German-speakers' Contribution to Australia's Development in the 19th Century
A Brief Look
By 1890 German-speakers were the largest non-British minority in Australia. Their contribution to Australia was extensive. For example:
Shipping ad, 1890s
Friedrich Krichauff - forester, expert on agriculture. More info on Krichauff here [at the ADB]...
Martin Basedow - education. More info on Basedow here [at the ADB]...
Ludwig Leichhardt - explorer of northern Australia. More info on Leichhardt here...
Georg Neumayer - astronomer, scientist. He was organiser of the first observatory in Melbourne, the Flagstaff Observatory for Geophysics, Magnetism and Nautical Science. He assisted in the planning of the Burke and Wills exploration expedition. Participants on the expedition were the Germans Wilhelm Brahe, Ludwig Becker [official artist - more info on Becker here...] and Hermann Beckler [expedition medical officer]. Germany's research station in Antarctica and a moon crater are named after Neumayer. More info on Neumayer here...
Johann Menge - mineralogist ('Father of Mineralogy in South Australia' - more info on Johann Menge here [at the ADB])
Hans Heysen - landscape painter. Multiple winner of the Wynne Prize (an Australian prize for landscape painting and for sculpture). You can view paintings by Heysen here [at the NGV] and read more about him here.
Bernhard Holtermann (Sydney - more info about Holtermann here [at the ADB] and here [news.com.au - 'Like a 1872 Google Street View, the Holtermann photos reveal gold boom Australia']) and J.W. Lindt (Melbourne - more info about Lindt here [at the ADB]) - pioneers in photography
Dr Eugen Hirschfeld - German Consul in Brisbane 1906-1914. He played a role in the founding of the University of Queensland.
Carl Linger - composer. Leader of the Liedertafel (choral group) in Adelaide. Composer of the "Song of Australia"; it became an unofficial national anthem in South Australia. More info about the Song of Australia here [at Wikipedia] and about Carl Linger here [at the ADB]
Johann Eugen von Guérard - landscape painter in Victoria. He was the first Director of the National Gallery in Melbourne. More info about von Guérard here...
Baron Ferdinand von Mueller - botanist and scientist. From 1853 he was the Government Botanist of the Colony of Victoria and from 1857-1873 Director of the Botanical Gardens in Melbourne. He travelled widely in Australia and greatly increased the world's understanding of Australian plants and animals. More info about von Mueller here...
Carl F.T. Strehlow - expert in the ethnology and languages of the Aborigines. Leader of the Hermannsburg mission station in the Northern Territory 1894-1922. More info about Strehlow here [at the ADB]...
Road sign of Lubeck, a village in the Wimmera district of western Victoria. The village was named after a city in the north of Germany. Grain silo in the background.
However many German immigrants were farmers and craftsmen and they settled new rural areas and introduced sustainable agriculture there. In the 19th century the great majority of German Australians lived in regional areas rather than in the cities. The Germans were often more successful farmers than the British, as they had already lived as farmers in Germany. (Many British immigrants had a urban background.) They established successful small farms in a similar manner to the early German settlers in Pennsylvania in the American colonies. Germans (some were newly arrived immigrants, others came from South Australia) settled in the southwest of Victoria in the 50s, and in the 70s in Victoria's Wimmera. Through their hard work and endurance they transformed the plains into a rich wheat-growing region.
Queensland separated from New South Wales in 1859 and became an independent colony. The new colony was keen to encourage German immigrants as a result of the achievements of German settlers in the other colonies. From 1862 onwards many Germans arrived, particularly farmers. They came primarily from eastern Prussia, western Prussia, Pomerania, Silesia and Württemberg and settled in the areas of Rosewood, Fassifern, Lockyer and Toowoomba. They had a good reputation, and Sir Thomas McIlwraith (three times Premier of Queensland during 1879-1893), stated in Parliament:
Having disembarked from the ships and spent one or two days in the Immigration Depot, the German immigrants disappear. One hears or sees nothing of them for 18 months or a couple of years, when some fine day they return from the bush in their own attractive turn out, wife and children seated high, and all well-dressed and happy-looking.
Sir Thomas McIlwraith
Pennsylvania-German farmers: Dr Benjamin Rush from Philadelphia, signatory of the Declaration of Independence, Chief Medical Officer of George Washington's Revolutionary Army, said that the Germans were the best farmers in Pennsylvania. Christoph Ludwig, a baker in Philadelpia, supplied bread to the Revolutionary Army and the allied French Army 1776-1783 and received his grain from the Pennsylvania-German farmers.)