Klemzig
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 Lithograph of the Australian village of Klemzig by August Angas (1846) |
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Klemzig is a suburb of Adelaide in South Australia with 5,600 inhabitants (as of 2011). This place, founded in 1838, was the first German settlement in Australia . The emigrants left the then Prussian Klemzig, which is now in Poland and is called Klepsk , because of religious disputes with the Prussian authorities. The Australian village of Klemzig was also the starting point for other German settlements such as Lobethal , Hahndorf and Bethany .
Reason to emigrate
The Prussian King Friedrich Wilhelm III. wanted to unite the Lutheran and Reformed Churches to form the Church of the Old Prussian Union , while people in the Klemzig area wanted to remain in the Old Lutheran Church . Therefore there were disputes with the authorities, who did not give in and threatened punishments, whereupon some of the Old Lutherans decided to emigrate.
emigration
The initiator and leader of the emigration from Prussia was Pastor August Ludwig Christian Kavel (1798–1860) and on the Australian side, George Fife Angas supported the project, which was instrumental in founding the British colony of South Australia.
Angas was one of the largest landowners in South Australia during the state's inception and a director of the British Colonial Bank , the Loan Company and a committee member of the South Australian Company . When Angus lived in Great Britain, he had business relationships with the Lutheran Mission in Dresden, which had sent pastors to Australia to proselytize the Aborigines .
On June 8, 1838, over 200 residents left their German homeland on barges via Tschicherzig an der Oder, heading for Hamburg, which they reached on July 6, and sailed on the Bengalee and Prince Georg to Australia, where the Bengalee with the first on November 18 21 Germans and the rest of them arrived in Port Adelaide on November 20th . Another 600 residents of Brandenburg , including farmers, craftsmen, employees, teachers and clergy from the eastern Brandenburg region of Züllichau , Schwiebus , Möstchen , Skampe , Muschten , Friedrichsfelde , Klippendorf , Kay , Rissen , Jehser , Rentschen , Palzig and Nickern followed them and founded Hahndorf and Glen Osmond .
In Australia, the first repatriates settled on 60 hectares on the banks of the Torrens River , where they built houses, the church and the school building of Klemzig, grew vegetables, made their own bread and worked in the nearby town.
The first settlers received a loan of £ 1,200 at 15% interest and a seven-year lease of 5 shillings per acre annually . At first they were not welcomed by the English settlers, but they changed their minds and Governor George Gawler even wanted another hundred thousand of them into the country.
memory
In memory of their homeland, they named the place Klemzig. Among the emigrants who left Klemzig were Johann Fiedler, who came to South Australia in 1838 and started viticulture in Bethany from 1847, and Joseph Ernst Seppelt , who came to Australia in 1850 and became one of the best-known early winemakers in Australia and also grew tobacco and wheat .
During the First World War there was anti-German mood in Australia and Klemzig was renamed, like many other places founded by Germans. The place was named Gaza to commemorate the Battle of Megiddo (1918) , which the British won with the leading role of Australian troops.
In 1935 the place was renamed to Klemzig under the South Australia's Nomenclature Act of 1935 and retained the name during World War II . However, the local football club kept the name Gaza to this day.
The place where the first German Lutheran church building in Australia stood is now the "Klemzig Pioneer Cemetery", a cemetery on which a replica bell tower reminds of the early settlement.
Web links
- Southaustralianhistory.com.au : Plaque with names of the early settlers in Klemzig Pioneer Cemetery
- Marc von Lüpke-Schwarz: A piece of Brandenburg in the middle of Australia. Report on April 2, 2013, at Deutsche Welle
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Australian Bureau of Statistics : Klemzig ( English ) In: 2016 Census QuickStats . June 27, 2017. Retrieved April 8, 2020.
- ↑ a b c lr-online.de ( Memento of the original from October 16, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. : Bernd Marx: From Klemzig to Klemzig , from June 7, 2011, accessed on August 18, 2011
- ↑ adb.anu.edu.au : George Fife Angus , in English, accessed August 18, 2011
- ↑ southaustralianhistory.com.au : George Fife Angas , in English, accessed 18 August 2011
- ↑ a b c southaustralianhistory.com.au : Klemzig, First German, and Lutheran, settlement in South Australia , in English, accessed 18 August 2011
