1 Smith, C.N. Nineteenth Century Emigration of ‘Old Lutherans’ from Eastern Germany (mainly Pomerania and Lower Silesia) to Australia, Canada, and the United States, (McNeal, AZ: Westland Publications, 1980). Smith usefully summarizes the information contained in W. Iwan's Die altlutherische Auswanderung um die Mitte des 19.Jahrhunderts (Ludwigsburg: Eichhom Verlag, 1942).Google Scholar

2 It should be noted that such large numbers of Protestant Germans to Australia were not paralleled by similar proportions in other countries, where large numbers of Catholics also emigrated.Google Scholar

3 Heavily German settlements in the 1840s included Lobethal, Hahndorf and Gnadenthal. For settlement details see e.g., Lodewyckx, Anton Die Deutschen in Australien, (Stuttgart: Ausland und Heimat Verlag, 1932), Chap. 5; Meyer, Charles A History of Germans in Australia 1839–1945 (Melbourne: Monash University, 1990), 82–102.Google Scholar

4 Until separation in 1851 Victoria was actually known as the Port Phillip District (of New South Wales) and administered by a representative of the New South Wales Governor.Google Scholar

5 Population rose from 77,000 in 1851 to 544,000 in 1861. There were Land Selection Acts in Victoria in 1861, 1865, 1869 and 1884. See e.g. Roberts, Stephen History of Australian Land Settlement 1788–1920 (Melbourne: Macmillan, 1924).Google Scholar

6 Widely traveled observers, like Government officials George Rusden and Hugh Childers, reported that existing denominational school buildings were poor, teachers badly trained or not at all, and country districts lacked schools to an alarming degree. Rusden, George W. National Education (Melbourne: n.p., 1853). Rusden later gave damning evidence before the 1852 Royal Commission on Education.Google Scholar

7 Fritzsche, Letter to Meyer, Pastor 1844, in Brauer, A. Australian Lutheran Almanac (Adelaide: Lutheran Publishing House, 1938), 71.Google Scholar

8 See for example Hebart, Theodore Die Vereinigte Ev.Lutherische Kirche in Australien, (Adelaide: Lutheran Book Depot, 1938), Chapter One; Löwenberg, Johann D. Persecution of the Lutheran Church in Prussia from 1831 (Eng. Trans) (London: Hamilton, 1840).Google Scholar

9 However it should be noted that not all ELSA congregations adopted the rigid anti-State attitude expressed by Kavel, and Fritzsche, and quite a few accepted State aid until it was abolished.Google Scholar

10 The Victorian Synod attitude is explained in Festschrift zur… Jubelfeier des 50jährigen Bestehens der evangel. -lutherischen Synode von Victoria (Melbourne: n.p., 1907), 4. (President ELSVic Pastor Hermann Herlitz).Google Scholar

11 In 1862 there were 187 National (Government) schools in Victoria and 460 Denominational ones.Google Scholar

12 Art. XXLX, p.38, School Regulations 1856 (part of ELSVic Synod Reports of that year).Google Scholar

13 Teacher Müller, Oskar who served for nearly forty years at Hochkirch School in Victoria's south-west during the second half of the century, had no formal teacher training. Max von Schramm, teacher at Doncaster Lutheran School near Melbourne, had been in the German Merchant Navy and also had no teacher training, but his religious strength is illustrated by his resigning from the school in 1874 because of Government interference. Two years later he was ordained as a Lutheran pastor.Google Scholar

14 In the late 1850s model schools to provide secondary education for would-be teachers were established by both the National and Denominational Schools Boards. But these remained small and non-compulsory. See Sweetman, Edward et al., A History of State Education in Victoria (Melbourne: Education Department, 1922), 59. From 1862 all teachers in state-funded schools were to have approved qualifications, in practice this seems not to have been thoroughly policed in the non-state schools.Google Scholar

15 Chadwick, Edwin The Secularisation of the European Mind in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), Seven, Chapter Chadwick discusses at length the extent of such influence amongst the general public, concluding that, by 1900, most of the new views had become simplified into vague slogans. Social and economic change were probably as important in influencing general opinions about the world.Google Scholar

16 There were some individuals who advocated a completely secular school system such as the prominent writer and bookseller Coles, E.W. and the writer Rusden., H.K. But the mainly practical difficulties in agreeing upon the content of religious instruction in schools and the intransigence of the denominations were perhaps more important than theories about secularism or rationalism. See e.g. Gregory, Jack S. Church and State: Changing Policies toward Religion in Australia (Melbourne: Cassell Australia, 1973), 132–3.Google Scholar

17 Papers Presented to Parliament (Victoria) 4, 1867, p. 1 175; see also Gregory, Church and State, 96–7.Google Scholar

18 School Regulations (Schulordnung) 1856, Article 1, p.26.Google Scholar

19 Kirchenbote, 2 August 1878.Google Scholar

20 Christenbote, June 1867.Google Scholar

21 Ibid., October 1872, p.74.Google Scholar

22 Ibid., September 1862.Google Scholar

23 The initiator was teacher Carl Krichauff. See Meyer, Charles “The Lutheran Schools of Victoria 1854–1930,“ (Ph.D. Thesis, Monash University 1995), 295–9.Google Scholar

24 For outline of the connections between Missouri Synod America and Lutherans in Australia see Koch, John B. When the Murray meets the Mississippi. A Survey of Australian and American Lutheran Contacts 1836–1974 (Adelaide: Lutheran Publishing House, 1975).Google Scholar

25 Christenbote, January 1882.Google Scholar

26 Kirchenbote, 3 July 1874.Google Scholar

27 This followed the pattern instituted by the South Australian Lutheran Teachers Association led by teacher Caspar Dorsch. An early handwritten draft timetable is written both in English and German, illustrating those subjects taught in English and those in German - about fifty per cent each. The timetable is reproduced in Meyer, “The Lutheran Schools of Victoria,” (Appendix), pp. 295–9Google Scholar

28 Pella Lutheran School Minute Book 1901–1912, Meeting August 1906.Google Scholar

29 Ibid., 29 August 1910. The teacher was requested to experiment a little, perhaps teaching it only in the junior levels, then to report back to the School Committee.Google Scholar

30 We have a full account of how this operated from evidence proffered by Lutheran teacher G. Hessel to the (Victorian) Royal Commission on Education, 1866. A summary is also given in Meyer, “The Lutheran Schools of Victoria,” 204–08.Google Scholar

31 Victorian Parliamentary Debates, Session 1872, p. 1472.Google Scholar

32 Selleck, R.J.W. “The Catholic Primary School“, in Cleverly, J. (ed.), Half a Million Children (Melbourne: Longman Cheshire, 1978); Austin, A.G. Australian Education 1788–1900, (Melbourne: Pitman, 1961), 198–207.Google Scholar

33 Christenbote, October 1872.Google Scholar

34 For example, the Christenbote came out in September 1882, p. 133, with support for efforts to reintroduce use of the Bible in state schools. Between 1880 and 1913 there were several lengthy debates in Parliament on the question of religious instruction in state schools and several bills were introduced to allow for greater religious participation.Google Scholar

35 See for example Christenbote 1878, June 1896. At the Twenty-Third Synod of the ELSVic in Bendigo the acceptance of religious instruction in state schools before school, given by the teacher or a minister, was ratified.Google Scholar

36 Kirchenbote (Adelaide) January 1876. Similar anti-dancing and anti-gambling comments are often to be seen in the church newspapers of both synods but particularly in the Kirchenbote. Google Scholar

37 For example Pastors Alfred Brauer and Peters both trained at the Missouri Synod Seminary in America, which had similar views regarding state interference; Caspar Dorsch, a Missouri Synod theologian, was active in South Australia. Prof. C.F. Graebner became Director of the ELSA Concordia College in Murtoa (Victoria) 1904–5, and from 1905–9 after the College had transferred to Adelaide.Google Scholar

38 I have not mentioned the presence of another important South Australian Synod, the Immanuel Synod, because it is largely irrelevant to the Victorian situation, having no schools there though several in South Australia.Google Scholar

39 Christenbote, June 1896.Google Scholar

40 According to Fischer, G. Enemy Aliens. Internment and the Home Front Experience 1914–20, (St. Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 1989), p. 3, 986 of 33,000 German-born Australians, and sixty one of 66,000 Australian-born of German descent, were actually interned during the War.Google Scholar

41 This conclusion is based upon examination of a number of local newspapers from the war years; other commentators have tended to lump urban and country Australians together. The matter is exhaustively treated in Meyer “The Lutheran Schools of Victoria,” Chapter Light.Google Scholar

42 Here, in addition to German Lutheran-established schools, there were also significant numbers of schools established by the Scandinavian synods. See Beck, Walter Lutheran Elementary Schools in the United States (St. Louis, MO: Concordia Publishing House, 1939), Chapter XIII.Google Scholar

43 The Age and Argus are full of war reports and letters expressing outrage against both overseas and local ‘German'; local Germans were continually accused of harboring enemy sympathies. See also Meyer, Charles “The Lutheran Schools at the Time of the Great War 1914–18“, History of Education Review 27: 1 (1998): 53–65.Google Scholar

44 Selleck, R.J.W. “‘The Trouble with my Looking Glass': A Study of the Attitudes of Australians to Germans during the Great War,“ Journal of Australian Studies, No.6, (June 1980).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

45 The Wrigley File with his Report is located in the Victorian Public Records Office, Lavation, Victoria, VPRS 892, Special File 1128. There are other documents of significance in this file.Google Scholar

46 Since then Lutheran schools and student numbers have steadily grown: in March 1999 Victoria could claim 11 elementary schools and 1 secondary; in South Australia numbers have climbed to 22 elementary and 6 secondary schools, of total Australian figures of 55 elementary and 14 secondary schools.Google Scholar