Names

Australian Placenames of German Background

Prenzlau, Queensland

Prenzlau is a rural locality 25 km east of Gatton in the Lockyer Valley. German families settled the area in the 1860s and 1870s - some or all of them most probably came from the Uckermark (an historical region in the northeast of present-day Germany - most of the Uckermark region is within today's state of Brandenburg). The main town of the Uckermark was Prenzlau, a town 100 km north of Berlin. There were villages not far away from Queensland's Prenzlau, at Minden and Tarampa, and it was not until 1894 that a post office and a government school were opened at Prenzlau itself.

(Photo © D. Nutting) road sign

A road sign near Prenzlau, Queensland.

In 1944 the Prenzlau State School celebrated its Golden Jubilee. Of the 80 original pupils in the year 1894, several were able to attend the 50-year celebrations, and a newspaper report on the event shows that the former students all had German surnames: E. Niethe, W. Niethe, B. J. Harm, G. Harm, O. Schloss, A. Pieper, B. Mundt, H. Leschke, and C. Reinke. Mr E. Wenck was head teacher of the school from 1897 to 1916.[1]

(Photo © D. Nutting) school sign

The Prenzlau State School sign in 2008.

(Photo via Wikimedia Commons) railway station

The railway station at Prenzlau, Germany.

Photo source: Colin Smith, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

◀ Placenames in Queensland...

♦ Notes:

1. SCHOOLS CELEBRATE END OF YEAR (1944, December 20). Queensland Times (Ipswich, Qld. : 1909 - 1954), p. 4 (DAILY). Retrieved November 15, 2022, from <http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article115484203>

♦ References:

'Prenzlau'. (2018). Queensland Places. Centre for the Government of Queensland, <https://queenslandplaces.com.au/prenzlau>