The Germans in Adelaide after 1848

Theodor Müller
- The Germans in Adelaide after 1848 -

We Germans in Adelaide were at that time an unusual clique. The years 1848 and 1849 had brought from Germany to this distant shore a different class of people than those that one usually imagines with the word "immigrant". Business people, architects, students, even army officers, all still young, found themselves together here and pursued a wide variety of occupations, which scarcely any of them would have dreamed of earlier; for Australia's big gold era had not yet dawned and people tried to earn themselves a living through hard work.
("Gerstäcker ist da!", in Die Gartenlaube 29 (1872), p477)

(The years 1848 and 1849) sent a different and larger contingent of Germans to Australia than had ever occurred before. While up to that time only pious sects and individual labourers and market gardeners had immigrated from Germany, who had not been able to raise the status of the German*, at that time intelligent, courageous German men from all walks of life arrived, who were not afraid to take on any type of work and to face the toughest privations and hardships, in order to be free citizens of a free world.
("Weihnachtsfeier in Australien", in Die Gartenlaube 49 (1876), p824)

* "who had not been able to raise the status of the German" - this is an unjustified comment, as German settlers before 1848 in general already enjoyed a very good reputation.

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