed me everywhere … she spent whole nights praying for me … but she was only granted to witness the conversion of our oldest brother. …… The sin became more and more of a burden to me and I wholeheartedly longed to be freed from it. But the devil worked against it. At first he covered up my sin to me, and when God uncovered it to me the devil returned to say it was too late for me, I had overdone it. But where the sin has become mighty, grace becomes even mightier.^[2]

  

The intensity of this plea for admission, and the stark realism with which Hey referred to the devil, imprinted his countenance as a missionary among heathen, who wandered, as he himself had once done, in darkness.

 

 

Missionary preparation

The Hey family at Mapoon

Source: Lutheran Archives Australia

Leading Mapoon

 

 

These undesirable marine visitors sometimes leave a legacy of disease, and always a certain demoralisation against which the missionaries have to wage perpetual warfare. The chief trouble is with the old men who have a plurality of wives. (Meston, 1896)

 

Hey reached the conclusion that Aboriginal participation in the marine industry should be more closely controlled by the mission rather than prohibited. He argued that marine work need not necessarily be detrimental,

 

if worked under proper supervision, possessing as it does such relation to their native occupation of fishing as to be congenial to their habits and harmonizing with the idiosyncrasies of the blacks on the coast. … [If part of their wages were controlled] for the general amelioration of the blacks the recruiting of natives would be somewhat justified. (Hey, 1 July 1897)

 

Police Commissioner William Parry-Okeden’s report in 1897 contained the same solution:

 

I think that bêche-de-mer and turtle fishing, if worked under proper supervision for the benefit of the aborigines, would prove a most suitable outlet for their labour, possessing as it does such relation to their native occupation of hunting as to be congenial to their nature and habits, and harmonising perfectly with the idiosyncrasies of the coast black; and if successfully carried on it would turn out to be of valuable financial assistance in carrying out any scheme for the general amelioration of the blacks. (Parry-Okeden, Report, 1897)

 

It appears that Hey took the advice of experts surrounding him rather than providing expert advice based on his own observations. Before a royal commission into the marine industry in 1908, he relied on an observation made by Walter Roth in 1900 to estimate the wages the young men were bringing back from their marine work.^[8]

 

Hey found the demands made on him as an expert taxing. In 1896 he wrote ‘not a month passes where we don’t send 30 to 40 letters, often [answering] requests for beetles, plants, and so on’.^[9] He was more comfortable with paternalistic governance, supported by the two women in his family, his wife and sister-in-law, and considered the missionaries at Weipa and Aurukun as his assistants. His style was described even by friendly observers as a ‘limited monarchy’.^[10] He believed in a beneficient style of discipline that relied on shaming, which could only work if his authority was unquestioned. But his authority at the mission was based on undermining the authority of tradition, and was therefore constantly questioned.

 

 

A personal setback came in 1907 when an incident involving physical punishment made media headlines and led to a public inquiry, exposing Hey’s style of governance to public scrutiny (see Mapoon entry). He had to suffer chastisement from the Queensland government, against which he also sought to assert his authority. Earlier that year he had reported to Herrnhut how authoritatively he was able to deal with the local protector:

  

 

 

It must have been difficult for Hey to be subjected to the utmost criticism himself so soon afterwards.

 

During World War I the anti-German sentiment deeply traumatized Hey. Although his naturalisation in 1898 spared him from internment as an enemy alien, he was still exposed to hostile and suspicious attitudes, and to several house-searches.^[13] He understood clearly that the days of German empire, and of building up networks of German missions, were over.

 

 

The Heys retired from missionary service in Oct 1919 and moved to Sydney on a pension of £88, topped up in the following year by the Presbyterian Church to £120. During his retirement Hey performed voluntary work in Sunday Schools, gave bible lessons in state schools, and conducted hospital visitations and funeral services and other preaching functions. He became an honorary member of the Presbyterian church council, and also gave expert witness advice to the Queensland government on the treatment of people of mixed descent, which became a topical issue in the 1930s. In 1936 he was asked to comment on the population statistics reflected in the records of the North Queensland Moravian missions, which suggested a reduction by 5,000 people within a year. Should the indigenous population not have increased as a result of mission work? Hey responded that such figures were always wrong, because the difficulty was whether and to what extent persons of mixed descent were included in them.^[15]

 

Whether or not the figures were wrong, the missions could not halt the decimation of indigenous people resulting from introduced sickness, settler violence, and the erosion of traditional systems resulting from displacement, the destruction of the natural environment, and contact with settler society.  

 

Hey died in Sydney at age 89 on 28 October 1951.