Carl Friedrich Theodor Strehlow (23 December 1871 – 20 October 1922) was an anthropologist, linguist and genealogist who served on two Lutheran missions in remote parts of Australia from May 1892 to October 1922. He was at Killalpaninna Mission (also known as Bethesda) in northern South Australia, from 1892 to 1894, and then Hermannsburg, west of Alice Springs, from 1894 to 1922. Strehlow was assisted by his wife Friederike, who played a central role in reducing the high infant mortality which threatened Aboriginal communities all over Australia after the onset of white settlement.
As a polymath with an interest in natural history, and informed by the local Aranda people, Strehlow provided plant and animal specimens to museums in Germany and Australia. Strehlow also collaborated on the first complete translation of the New Testament into an Aboriginal language (Dieri), published by the British and Foreign Bible Society in 1897. He later translated the New Testament into the Western Aranda language and also produced a reader and service book in this language. His son Theodor (Ted) Strehlow, who was 14 at the time of his father's death, built his career in part on the researches carried out by his father.
Early life and education Strehlow was born on 23 December 1871 at Fredersdorf, near Angermünde, in the Uckermark, Brandenburg, Germany, to the Free Lutheran village school teacher, Carl Ludwig Strehlow (10 March 1831 – 6 November 1896) and his wife Friederike Wilhelmine Augustine Schneider (3 August 1831 – 3 September 1916).For her biographical details see CA Starke, Deutsches Geschlechterbuch Band 38 p. 161. Her complicated family background and troubled childhood and adolescence is given exhaustive coverage in John Strehlow's The Tale of Frieda Keysser Vol. 1 pp. 75–172. The seventh child of this marriage, Strehlow grew up as the oldest son, two earlier sons having died young of diphtheria. Strehlow's oldest sister, Magdalena, born in 1857, was fourteen years older than him.
Little is known about his education other than that until 1886 when he was 14, he was given a sound, basic education by his father at the local Free Lutheran school, set up by the Old Lutherans in opposition to the state school, integrated into the Union of the Calvinist and Lutheran Churches, which had been instigated by the Prussian King Friedrich Wilhelm III in 1817 after the Napoleonic Wars. Sometime before 1886, Strehlow's local Old Lutheran clergyman, Rev. Carl Seidel, had begun to educate him in the subjects required for matriculation (Latin, Greek, history, English, mathematics, religion and German) during the four-year preparation for confirmation, which was then obligatory. Lessons took place in the manse at the main town of the district, Angermünde, where Seidel was based. A keen linguist influenced by the ideas of Jacob Grimm, Seidel laid the foundations for Strehlow's later interest in linguistics, which is the key to understanding his views on the antiquity of Aboriginal society and culture, and especially its decay from a previous higher level, something Strehlow thought was evident in their languages, of which he mastered three: Dieri, Aranda and Loritja.Details from CA Starke, Deutsches Geschlechterbuch Band 38. (Limburg a.d. Lahn, 1962) p. 189.
Though a brilliant student, among the anomalies of Strehlow's education, was his father's opposition to him having a university education on the grounds that the family was too poor. This opposition may have arisen from bitterness – in 1856 his father was jailed for two weeks for teaching religious instruction while working in the state system in Seefeld in Farther Pomerania, something forbidden him because he was a member of the Old Lutheran Church.Taken from the Immanuel Synod's paper Kirchen- und Missionszeitung 12 April 1912 p. 115.
Strehlow senior's older brother and sister emigrated to the United States of America, possibly for religious reasons, though this is not certain. Assisted by Seidel, Strehlow won his father's permission to study for the ministry in any of the mission schools in Germany by November 1887 when he was not quite 16. Since a university degree was mandatory in Germany for the clergy, this meant he could only become a clergyman abroad, which in practice meant working among German immigrants in America. After being rejected by the Leipzig Mission because he was too young, with financial assistance from the Society for Home and Foreign Mission (Gesellschaft für Innere und Äussere Mission) set up so poorer students could study, Strehlow entered the seminary founded by Wilhelm Löhe in Neuendettelsau, Middle Franconia, Bavaria at Easter 1888.Details from the Chronica der Missionsanstalt Neuendettelsau, Erstes Buch Januar 1877 – December 1898. Here, the three-year curriculum was stamped by the ideas of Rev. Friedrich Bauer, whose German Grammar ran to 37 editions by 1913, and later became the Duden. After Bauer's death in 1873, the school was run by Rev. Johannes Deinzer, who was heavily influenced by his teachers at Erlangen, including Nägelsbach, von Hofmann, Thomasius, von Raumer and others.For Deinzer's biographical details see his obituary in Kirchliche Mitteilungen15 Feb. 1897 Nos. 1 & 2, pp. 1–13. Chapter 23 in The Tale of Frieda Keysser pp. 213–24 gives detailed coverage. The heavy emphasis on classical languages at the seminary resulted in the more academically inclined students reading works by Homer, Virgil, Sophocles, and others. Strehlow was awarded a "brilliant first" prior to his graduation at Easter 1892, with his final exams delayed possibly because he was thought too young to hold the position of pastor in an American congregation. By then, most of his class had left for their posts abroad, a number of them to South Australia, but most to America.
Career Missionary calling Among the personalities who resisted the fusion of the Lutheran and Calvinist Churches was Rev. Friedrich Meischel, who arrived in South Australia in 1860.Adam Schuster, Aus Tausend Jahren Neuendettelsauer Geschichte (Ansbach 1963, p. 130 & The Tale of Frieda Keysser p. 247. He had earlier been in contact with Neuendettelsau's founder, Wilhelm Löhe, and is thought by some to have been inspired by him. After Stuart's epic overland crossing from Adelaide to what later became Darwin and back again in 1862, Meischel promoted the idea of missionary work among the inland tribes, in particular the Dieri, who had helped Burke and Wills after their ill-fated attempted crossing of the continent. Meischel's dealings were largely with Revs. Christian Auricht and G.J. Rechner of the Immanuel Synod, formed after a split between the first Lutheran clergy to come to Australia, Kavel and Fritsche. A mission supported by both the Immanuel and Australian Synods was duly set up at Killalpaninna on the Cooper's Creek north-east of Marree, staffed by personnel from Harms' mission school at Hermannsburg Mission in Germany. By the time of Strehlow's graduation, missionaries were recruited from Neuendettelsau after the Immanuel and Australian Synods decided they could no longer work together, and neither could work with Hermannsburg in Germany, which had aligned itself with the state church and become "unionist".The Tale of Frieda Keysser p. 407. A staffing crisis in 1891, in part due to disagreements between the missionaries themselves, but also conflict with the state governments where Lutheran missions were operating, resulted in Deinzer being asked for a further missionary. Strehlow was as yet unplaced with an American congregation, so was approached to fill the position of teacher at Killalpaninna, which he duly accepted, arriving in South Australia on 30 May 1892 where he was ordained at Light Pass, South Australia., reaching the outstation Etadunna on 11 July 1892, and Killalpaninna itself a day or so after.The Tale of Frieda Keysser p. 308. Being split between several sites, the mission settlements here were known collectively as Bethesda Mission and within six months of arrival at the mission Strehlow learnt Dieri.
The Dieri New Testament The impetus for the New Testament in the Dieri language is said to have come not from Reuther but from Strehlow who, as the teacher in the mission school, needed printed material in Dieri for his students, a number of whom were older people receiving religious instruction. He had also just received a rebuff in his attempt to marry Frieda Keysser. Given a thorough linguistic training from his local clergyman Seidel before going to Neuendettelsau, Strehlow had the advantage in translation over Reuther, who only spent two years training at Neuendettelsau and had no prior knowledge of Greek, the language of the Koinos New Testament. He also knew no Latin. The resulting translation was a collaboration between the two missionaries and was published by the British and Foreign Bible Society in 1897. It was the first ever translation of the entire New Testament into an Aboriginal language.
Hermannsburg Mission In October 1894, Strehlow was appointed jointly with his friend and former fellow student Rev. John Bogner to take over the abandoned Mission Station of Hermannsburg in Central Australia, then largely financed by sales of sheep, wool, horses and cattle. It had been newly purchased by the Immanuel Synod. Strehlow arrived on Friday 12 October 1894, still only 22, and with only three breaks for holidays, stayed there until 1922. He was on his own until Bogner arrived with his wife and child on 25 May 1895. Bogner was the manager, in charge of stock and the rebuilding of the structures which were falling into ruin, while Strehlow was the teacher in charge of education, religious instruction and translation. He used his knowledge of homeopathy to fight diseases, and had sufficient medical knowledge to set broken limbs. The population were mainly Aranda, with some Loritja from the west. Under Bogner, sheep raising was abandoned in favour of horses and cattle, but the station never made a profit.
Strehlow married Frieda on 25 September 1895.)
Although Strehlow took over as manager in 1901 after Bogner had left, he continued to play the dominant role in the religious life of Hermannsburg, which – in keeping with his predecessors – he conceived of as a place of care for the old, cure for the sick, and lastly, but most importantly, a religious centre where the Aranda people could hear the gospel preached in their own language. As manager as well as missionary, he kept a close eye on all developments – working out policy regarding conversions, station regulations, as well as making sure the stockmen on this property of were not doing deals with the neighbouring cattle stations.
Strehlow's missionary work was closely bound up with his study of languages, which derived from his role as a teacher, using and later translating material into the local language, which was then printed. This meant he had to work closely with the older generation, who were the best speakers of the language, putting him in an unusual relationship with them, since usually they were not interested in Christianity at all. In practice, this meant that Strehlow's teaching of Christianity became strongly influenced by them and their knowledge. He concluded that their language "has passed its flowering and is now falling into decay",See his Report in Kirchen- und Missionszeitung 19 Oct. 1893 p. 170. and felt he had to investigate their culture to understand why.